The Ideology of Fascism

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The ideology of fascism

1. The Ideology Of Fascism 2.
FREEDOM AS BEHAVIOR GOVERNED BY
READ
3. ACTUALISM 4.
AND THE PROTO-FASCIST SOCIOLOGICAL TRADITION 5.
THE RESISTANCE 6.
AGAINST FASCIST SOCIALIZATION 7. 283 8. GENTILE AND
FASCIST SOCIALISM 9. TOTALITARIAN

SOCIALISM 10. TOTALITARISM OF
THE RIGHT AND OF THE LEFT 11. THE INVOLUTION
OF THE LENINISM 12. TOTALITARIAN AND
REVOLUTIONARY MASS MOVEMENTS 13. REGIMES OF
REVOLUTIONARY MASS MOVEMENTS
TOTALITARIES
14. NOTES TO CHAPTER SIX 15.
NOTES TO CHAPTER SEVEN 16. 110
Ibid., pp. 3, 11 and following, 25. 17.
1966. p. 12.
18. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
19. 411
20. 1 3D1U974
The ideology of fascism

A. James Gregor
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This book has no great pretensions, except those for which it was
essentially written: 1) to provide a historically exact and objective treatment
of Mussolini's Videology of Fascism and, 2) to propose a general
typology of mass revolutionary movements that reflects the thinking
contemporary, with particular regard to the description and analysis of
totalitarian movements. If the term "totalitarian" identifies a well-defined
political species, with totalitarian movements representing specific types
of it, all these movements must have phenotypic and probably
genotypic similarities in common. If we want to rediscover these similarities,
we must, in order to arrive at their classification, necessarily start with their
description.
The result of such a work presents itself as an essay on the history of

political ideas, a discursive and descriptive treatment of the relatively
coherent and solid range of those ideas which contributed to the
building of Fascism under Benito Mussolini. As such, this work deals only
marginally with the political and institutional history of Fascist Italy.
Any attempt to include the latter matter would obviously have gone beyond
the limits imposed and transcended the author's competence. There are
a considerable number of books in English and other languages which
deal abundantly with the political and institutional history of Fascist Italy.
On the other hand, however, there are very few that offer a competent
and objective treatment of the principles that gave birth to that history and
are the basis of those institutions.
Any political ideology has a particular history and, consequently, is unique

in the history of ideas. However, to understand the value of a political
ideology it is necessary to relate it to well-defined constants, to indicate the
place it occupies in a context of forces that are in a systematic relationship
with other contemporary political ideas. To this end, I have considered that
Fascist ideology assumes particular importance when considered in

the context of the problems troubling developing nations. In this context,
the descriptive and didactic treatment of fascist ideology takes on a
heuristic character which offers the preliminary cues to the historical and
political explanation. The main
The purpose of this book is a treatment. expository and descriptive

of the subject; secondary purpose is the search for truth. An exact
description almost invariably leads to the discovery of the truth.
A major thesis argued here is that Fascism has been thoroughly

misunderstood by Anglo-Saxon scholars, especially as most investigations
into it have been conducted from preconceptions that have led to serious
neglect of its stated ideology. The first chapter thus deals with the main
aspects of the nature and dimensions of the inability to understand
resulting from such an attitude. Since our exposition is decidedly against
the tide, we have used explanatory notes and direct quotations to
the maximum. This makes the text heavier and makes it more difficult to
read. And the price you have to pay to write and read a book that
attempts to give a new orientation to a thought which, for a long time,
has limited itself to following the paths traced more than a generation ago.
. Two apparent flaws accompany this effort. The first, and most
obvious, is the regular recourse to a limited set of core concepts
by the various thinkers included in our discussion, which makes repetition
an unavoidable necessity. The same set of ideas appears again and
again in the works of men who belong to both the proto-fascist and
the fascist traditions. Furthermore, the fascists, in expounding their
theses, use the same concepts on the most varied occasions. The
analysis of any rational justification needs a nafferination of the
antecedent premises if the structure of an argument is to be revealed without
ellipsis. The recurrence of similar ideas, moreover, is an indisputable proof
of the constancy of the fascist doctrine. The second flaw, and perhaps a
consequence of the first, is that the treatment of fascist ideology
conducted in this way assumes an aspect that is perhaps too rational and systematic.
Despite appearances, however, I feel that the treatment is
substantially correct. Any excessive uniformity is undoubtedly a

consequence of the fact that I have not included all the dissident fascist
opinions in the exposition. Mussolini's own thought, which is at the
center of the exhibition, has been considered chronologically.
References to his writings and speeches, and quotations from them, are
made in that order, unless otherwise indicated by a precise reference to
the date. Sometimes comparisons are made with his previous or
subsequent doctrinal statements in order to highlight their coherence or some particular d
The strictly chronological order has been maintained in order to
demonstrate how the substantial coherence and development of
Mussolini's thought are not an artifice of the exhibition itself.
Given the intentions of the discussion, particular criticisms of fascist

thought are purely marginal. These pages are dedicated exclusively to the
exhibition. Giving space to intrinsic or extrinsic criticism would have
meant at least doubling the size of the work. In any case, a valid critique of
fascist thought presupposes what this book attempts: namely, an exalted
and objective understanding of fascist engagement. Most of the
criticisms of the past have failed to meet this first minimum requirement.
What I believe emerges clearly, without any possibility of doubt, is

that the Mussolini of Anglo-American literature is, in many respects,
only a caricature of the historical and political figure. Mussolini may have
been many other things, but he is still an interesting political thinker;
interesting (or boring) as much as Lenin, with whom, moreover, has many
affinities. His thought, most often expressed in elliptical and shorthand
form, did not have the breadth and depth of Lenin's. Often the most
interesting things can only be revealed by going back to the underlying
premises and ancillary assumptions. Such an undertaking is obviously
risky. But that it is not a reprehensible undertaking is evidenced only by
recourse to literature which we know to have been familiar to Mussolini
and tacitly or explicitly accepted by him.
Mussolini was certainly as profound (or superficial) a thinker as Stalin

or Mao Tse-tung, and one can profit greatly from reading the
thirty-five volumes of his Opera omnia as much as can be gleaned from

reading the works of the other two.
Chapters II to VII attempt a reconstruction of fascist ideology. Chapter VIII

attempts to indicate the importance of fascist thought in the current
political situation. It emphasizes the fact that Fascism and the numerous
variants of current Marxism share some important characteristics,
more penetrating than any difference that can be found between them. This
chapter argues that Fascism represents an extreme type of mass
revolutionary movement and offers a schema of national totalitarianism. The
mass revolutionary movements of our era, it is said, have increasingly taken
on the specific features of classic Fascism. What the volume does not
address, but which I hope will be the subject of a subsequent volume
is the identification of the economic, political and social circumstances
that lead to the organization and success of contemporary para- or proto-
fascist mass movements.
Fascism is considered there as the first regime of mass revolutionary

movement that aspired to commit the totality of the human and natural
resources of a historical community for national development. The clear
intention of Fascism was the restoration of Italy's position as a great
power in the world. In order to achieve this goal, the clear aim of the
movement was productivist and developmental. It is the first mature example
of what, in our age, is called the modernization movement. In the
calculated effort to achieve its ends, such a movement requires a centralized
organization for the mobilization, dislocation and direction of resources.
Thus the totalitarian state and the single authoritarian party made their
predictable appearance. Fascist ideology supports and at the
same time promotes changes towards totalitarian state capitalism. Italy
was among the first underdeveloped countries of the twentieth century to be
shaken by a movement of national revolt. His avowed adversaries were
the most favored, or "plutocratic," nations of the earth. Fascism was the first
representative of those revolutions that are known today
mate "progressive revolutions". The Soviet Union, around the same time,
took on a similar look. The internationalist characteristics,
libertarian, distributive, and democratic characteristics of classical

Marxism were rapidly transformed into the nationalist, authoritarian,
productivist, and elitist characteristics of an incoherent and incongruous
fascism: what is commonly referred to today as Stalinism. The main
victims of Stalin's purges were exponents of Social Democracy and
Bolshevism, that is, exponents of the same political elements that
were eliminated in Fascist Italy.
Fascism is interpreted here as a developing dictatorship suited to

partially developed or underdeveloped national communities, and
therefore itself second-rate, in a period of intense international
competition for place and position. In this sense the ideology of Fascism,
historically and intellectually unique in that it was the product of a particular
set of ideas prevalent during the first decades of the twentieth century,
is understood to operate in an environmental situation in which they
were, and substantially remain, active some general historical forces.
These forces can be distinguished by the ideology that has mobilized
every single nation to respond to the forces themselves. Italian
Fascism was historically unique but, as a response to the general
political and social problems that accompany the attempt to give an
underdeveloped nation a "place in the sun," it has a much wider
significance than its brief historical existence would suggest. Fascism, in
fact, was a political phenomenon characteristic of partially industrialized European nation
It was strongest and came to power in European countries of Latin
origin, where gross national product and per capita income were lower,
and in only marginally industrialized countries such as Spain, Portugal,
Romania and Hungary. If this analysis is correct, it is to be expected that
revolutions in underdeveloped countries, which face the same problems
and nurture the same aspirations to achieve a better position in
international competition, must assume the typical features and provide the
same justifications of classical Fascism. The involution of classical
Marxism in the Soviet Union and the manifestly fascist characteristics of
African socialism offer circumstantial proof of this statement.
Only the emergence of National Socialism in an industrial country like
Germany seems to contradict this thesis. However, the traumatic
experience of Germany after the First World War, its reduction to a second-
order power at the very moment when all the
prerequisites for becoming a first-class world power lead us to assume

that this serious degradation of condition could help explain how it
sided with the revolutionary powers of the continent, with which it had
very little in common. But it is instructive to note that National
Socialism represented an anomalous fascist power. For National
Socialism, the object of charismatic loyalty (the community with
which it identified) proved to be not the nation, the characteristic
object of loyalty for true Fascism, but an ill-defined and misjudged
racial fraternity. National Socialism was, substantially
mind, further removed from Mussolini's Fascism than was the

"socialism" of the Soviet Union and, as such, requires a separate study.
In a curious reversal of political intentions, the Soviet Union
became increasingly nationalist while National Socialism became
increasingly internationalist. Hitler aimed at a racial international
that freed the world of national boundaries. the Soviet Union, on
the other hand, had to admit the historical validity and relative
permanence of national communities.
These interpretations are of course offered as heuristics.

Of course, they constitute a possible solution to the problems raised
by this book and to the growing awareness of the fact that regimes
of mass revolutionary movements with totalitarian aspirations have
more characteristics in common than any of them has with any other
political system. . Naturally, the main purpose of the volume is
the reconstruction of fascist ideology. If I can give a convincing
treatment of this alone, I will have more than fulfilled my intentions.
The writing of the manuscript made me indebted to more people than I

can publicly thank. However, I owe a particular debt of gratitude to
the engineer Giovanni Perona and to Professor Corrado Gini for the
many indications given to me regarding the content and structure of
Fascist thought. I feel particularly obliged to Professor Giuseppe
Prezzolini, who not only read the typescript during the compilation of
the work, but also made constructive criticisms which clarified in
my
mind many topics. Furthermore, her encouragement and kindness

have, in many cases, strengthened my hesitant decision.
The Institute of International Studies at the University of California,
Berkeley, provided me with the financial support that made the completion
of this work possible, and my wife, Dorothy, has read and reread
these pages in order to make my prose more understandable too.
Germanizing. Mrs. Jean McGrath worked tirelessly curating the manuscript
for publication. Finally, I am grateful to the many members of the
Department of Political Science for offering me the environmental
conditions and showing me the interest that made this work possible. It
goes without saying that I alone am responsible for its possible defects.
AJG
Our century, the twentieth century, is a time of turmoil and

upheaval in almost every field of human endeavour. The intensity
and breadth of the crisis afflicting humanity have no parallel in past
history; but the current crisis has in common, with the crises that
have preceded it, some characteristic features, the most important
of which is a tiring and tormented restructuring of previous convictions
and of the commitments that were honoured. Our century is an age of
uncertainty and fear. It is hard to find some ancient tradition, some
once exalted principle, some hitherto unquestioned belief, which has not
been subjected to destructive criticism or has not become the subject of
deliberately skeptical investigation. All aspects of man's social life,
which in more peaceful times were governed by custom and
comfortable conformity, are now open to discussion. This de facto
reality manifests itself mainly in the field of political life which, over the
course of the twentieth century, has become increasingly vast and
totalitarian, in the sense that no aspect of life is considered, in
principle, to be detached from politics any more. The place of declining
religion has been taken by politics, its secular substitute, and while
the history of the past has been largely the history of religious strife,
the twentieth century has been and will continue to be, as far as
we can see, the century of ideological struggle, of political conflict. Humanity has divide
Incalculable estates and countless human lives have been destroyed
in the course of strife, catastrophic wars and socio-political revolutions
of our day. Contrary to the optimistic forecasts prevailing at the end of the
last century and at the beginning of the present, our age has
proved to be an age of disorder.
The objective data at our disposal show that the last quarter of the
nineteenth century was remarkable in order, international peace,
internal peace in the various nations, substantial progress. Of the fifty-
six quarter-century periods between AD 525 and 1925, only two have
such a low rate of unrest. On the other hand, during the same period
only a quarter of a century turns out to be more turbulent than
the twenty-five years between 1901 and 1925. The transition
«her century brought with it a clear increase in internal and international

unrest. The first quarter of our century saw numerous internal
revolutions, among which the Bolshevik and fascist ones stand out, in
Russia and Italy, and was marred by the First World War. Since then
the pace of events has been gradually accelerating and, aided by the
technical revolution in transport and communication
systems, the revolution has become a phenomenon which now embraces
the whole world. Internal and international conflicts are no
longer geographically circumscribed and the crisis is no longer a crisis
of the West or of Western civilization; we live in a time of trouble that
afflicts all humanity. The twentieth century is perhaps the most tumultuous
century in the entire history of the human race. 1
Two world wars in the space of a generation, linked together by an

uninterrupted series of local wars and revolutions, were followed by
several peripheral wars, "police actions" and bloody struggles which
definitively dashed any hope of the restoration of a world order and of
the solemn and binding pacts that gave peace to our grandparents at
the end of the last century. The largely illiterate masses on five continents
have been swept into disorder by what has been termed "the revolution
of ever-increasing pretensions". Among these revolutions, some
have been animated, more or less, by a secular solidarity ideology and
directed by a unitary political party towards a totalitarian or semi-
totalitarian state. Nations so distant, like China, from Western politics
and culture, or even contrary to them
tradition, have been conquered by the ideological paraphernalia and

institutional accessories of a typically European doctrine. Egypt, Syria, Senegal,
Mali and Guinea, which for a long time had remained alien to the current of
Western thought, have accepted the "world view" and the politics of a
secular ideology. Throughout Asia and Africa, in the Western Hemisphere
and beyond the Oder-Neisse, secular ideologies lit the sparks of revolution.
Along with these revolutions, the single party, the planned economy, the
totalitarian or potentially totalitarian state have advanced. Instead, the ideal
of the republic of free opinion and the liberal politics of the clash of ideas
have disappeared. The aspiration for a "pluralistic democracy," which had
been the greatest hope of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
liberalism, has also disappeared. The market economy based on free
initiative and its by-product has disappeared: the State, that is, whose
functions are delegated, functional and strictly limited. We have witnessed,
and are witnessing, a vast ideological revolution, a substantial shift in what
had been the social and political worldview of the West.
A DEFINITION OF IDEOLOGY
In general, the term ideology is used to mean a certain set of beliefs

(descriptive and normative) which, in their com
plexus, have important implications across a wide range of human

ideology implies a conceptual reference system of activities. An
.
life 2 which supplies the criteria of choice and decision by virtue of which
the main activities of an organized community are regulated. This
current use of the term, and the usual way of understanding it, are
very exact: in the course of our discussion we will always use it in this
sense, so that the passages in which it appears will be very understandable.
For particular purposes of exposition and analysis, however, we have
introduced some conventional distinctions. We will always understand that
an ideology includes: 1) an explicit system of values, supported by reasoning
and accompanied 2) by a relatively organic system of generalizations
concerning nature, society and man, to which a group justify the issuing of
directives, standards e
political and social prohibitions, and 3) by the directives, norms and prohibitions, formal and
informal, themselves.
•—— The first component of an ideology, as understood here
Let's say, it can be defined as social and political philosophy, that is,
a rigorous and coherent body of reasoned judgments concerning nature,
society and man, having normative implications. This philosophical
component of ideology has a transcendental and intellectual character. It
is formulated in a reasoned form and in such a way as to present at
least a minimum of logical coherence. Its distinguishing feature is
its regulatory potential.
Speculative social and political philosophies tend to come across as

descriptive. Apparently the arguments that follow are dedicated to the
study and description of the nature and origin of the universe,
society or man. Consequently, it seems that philosophers are concerned
with expressing descriptive propositions which differ from those
expressed by natural scientists only in their greater range of interests and
less quantitative precision. But for social and political speculative
philosophers, this series of propositions is always connected, however
obscurely, with a whole series of normative judgments.
The ability to move from descriptive to normative propositions is what
distinguishes speculative political and social philosophy from political science
qua science. Theoretically, the naturalist scientist and the political
scientist, as a political scientist, are concerned only with the
description, classification and explanation of phenomena. They are
concerned with descriptive, or defining, propositions, which they use for
the articulation of typologies, for precise descriptions, for the construction of
theories, and for fruitful explanations. In their capacity as scientists,
natural scientists and political scientists are not concerned with what
the universe, society and man should be. Their task is limited to exact
description and classification, valid explanation and prediction based on
factual data. On the contrary, the social and political philosopher
or, as it is commonly called, the political theorist, is dedicated to the study
of models of right behavior, and to the search for solid, serious and schematic
criteria that govern approval and disapproval, the evaluation of right and
wrong. In this sense,
speculative social and political philosophers, or political theorists, represent

a subgroup of practical moralists.
The second component of ideologies is doctrine: a series of

presuppositions, generalizations and judgments, that is, not always
rigidly connected on the general nature and dynamics of social reality. All this
is combined with negative judgment about the past and the present which,
together with some concepts about the desired solution, provides a general
guide for immediate action. Doctrine differs from speculative social and
political philosophy in that the values it invokes are tacitly presupposed rather
than rationally explained, and that its preoccupations are centered on local and
contingent needs. The ideas expressed by the doctrine, taken by themselves,
show a rudimentary internal coherence and are characterized by a notable
emotional emphasis. Doctrinal claims are designed to persuade rather than
rationally convince. In general, the doctrine is the spearhead of a political
and social philosophy that has turned into an ideology. The doctrine is
disseminated by means of propaganda pamphlets and non-academic
treatises, and is usually the product of a number of intelligent but amateurish
people. Political and social philosophy, on the other hand, is always the
product of a master mind or a very small group of masters. Marxism, as
a social and political philosophy, was the product of the genius of Karl
Marx. Fascism, as a social and political philosophy, was essentially the
product of the genius of Giovanni Gentile. Marxism and Fascism, as
doctrines, were instead the products of numerous artifices. The point at
which a doctrine becomes social and political philosophy is much discussed and
there is no need to enter into the polemic here. Generally, the differences
between social and political philosophy and social and political doctrine are
so evident that one can be satisfied with intuitive distinctions. The fact that
Lenin was neither Marx nor Mussolini Gentile is evident from everything Lenin
and Mussolini wrote.
The third component of ideologies consists of formal and informal imperatives

expressed in the form of a codified law, or represented by
group feelings, and supported by formal and informal sanctions. This latter
component of ideological systems includes legislation, precepts and social sentiments,
instituted and favored by various social and political organisms. The typical reaction
to the violation of a positive pattern of conduct (a public sentiment or a codified law) is
moral indignation and punishment of the perpetrator. Formal and informal imperatives
provide the context of rules by virtue of which it is possible, in a clear manner, to
establish what is good and what is bad, to attribute faults and possible extenuating
circumstances. The first order of justification for an act is the reference to the law or
to social customs. This is how the average citizen acts. In a communist society, the
average citizen is a good citizen when he adapts to a particular context governed by
laws. After the end of the Second World War, we saw a large number of good fascists
become, in a remarkably short period of time, equally good democrats.
tics or communists, depending on the doctrinal and philosophical climate that

had prevailed in the geographical area of their residence.
From a philosophical point of view, even more interesting arguments arise

when the same system of formal and informal norms becomes the subject of
investigation. Laws restricting the enjoyment of private property in the Soviet
Union, for example, are justified by appeals to doctrinaire concepts about the nature of
capitalism and capitalist society, the enjoyment of property, and class struggle. But
implicit in all of this are some basic prejudices and some values that give normative
force to the definitions. The search for and evaluation of this implicit set of values is the
task of critical social and political philosophy. The analysis of the justification
arguments focuses, at this level, on the social and political speculative philosophy
that underlies the ideology.
REVOLUTION, TOTALITARIANISM, DEMOCRACY
When an entire existing ideological system is threatened, we speak of imminent

revolution. Revolutions are profound and fundamental changes in the political
organization, in the social structure, in the control of the economy; revolution is a
victorious attack against all existing social and political agreements, whose ultimate
justification is ideology up to
then dominant. A revolution therefore indicates, as far as we are concerned,

an important break in the continuity of philosophical development. Of course,
this does not necessarily mean that revolutions are essentially, or first and
foremost, an intellectual product, but only that 'ideas have
consequences'. Revolution is the natural consequence of a finite,
though indeterminate, number of causes acting simultaneously.
Among these causes, the reference to one rather than another ideology,
its strength, and its relationship with a given crisis situation is undoubtedly
important, even if imponderable. Revolution is, in general, a violent
reaction to multiple dysfunctions of the existing social system. These
dysfunctions, combined with the unwillingness of the ruling class to make
changes, create the necessary conditions for revolution. 3 An additional
set of local conditions, such as the presence of determined revolutionary
leaders and efficient political organization, among others, can act as
catalyst agents of the revolution. The constitution of a new rational foundation
that legitimizes the new order of society is its most evident characteristic
result.
It is not within our scope to specify what are the necessary and sufficient
conditions for revolution. In the present discussion it is enough for us to
point out that the radical mass movements that give the impetus to the
changes are, in our day, revolutionary.
They are fighting the fundamental principles of the late

nineteenth century. To the capitalist, contractarian, individualist
ideology
and liberalism of the last century, oppose the tutelary, collectivist

and authoritarian socialism of today. The generic name by which these
latter ideologies are designated, whatever one of them attributes to
itself, is totalitarianism.
Totalitarian ideologies rationally justify a type of society characterized

at least by: 1) an official ideology (and compared to previous systems of
political thought, a very particular official ideology) founded on the
radical rejection of some aspects of the past and by chiliastic claims
on the future; 2) a unitary solida!ist mass movement, organized
hierarchically in the form of a single party under the leadership
authoritarian of a charismatic (or semi-charismatic) leader and a

''managing and tutoring elite; 3) a semi-monopoly, technically conditioned,
of the means of communication and coercion; and 4) centralized
management, under bureaucratized control, of the whole economy. 4
First of all, this book wants to demonstrate that Italian Fascism (which we will
hereinafter also call model, or typical, or classic Fascism) provided the
first, and perhaps the only so far, rational and ideological explanation,
organically and perfectly developed, valid for the totalitarians of the twentieth
century. While it was possible, at least for a certain period, to consider
Leninism an offshoot of liberalism and of "radical democracy",
Fascism, from its earliest beginnings, defined itself as anti-parliamentarian,
anti-majoritarian and totalitarian. The primitive ideal of Marx and Engels,
supported by the latter throughout the course of their lives, was a
"democratically organized state", an ideal which was later defined by Hans
Kelsen as a "perfected democracy", governed by the "majority principle". ».° As
late as 1919, an astute commentator like Bertrand Russell could argue that «
orthodox socialists are satisfied with the parliamentary system in
government... » 6 Today's Marxists never tire of defining their system
of government , and the rational reasons which underlie it, a « true democracy
».
The attribution of a qualifying adjective, such as "democratic" to a political

and social philosophy obviously cannot replace a serious analysis, but the
fact that Marxists themselves call their ideas "truly democratic" indicates
that Marxists of the most varied times and places try to distinguish their
democracy from "bourgeois democracy".
But, whatever the result of the analysis and the degree of legitimate skepticism
in the face of Marxist, and in particular Leninist, protests of
democratic faith, the fact remains that Marxists of all confessions
proclaim themselves "democrats". Lenin's anarcho-syndicalist State and
Revolution is a sincere if unconvincing profession of democratic aims. "We
set ourselves the ultimate goal," wrote Lenin, "of the abolition of the
state, that is, of any kind of organic and systematic limitation... We are
convinced that... any need for human coercion will disappear in general, just as
it will disappear any need for
subordination of man to another man, of one part of society to another

part..." 7 Alfred Meyer recently reiterated: "Democracy, in its most radical
and
anarchist, it is part of the ideal society towards which Lenin and

most of the other Marxists tend.' 8
Leninism, considered as a social and political philosophy, constitutes,

at best, a confused and confusing rationale for the totalitarianism
of Russian and Chinese societies. The practice of Soviet society is a
flagrant violation of the proclaimed ideals of Leninism. Only specious
and tortuous arguments can give any semblance of logic to this
ideological system. The confrontation between the ideals of classical
Marxism and their translation into practice, which gives form and
substance to Soviet society, always remains a source of constant
embarrassment for contemporary Leninists. The "democratic
centralism", which gives the Communist Party, a minority, hierarchical
organization, was initially a device designed to meet the needs of an
autocratic and oppressive political and social environment. The fact
that Leninism successfully made a virtue of necessity and elevated the
party to the status of a fundamental instrument of political domination and
control remains a source of considerable theoretical difficulties for Marxist
thinkers. 9 Rosa Luxemburg, one of the best minds of Marxism
between the end of the last century and the beginning of the present,
realized that the Leninist conception of the party constituted a
betrayal of the essential concepts of Marxism; 10 but contemporary
Leninists, in order to be able to implement Marxism, were forced to make this Leninist co
The tensions that have been building up in Leninism as an ideological

system have become increasingly evident. While Lenin still stated
that "The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of
class antagonisms", and that "the state arises where, when and because
class antagonisms cannot be objectively reconciled", and
consequently that «the state is an organ of class domination, an organ
for the oppression of one class by another», today's leninists have to
argue that «until now the state has always been the instrument of
the dictatorship of one or the other 'other class', but
that now "for the first time in history, a state has assumed a form which is not the
dictatorship of any class, but is an instrument of society as a whole, of the
entire people". 12 Lenin stated that « as long as the state exists there will
be no freedom. When there will be freedom, there will no longer be a state." 13
For current Leninists, on the other hand, the state is "the organ which
expresses the will of all the people" and "it will last long after the victory of
the first phase of communism". 14 These glaring discrepancies have not
escaped the attention of today's revolutionary Marxists. The Chinese
Communists, in fact, argue that "the state is a weapon in the class struggle, an
instrument by which one class represses another. Each state represents the
dictatorship of a certain class. As long as the state exists, it is not possible to
overcome the class and belong to the whole people...
The fact that Khrushchev announced the abolition of the dictatorship of
the proletariat in the Soviet Union and put forward the theses of the 'state of
the whole people' shows that he
it substituted bourgeois falsehoods for Marxist-Leninist teachings on the

state.' 15
Soviet Leninism has shown itself manifestly incapable of rationally

justifying some of the most important political and social developments of
the revolutions which characterize our time. In this sense, it takes much less than
Fascism to understand those revolutions which have been decidedly
nationalistic which has become , or to understand our age,
increasingly totalitarian. Therefore, the search for a consistent and valid rationale
for totalitarian nationalism must be done not in the pages of Marx and Lenin, but
rather in those of Gentile and Mussolini.
Leninists are more concerned with passing over in silence than with explaining,
or even justifying, the totalitarian and nationalist characteristics of the societies
they govern. As the tutoring, pedagogical, entrepreneurial and directive
functions of the state increase, until they become the typical characteristics
of the productionist dictatorships, or totalitarianisms, of our century, the Leninists
insist more and more on the eventual "disappearance" of the state. The fact that
this "disappearance" was prudently postponed by "perhaps an entire
historical epoch" documents the tensions that have arisen between Leninist
doctrinal positions and practice. In the same way, while the brotherhood among
the socialist nations is increasingly damaged by interests
manifestly nationalists, and nationalism emerges as one of the most dynamic

forces of the day, Leninists expend ever greater energy reaffirming their
theoretical faith in internationalism and make little effort to defend the
calls for "socialist patriotism" which have been inserted into the
Decalogue of the « Builders of Communism ». 16
FASCISM AS IDEOLOGY
It is strange that Fascism, as an ideological system, has been the subject of

very few serious studies. Today, a generation after the end of Italian Fascism,
George Mosse can rightly argue that "Fascism has been a neglected movement"
and Hugh Seton-Watson can convincingly add that "the essence
of Fascism still eludes us". 17
Before the war, Fascism was neglected mostly out of ignorance and
prejudice; understandable, moreover, at a time when Fascism represented
a concrete threat to national existence, to traditional institutions and to the
political preferences of other nations. Just before the war, and during its course,
Fascism was simply equated with National Socialism and blamed for all the
absurdities, all the infamies, all the ridiculousness that could be, legitimately or
not, attributed to Adolf Hitler's political conceptions. For some time, for
example, it was common for commentators to accuse the racial doctrines of
Fascism of "slavish imitation" of National Socialist racism. 18 Even a careful
scholar like Ernst
Nolte concluded, after the war, that towards the end of his political career, and
therefore also of Fascism, Mussolini had accepted "intoto Hitler's racial political
doctrine". 19
The first judgement, that is, according to which the racial doctrine of Fascism
would have been an imitation of the National Socialist doctrine, even if it can
be considered partially, and in a very restricted sense, true, is pronounced
at the expense of the real historical development of the doctrine and
obscures the importance that the racial doctrine of Fascism has assumed for many
contemporary ideologies. The second claim, that Mussolini fully accepted

Hitler's racial doctrines, is simply false.
Only recently, has a more sober assessment of National Socialism and

Fascism led to the awareness of the fact that 'since neither National
Socialism nor Fascism have been studied in depth, we lack precise
definitions of one and the other and frequently confuse them. Only the
ignorant can still think that socialism and communism, despite the multiple
points of contact, are the same thing.
And instead, even serious scholars indulge in talking about German
Fascism and using the terms Fascism and National Socialism as if they were
interchangeable ». 20
Only the end of the passions, which resulted from the fall of Fascism
as an international threat, has made possible a more objective and accurate
study of Fascism as a political phenomenon. A number of important
works on Fascism have been written in the last decade, including a
valuable study on Gentile as a social and political philosopher. HS Harris's
book, The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile, is perhaps the best
exposition of Gentile's thought to have appeared in the world so far. 21
While there is still much to say about Gentile's relationship with Mussolini
and Fascism, and about Fascism itself, all the fundamental
documents for an objective and exact judgment are now within reach.
At least in part, the reason for the imprecision with which Fascism has
been treated up to now must be sought in the tendency, very widespread,
until recently, among political scholars, to give too much credence to the
Marxist or semi-Marxist interpretation of the entire political
phenomenon. The typical Marx-Leninist interpretation of Fascism can be
found in books such as the Short Philosophical Dictionary, published in
the Soviet Union, which defines Fascism as "the most reactionary
and openly terrorist form of the dictatorship of capital and finance, created
by the imperialist bourgeoisie to the resistance of the working class
and all progressive elements of society j). 22
For Trotsky too, Fascism was "originally a popular movement", but "directed
and financed by the great capitalist powers". 23 Fascism was conceived as
a creation of monopoly, or capitalism
financial, and its ideology a violent rationalization of capitalist interests;

it was presumed to be "directed" by the "great capitalist powers".
All the documentary evidence we know, however, clearly indicates that
Mussolini was the effective ruler of Italy
fascist. 24 Through the Party apparatus, he exercised ultimate control

over the destinies of his nation. All the concessions that he may have
made to capitalism or the capitalists, all the benefits that the latter may
have derived from the Regime, always derived from considerations of
a tactical order for the duration of the Regime. As became evident in
the last years of the Fascist period. Mussolini was very willing
to sacrifice capitalism in toto for the survival of Fascism. Furthermore,
contemporary scholars are beginning to admit the existence of a
"proletarian Fascism" and even of a "peasant Fascism", in situations in
which Fascism itself is fought against by the propertied classes or in
which there is absolutely no class of the "large capitalists" or of
the "imperialist bourgeoisie". In such cases, the Marxist or semi-
Marxist interpretation becomes a false interpretation of history
which even goes so far as to claim that the big Argentine capitalists
actually "maneuvered" Perón's proletarian fascism, or that the
Romanian capitalists had really created Corneliu Codreanu's peasant
fascism. ; however, there is no concrete evidence to support such
theses, while there are significant ones that dismantle it.
In fact, there is a fascist ideology that cannot be adequately

interpreted as a simple rationalization of the interests of a specific
social class. It is an ideology, normally articulated by declassed
intellectuals, which becomes the driving force of a mass solidarity
movement formed by the most disparate components of the population
in various historical and social circumstances. Those elements of the
population who, for whatever reason, support Fascism also influence
its practical action. If the most active and aggressive help comes
from a bourgeoisie that wants to reach power or is threatened, the
practical action of Fascism assumes, at least provisionally,
semi-conservative, anti-Marxist and even capitalist characteristics.
While his support comes from the working classes, his practical action
is indeed anti-arxist, but also decidedly anti-capitalist. In this sense, it would be more co
a "Fascism of the right" and a "Fascism of the left". But the fact that
both are, anyway. Fascism, indicates that there is a relatively
coherent and specific set of ideas that can be defined as "fascist
ideology". This volume examines model Fascism, i.e. the first ideologically
mature definition of generic Fascism.
Our exposition aims to provide the necessary material for an
accurate evaluation of Fascism and to avoid that the latter can be
erroneously identified with the fanatical conservatism of the John
Birch Society or the American Republican Right.
Due to the aberrant influence of the Marxist or semi-Marxist

interpretation, which, as we have said, imagines Fascism to be
only an aggressive movement in the service of monopoly capital, fascist
declarations have never been studied for what they really are, but are
always be "interpreted": one must never believe that the Fascists
really mean what they say; And. Of
Consequently, very little effort has so far been made to seriously

study Fascism as an ideology.
Fascist ideology, on the other hand, deserves all the attention not only
for the purpose of reconstructing an important part of the modern social
and political controversy, but also for understanding historical events
and some of the most significant contemporary events in a more precise
manner. The ideals professed by men, while rarely translating into
direct action, nonetheless provide a precise point of reference by
virtue of which it is possible to orient oneself in order to try to understand
the action itself. We are all very willing to swear that in considering
the activity of a specific individual in a specific political context, it is
much easier to be able to predict his future behavior if we already know
that his training is Marxist, or radical-Kennedian or fascist. Even better
this indication can be applied in retrospect. Knowing the ideals of the
worthy fascists, one is in an advantageous position to reconstruct their
influence on the "logic" of historical events. It must, of course, be
assumed that some precepts and beliefs typical of Fascism have
exerted some influence on the way the fascists acted. It is not difficult
to argue for the validity of this assumption in the case of fascist individuals or groups
second order. A Fascist doctrine and "style" were rapidly forming

and it is possible, with a certain precision, to foresee the individual and
collective attitudes of the Fascists in given historical and political
circumstances. On the other hand, it is more difficult to do this for
the fascist leaders. For a long time there was a tendency to view the
Fascist leaders in general, and Mussolini in particular, as
unscrupulous opportunists. It is strange, however, that the Leninists,
whose doctrines show a very evident divergence from practical action
(since in principle they wish for the "disappearance of the state", a very
fanatical internationalism and a yearning love for peace) are very
rarely defined as unscrupulous opportunists. Leninist ideology is
assiduously studied to get an idea of what the behavior of Soviet or
Chinese communists might be. And instead the fascists, whose
ideology is an evident and limpid defense of their practical action, also
hoping in theory for an authoritarian state, a fervent nationalism and
an undeniable militarism, are regularly considered men in respect of
whom the study of their professed ideology would be absolutely useless.
The fact is, however, that all the evidence available to us demonstrates
that Mussolini was as scrupulous, or unscrupulous, as Lenin was.
A valid explanation of the behavior of both can occur only if this is
understood as the result of the interaction of theoretical and practical
considerations. The fact that Mussolini was considered, in the past, an
unscrupulous man and an opportunist is a consequence of numerous
erroneous judgments. First of all, Mussolini is thought to have abandoned
Marxist socialism in 1914 in order to derive an unclear political
advantage from it. It is a fact, however, that already in 1904 Mussolini's
socialism could not be considered at all
orthodox. Important elements of Fascism were already present in his

syndicalism of this early period. The available evidence tells us that
his switch to Fascism was neither sudden nor as strange as the
mere juxtaposition of Marxist socialism and Fascism made us think in the
interwar years, and might still make us think today.
On the other hand, Mussolini's abandonment of socialist internationalism
seemed sudden and strange; all the evidence indicates, however, that it
was the result of a long period of intense reflection and rethinking.
26 Nor could Mussolini expect to obtain immediate political advantages

from the expulsion of the Socialist Party in 1914, that is from the party in
which he had reached a position of the highest order. After his expulsion
from the party, Mussolini found himself completely isolated politically.
The most frequently cited example of alleged fascist opportunism is, of

course, the manifestation of racism after Italy's rapprochement with National
Socialist Germany. The fact that fascist racism was, at least in part, the
consequence of considerations of a tactical nature is undeniable;
27 but this recognition must not obscure the very particular character
that fascist racism had in its theoretical and doctrinal distinctions, which
were translated into practice.
THE ASSESSMENT OF IDEOLOGIES
It must be admitted that for many Anglo-American intellectuals the study

of ideologies is, at best, useless; at worst, perverse. Our tendency is
to look cynically at the motives of ideologues and sceptically at their
logic.
After all, the very training of ideologues seems to validate such

prejudices: they tend to express their normative claims in elaborate
metaphors and to be emphatic to mask logical deficiencies in fact,
while they make frequent appeals to sentiment and resort to elaborate
rituals to overcome the poverty of gnoseological judgments. Their works
are generally attempts at political persuasion and are composed of
tendentious metaphors and ill-concealed sentimentality. We've all found
ourselves exposed to these clearly persuasive tunes at one time or another.
In our tolerance, we cannot blame a man for working in the interests of
the ideology to which he is loyal out of personal preference, but we can
argue that it is wrong for another man to be duped into such work.
For all these reasons, we are not satisfied with a study that justifies
statements like "racial discrimination is wrong" or "democracy is the best
political system" on the basis of simple personal preferences or feelings. It
is clear that any person, engaged in a serious regulatory controversy, thinks
only of defending their preferences
sentimental preferences against the simple sentimental preferences of

one's opponent. And the ethical controversy does not cease when the
conflicting propositions are studied as examples of these same preferences.
The litigants will surely say that their moral judgments arouse feelings of
approval because they are right and not that they are right because they arouse
feelings of approval. An ideologue will present his own political and social
conceptions by adducing reasons to support them, but he will never tire of
repeating that he prefers one or the other social and political concept out of
sentiment. And no one asks him to put forward arguments in their
defense if he doesn't. What is asked of them is to give reasons in their favor,
when they contain prescriptions and prohibitions.
Indeed, it is believed that this distinction characterizes the difference
between matters of taste or preference and matters, in good faith, of legitimate
acceptance.
Critical philosophers of modern social and political ideologies need not

resolve the meta-ethical and meta-normative questions that this distinction
involves. To be convinced of this, it is enough to observe the activity of
contemporary ideologues and their production. It is characteristic that political
ideologues propose a generic normative ideal, such as, for example, "the
emancipation of man", "freedom" or "self-fulfillment". It is not difficult to obtain
agreement on such ideals, for the simple fact that agreement constitutes
nothing more than proof of normality or righteousness, that is, proof that the
language of contemporary morality is understood and accepted. What could be
opposed to such ideals?
Who could maintain as a fundamental sentiment the need, for example, to
make man a slave? Or from the brutalization of one's own personality?
Anyone who assumes similar attitudes can never be considered a serious
interlocutor. He would need to undergo psychiatric treatment rather than
persuasion. If a serious controversy is started, our adversaries will never
advocate slavery or brutalization, but they will say that what we consider
slavery or brutalization is in fact the "true" freedom or elevation of man, of
which they will provide new sustained definitions from reasoning. Or they may
point to the existence of equally imperative ideals contrary to those professed, or
try to specify what such ideals mean in terms of
descriptive content, production method and probable cost.

When the controversy moves to this level, however, the contenders
are now engaged in a gnoseological clash which necessarily involves
a conceptual analysis, logical rigor, evaluation of facts and the ability to
predict. Personal preferences, when they enter the polemic, enter it as
an acceptance shared by all of gnoseologically vague and
ambiguously persuasive terms such as "freedom", "emancipation",
"progress", "order", "justice", "democracy". In reality, controversy arises
when one tries to give a valid content to these expressions; and
such an effort is inevitably and substantially gnoseological.
In other words, it is not necessary to resolve the ultimate questions

concerning the nature of normative controversies before undertaking a
critical study of contemporary ideologies. One can even be
convinced that the basis of the analysis leading to conclusions is the norm
tive lies in a non-cognitive personal preference and yet take ideologies

seriously. And this is so, because ideological judgments appear in the form
of conclusions of gnoseological arguments which tend to provide a
model of values that are valid in themselves. The ideologist offers the
reasons for his conclusions and statements. Ideologists can often
contradict each other, and they do. When a radical claims that men
can be politically free only in a situation that allows them an effective
choice between opposing political parties and the fascist instead
claims that such a political system is specifically designed to prevent
freedom, they contradict each other. the other.
The differences between them may derive from different
judgments or conflicting definitions, but in any case they are based
on intellectual and intelligible foundations. The fascist might argue
(as some do) that the differentiation of political parties is a ploy to
oppose the popular will, or argue (as some others do) that the kind of
liberty characterized by periodic electoral competition may best be
termed license or whim; and would back up these new definitions with
reason. Competing political parties in parliamentary regimes, he might
argue, in order to garner as many votes for them as possible, must
appeal to the basest sentiments and
intelligences and must focus their attention on the best organized special
interests. This is so because most men are cowardly, of mediocre
intelligence, and preoccupied primarily with their own particular immediate
interests. But no human group which is governed by its basest feelings
and worst intelligences and is directed by organized but particularistic
interests can be considered free. To counter these arguments it would
be necessary to ask questions of the following tenor: Is it true that
political parties, in parliamentary systems, appeal to the lowest
motives and the most mediocre intelligences? Is it true that most men
are stupid and cowardly? Is it true that organized but particularistic interests
prevail in parliamentary regimes? And here these are again
questions about questions of fact and definition. In other words, they can
be the subject of intellectual disagreement. The fundamental
political values that make the whole discussion normative are, in a sense,
generally shared as a starting point by both parties in the dispute.
Both, for example, agree that men, in one sense or another, must be free.
Questions can be asked about the meaning of the "freedom" that is
proposed and about the systems that are suggested to implement it. But it
is again a matter of gnoseological questions.
Modern language is full of words which, in current parlance,

possess a positive emotional force: "freedom", "justice", "happiness" and
"emancipation" are among the most important and have become part of
the essential vocabulary of every contemporary ideologue. Their use
serves to guarantee the initial unanimity of those who participate in a
political controversy. But, on this common basis, each ideologist
builds a different structure, composed of gno statements and propositions
seological both factual and analytical. The components that are not
precise statements, the so-called "pseudo-propositions", the sentimental
references, serve (or should serve) only to give the initial impulse to
the discussion, the force necessary to bridge the gap between the
analytical and factual propositions and the normative conclusions. The
term freedom has a high positive emotional value. The choice of freedom
can be considered a simple matter of personal taste, but since so far no
serious ideologue has ever defended slavery or servitude per se, one can be
sure that this initial choice was a simple matter of taste which does
not imply the need to omit the critical evaluation of opposing
ideologies. Given that all valid political ideologies start from ideals
about which there is no initial serious controversy, but at best
controversial definitions, factual disagreement, possible clash with
other equally valid values, contemporary ideologies can be judged
on the basis of their logical coherence, of their pertinence, of their truth
or falsehood with respect to the facts and of the reasons given
to accord greater weight to one value rather than another. The
claims are subject to gnoseological investigation. The reasoning is
open to public scrutiny. The sentimental components are easily
understood by all.
We can demonstrate the validity of what we have said up

to now, subjecting to examination even those ideological expositions
which lend themselves least to rational analysis. Hitler's Mein Kampf,
for example, can in no way be conceived as a simple restatement of
the author's personal sentimental preferences. Suggestions,
warnings, imperatives are discussed in the work. The arguments may
be elliptical, some fundamental premise may have been implied, or
they may be invalid because their objective assumptions are faulty,
but they cannot, however, be regarded as mere assertions of personal
preference. Hitler, for example, supports the fulfillment of one of
humanity's greatest aspirations: the continuous evolutionary
progress of man. No one, in principle, is against this ideal. In this
sense, the ideal itself need not be explained. Contrasts arise when
Hitler argues that the fulfillment of this ideal requires the caste ordering
of a particular biological race; that is, when the fulfillment of the ideal
comes into conflict with other values. We ask for evidence, for
example, that confirms that a certain race is the sole repository of
man's creative abilities. But these objections raise questions
of fact and of definition which, as such, are subject to
gnoseological evaluation. No one is seriously asking to curb man's
highest aspirations or his evolutionary progress. Consequently,
Hitler need not bother to prove the validity of his initial values with
particular arguments: and neither does any other ideologue. Equally,
Marx need not argue with
arguments elaborated his ideal of "emancipation of man".

We are all ready to hold this ideal to be very valid. But the acceptance
of it no more makes a man a Marxist than the acceptance
of the
fulfillment of the highest aspirations of man or of the evolutionary

progress of humanity. These acceptances only indicate that one
has understood what constitutes the right response to the
contemporary language of approval and disapproval.
If what we have said so far is right, we must consider, at best, an

over-schematization of the idea that classical Fascism "violently
rejected humanitarian ideals, including any concept of potential
equality among men." 28 Undoubtedly, the Fascists denied that men
are equal, in a descriptive sense. They recognized, as indeed do
Marxists, Democrats and Christians, that men are different in size,
weight, racial characteristics, intellectual capacities and moral
character. But no presumptive or procedural equality is founded on
these differences. Giving importance to these differences
does not necessarily exclude the acceptance of a presumptive or
procedural equality. Presumptive equality requires only that men
are initially regarded as subjects each having intrinsic worth;
that each man, that is, is initially considered the depositary of a moral
essence and the immediate object of our consideration.
Procedural equality requires only that any substantive denial of rights,
any practical discriminatory action, any diversity of punishment
be rationally justified and not as the result of arbitrariness. Men
are, and should be, treated as equals unless and until important
reasons arise to regard and treat them as unequal. In practice,
equality has a slightly greater meaning than presumptive or procedural
equality. This practical meaning only requires that the differential
treatment of individuals, or groups of individuals, be justified with
arguments capable of meeting the approval of an impartial judge. In
essence, it has no more significance in a democratic regime than it
did in Fascist Italy. The apologists of Italian Fascism considered,
in principle, every man to participate
of the Kantian Kingdom of Fini. 29 Differential treatment was

conceived as a consequence of real and important differences
in specific and objective characteristics of an individual or group.
Thus, the way in which the fascists treated the Jews was justified with
arguments, in principle, no different from the justifications put forward
by the American authorities for the deportation and confinement of the
Japanese-American population of the West Coast of the United States
during the Second World War. world. In both cases, reference was made
to the threat posed by these minorities to the collective security and life
of the whole nation and so on. The only obvious differences in
the two situations are that in the first case it was absolutely impossible to
appeal to any impartial body. In the American case, injustice can be blamed
on popular sentiment that overwhelms everything in times of collective
emergency. In a totalitarian regime, on the other hand, appeals to
impartial bodies are prevented by the very institutional structure of the
system. But this should not overshadow the fact that they also come under
totalitarian regimes
provide rationale for differentiated treatments. And the examination of

ideologies is aimed precisely at the coherence, pertinence and truth of
these rational explanations.
Any classification scheme which distinguishes between Marxism, Fascism

and Democracy on the basis of Fascism's alleged "anti-
humanism" and "anti-egalitarianism" would be wrong. Italian Fascism
explicitly supported a conception defined as the "humanism of work" and,
as we have said, an initial equality of men. The real differences
between the three ideologies begin to manifest themselves when humanism
and equality are defined, and the means of their implementation
specified, descriptively. But these are matters of fact and of definition and
not of irreducible and incorrigible sentimental preferences; that is, it
is the gnoseological foundation on which intellectual disagreements are based.
What we mean, in essence, is that ideologies can be considered

products of reason and can be evaluated against some principles of truth,
validity and pertinence. The fact that this way of
addressing ideologies is plausible can be demonstrated by a further

example: by nationalism as an underlying political value.
The appeal to nationalism is often understood as an absolutely

irrational appeal: "My country, right or wrong." But the nationalist is never
satisfied with justifying his theses only with a statement of this type. Let us
take, once again, the National Socialist case. The "Germany
Above All" thesis is neither morally intuitive nor intellectually certain. Had
it been so, Hitler would not have felt the need to provide reasoned
justifications on his behalf, as he did.
Hitler said that the racial "core" of the German people was "Aryan" or
"Nordic" (he used both definitions) and therefore argued that only the Aryans
were true creators of culture. With their disappearance, culture would have
dissolved and humanity would have returned to barbarism. In other words,
the very existence of humanity would have been threatened. 30 The
departure from the initial presupposition of the equality of men,
typical of nationalism, was thus justified with the reference to a whole series
of propositions, logically connected to each other and supported
by generally accepted values. It is possible to demonstrate with practical
tests the logical validity of the reasoning and the truth of the propositions that constitute it.
If the form of reasoning does not pass the test of validity and the
propositions the test of truth, the reasoning fails and we return to the
initial assumption favorable to procedural and presumptive human
equality. For this reason National Socialism defended so intransigently all
its factual claims concerning racial differences.
If what we have said is valid, then a serious critical evaluation of

contemporary ideologies is possible without necessarily having to definitively
resolve the fundamental problems of metaethics. Ideologies are
linguistic entities that can be judged.
evaluated, approved or disapproved without the need to indulge in

simple sentiment or to solve all the problems that concern the
normative discussion. Judgment can be provided, substantially, though
not exclusively, in terms of reasoned discourse. 31
DESCRIPTION, ANALYSIS, POLITICAL THEORY

EMPIRICAL
Finally, we must take into consideration the function in the field of
cognitive activity of descriptive studies such as the present one. Current
political science and modern political historiography attach great
importance to the construction and explanation of theories.
Descriptive studies are, by and large, suspect. However, it must be
recognized that important theories and exact explanations require, as a
necessary preparatory element, a serious description and an exact
classification of the subject in question.
The fact that these minimum needs for research and judgment have
not been met so far has left the study of Fascism as a political phenomenon
in a confused state. Much of the responsibility for this confusion
must be attributed, as we have said, to what has been defined as the
«communist theory of Fascism»,32 a theory which claims to establish
what are the characteristic attributes and the historical
and socio-economic functions of fascism in general and of classical
Fascism in particular.
The orthodox Marxist does not find it difficult to see in generic fascism "a
very effective system of defense of capitalism in conditions of crisis
and extreme weakness", manipulated by the "business minds of capital
and finance who pay the costs and pull the strings. . » Consequently,
Fascism is understood as a tactical system of capital and finance. There
is therefore no typical Fascism ideology, "which does not in reality
represent a new ideology distinct from the general ideology of capitalism".
33
Given this judgement, there is an almost irresistible tendency to regard

any non-Marx Leninist organization, ideology or individual as
"fascist". The category of "fascists" became very extensive and
confused. It is possible to define a fascist anyone who assumes attitudes,
real or presumed, which can be understood in some way as "favorable"
to financial capitalism. The term is used contemptuously to mean all
political or social elements that are not Marxist-Leninist. Therefore, i
German Social Democrats were "fascists". Even the National Socialists were
"fascists." Commercial establishments, religious associations, patriotic
clubs, chambers of commerce, veterans' organizations and, occasionally,
even the Boy Scouts, have all been categorized under the generic definition
of "fascist."
The only result has been, as could easily be expected, intellectual

confusion and systematic ambiguity in the rational use of the term. The
term "fascist" had no intentional meaning and, consequently, no
characteristic. For the average American it has come to mean
simply say « anyone with a different opinion than ours »

... 34 American scholars instead came to refer it, from 1940, to those
let them be "militaristic, nationalistic, proud, selfish and boastful". 35
Worse still was the fact that American scholars themselves, too
frequently influenced by the Marxist judgment on Fascism, have come to
establish a scale for measuring fascist attitudes, based on their own
analytical stereotype artifacts. Ross Stagner, in an early study of fascist
attitudes, selected a set of questions, the answers to which could serve
as putative indices of the attitudes studied. Sample arguments were drawn
from 'authoritative sources', including JP Dutt's Marx-Leninist
interpretation of 'fascism' and statements typical of German 'fascists', ie
National Socialists. A fragmentary collection of speeches by Mussolini
was also used for this purpose; but it is evident that the latter
were systematically interpreted in an "anti-radical" manner, as a
manifestation of a "middle-class consciousness, which can be
considered a manifestation of an attitude of contemptuous superiority
towards the working class". Due to the inclusion of National Socialist issues
among the "fascists", the "racial struggle" appeared as a typical theme of
Fascism at a time when (1936) the Fascists condemned the
inhumanity of National Socialist racism. And topics such as "anti-
radicalism, contempt for the lower classes and opposition to trade unions"
were very frequent in the period between the two wars in studies that
presumed to establish what "fascist" attitudes were. 36
It is not clear how much and what these studies and schemes are worth,
but it is clear, however, that, in any case, they do not include the assertions
of authoritative fascists. The fascists, especially in the decade between
1930 and 1940, never tired of reaffirming their radicalism, their rejection
of capitalism as an economic system and their concerns for the
welfare and union organization of the working classes. Only when the
instruments of investigation are formulated by people ignorant of the most
important fascist literature or the investigation itself is undertaken by people
subject to broad prejudices, can typical fascist claims be "interpreted" in a
sense exactly opposite to that of their literal meaning . Whatever these so-
called "attitudinal studies" intended to study, it is clear that they were
not studying classical Fascist attitudes at all.
The fundamental bias implicit in these experiments becomes explicit

in works such as those of Dutt. He argued that Fascism "cannot be
interpreted in its own terms... but in terms of the service it rendered to capital
and finance". 37 American university textbooks echoed this judgment
and accepted the same prejudgment without the slightest reservation. The
text of JF Brown's work on social psychology informed students and
colleagues that 'liberal democracy, although it may appear to be
the government of all the people, is really the government of the
bourgeoisie. In the
modern society, a dictatorship represents only the domination of one class

by force alone... In modern industrial society the dictator can only be the
tool of the bourgeoisie, unless the fundamental property relations have
been destroyed by the proletarian revolution ».
Brown went on to say that when "the government is assumed by the

bourgeoisie and directed according to its interests", there is a "fascist dictatorship".
38 Given this premise, the "fascist movements" must necessarily "tend
towards political and economic conservatism". Fascism must, moreover,
be "anti-radical" and, given also a certain number of ancillary presuppositions
which psychologically derive from this definition, must have contempt for
the working classes.
Even after the Second World War, the ponderous studies carried out
on the "authoritarian personality" were conducted with the assumption
that what was being studied was a personality "potentially fascist" or
with "fascist predispositions". 39 Thus it was assumed that he
could find that people who were anti-Semitic tended to be,
in general, ethnocentric, anti-groups other than their own, politically
and economically conservative, staunch supporters of "free enterprise"
and enemies of workers' unions. This set of predispositions seemed
confirmed by empirical facts and the people who presented
these overbearing dispositions were from time to time defined as
"authoritarian", "anti-democratic" or "fascist" as if the three
terms were interchangeable in speaking of a specific class of people.
What seems clear enough is that, as Roger Brown recently stated,

"American intellectuals have generally accepted the Marxist
interpretation of Fascism as a movement of the political far
right, with a conservatism driven to exasperation by the
problems of capitalism". Consequently, in measuring "fascist attitudes"
only those fascist statements were taken into account which, in some
way, could be interpreted as politically and economically
conservative. Apart from the methodological insufficiency of these
studies, the fact remains that anti-Semitism, political and
economic conservatism and contempt for the working classes
have never been necessary or sufficient conditions for becoming
part of a class of people that can, historically, be considered "fascist".
Many important Italian fascists (including Gentile) have never
been anti-Semitic, anti-radical or anti-unionist, not even for
tactical reasons. Many movements generally regarded as "fascist"
have not been anti-Semitic, nor have they ever manifested any
"racial antagonism" in any sense of the word.
The fact is that we are not in a position to attach, with conviction, a

precise meaning to those who score high on tests such as the F
Scale. There is much intrinsic evidence that shows that convinced
fascists would not have scored very high. It is evident that in Italy
Fascism had a large following even among the
conservatives. But the evidence shows that they soon felt disillusioned
with Fascism's radicalism. GDH Cole wrote
in particular, against "the erroneous belief that Fascism is only a form of

capitalism... The big capitalists end up being controlled by it and forced to
subordinate their impulse to enrich themselves more and more to
the needs of the Fascist State... [Fascism ] was not essentially
a class movement. When he claimed to want to transcend classes he
was essentially sincere: in fact, he traced it beyond the class division
of modern society to primitive conditions of tribal solidarity ». 42
Many modern scholars now recognize that most of the attempts to

analytically understand Fascism as a social and political phenomenon
have been too schematic. Unfortunately, the self-styled indices for
evaluating "fascist attitudes" have contributed to spreading this
schematism. What is needed as a premise for responsible work
concerning fact and theory-building is a serious redefinition of historical,
classical Fascism. This is the obligatory taxonomic premise required by
any further empirical investigation.
Only with this re-evaluation can a certain order be restored to the
matter and can one have the hope of carrying out a valid work
of classification, interpretation and explanation of the theory.
In the following chapters we will attempt a redefinition of the

justifications of historical Fascism, that is, a summary definition of the
set of reasoned beliefs defended by the Fascists. Such reasoning
can rightly be seen as representative of the public
manifestations of deeply felt social and political attitudes.
/ FASCISM AND ITS IDEOLOGUES
Fascism, as an ideology, is a much more complex and

systematic intellectual product than many of its opponents (and even
its own supporters) are willing to admit. In its best parts, the works
of Gentile, for example, present themselves much better than the
rational theories of Lenin and the philosophical attempts of Marx
themselves. The fact that Gentile's defense of Fascism
might constitute an accurate rationalization of fascist power must not

dissuade us from our toil. A judgment of this kind can only be the
consequence of the comparison, necessarily very detailed,
between fascist practice and thought and its formulation is essentially
the task of the political historian. But the confrontation itself requires
an in-depth and responsible knowledge of the historical-rational basis
of Fascism. To this end, the study of Gentile's thought is of crucial
importance. Even if Gentile's attempts at educational reform, for example,
were frustrated by the Regime, and even if many Fascists objected
to the identification of Fascism with Gentile's philosophical system, Gentile's
theses reappear again and again in all official Fascist attempts
to explain of the regime's political action. Gentile's arguments proved
essential for apologists for Fascism. And given that in this volume we are
dealing precisely with rationally reconstructing this apologetic. Gentile
will occupy a very important place in our exhibition.
All that being said. Gentile is only one, albeit an important one, among
those who contributed to the maturation of the ideology. The ideology
itself was consolidated only after the rise of Fascism to power and
consequently the latter managed to attract many excellent scholars into its
orbit, among the no worse of which are the jurist Carlo Costamagna, the
political sociologist Roberto Michels and the demographer, statistician and
sociologist Corrado Gini. This does not mean that all the convictions
expressed by these men were totally compatible with the system of
thought that can be defined as the ideology of Fascism, but it is a
preliminary recognition of the fact that all of them substantially contributed
to the maturation of the system which finally became the « charter » definitive
intellectual property for the exercise of fascist authority. Neither Roberto
Michels nor Corrado Gini, for example, were fanatical fascists. Both found
Fascism compatible with their ideas and both made substantial
contributions to its ideological formulations, 43 while advancing
reservations with respect to the historical regime.
Historical precision requires that the thought of these men be included in

any reconstruction of fascist ideology. The fact that their adherence to
Fascism was not welcomed by the regime or that later they
have repudiated Fascism itself, is of little importance for the study of the
actual development of Fascist ideology. When Fascist Italy assumed an anti-
Semitic stance, for example, some attempt was made to detach the
ideology from those men of Jewish origin who had contributed
substantially to its articulation. Roberto Michels had Jewish ancestors, and
so did A. 0. Olivetti and many others no less important. 44 As a result,
Fascist doctrinaires tended to neglect their input. Of course, we will not
place such limitations in this book. Finally, the fact that many of the
men who had contributed to the development of the ideology were
later declared "traitors" by the historical regime is equally of little
importance for the purposes of our reconstruction. Many of the early
Bolsheviks, including some of Leninism's most important theoreticians,
were executed as "traitors" to the system to whose construction they had
played a decisive role; and their contribution can be judged independently
of the latter fact. Indeed, the thought of N. Bukharin and C. Zinoviev is as
important for an exact judgment of the historical and intellectual articulation
of Leninism as that of Joseph Stalin. For the same reason, in this
book we have included ideas developed by men such as, for example,
Giuseppe Bottai, who, while maintaining serious reservations about
the regime and being eventually judged a traitor, 45 nonetheless contributed
greatly to the development of its ideology.
Finally, given that Fascism only reached ideological maturity around

1930 and its development continued in the following years as well, any
work concerning its ideology must have a historical character.
Some fascist premonitions can already be found from 1904 in Mussolini's
thought; and in 1910 talents had become important characteristics to allow
Renzo De Felice to speak, rightly, of
an "Inussolinian" socialism, different from the "Marxist" one, and to

Georges Roux for rightly thinking that a beginning of Fascism had already
begun to manifest itself in the form of revolutionary socialism. 46 In what
sense and to what extent these judgments are true can only be
demonstrated by an examination of the historical development of Mussolini's thought.
Equally, the doctrinaire emphasis on race theory and the radicalization of
corporatism are subsequent to the maturation of ideology in
as such. Their precise evaluation requires the use of a historical

perspective. All the various phases, of course, are subjected to an equal
test of coherence, pertinence and truth.
Fascism enjoyed wide acceptance during the first half of the twentieth
century, the most tumultuous century in history. A precise judgment on it
is a fundamental responsibility of our day, since, as we will see, Fascism
has cast its shadow over our entire historical era.
5 ITALIA of the early 20th century, was the result of a vast whole
Li of historical forces, unique. Unified just three decades earlier,

squeezed by a European encirclement in which the main nation states
had already secured a position of enviable security and had achieved
an enormous development potential in that industrialized era, Italy
was not held in any consideration.
Since the time of Charles V in the sixteenth century, the people who
had given the world some of its immortal treasures had played no part
in world affairs. At that time, Italy was divided into a series of states at war
with each other, whose isolation grew inversely with the opening of new
communication routes.
While England and France were solving the problems of their national
unity, the Italian states succumbed to foreign conquerors and became
entangled in the intrigues of internal secular and religious politics.
In the nineteenth century Italy decisively entered the modern era and
the whole peninsula was then agitated by aspirations for reform and
unity. The Risorgimento achieved both under the guidance of a newly
formed and numerically limited middle class. In 1870 Italy entered the
ranks of the liberal and unitary nation-states of the European
continent, but its entry into modern history was hampered by an
accentuated regionalism and provincialism, the result of centuries of
division and subjection, and its unity was due only to the efforts of a very
small part of the population.
Furthermore, Italy was incredibly poor: indeed, in 1890 the per

capita rent was forty dollars, while the corresponding values for
England and France were one hundred and fifty-five and one hundred and
thirty dollars respectively," and there were encouraging
prospects for improvements.
Moreover, its very configuration and geographical position contrasted with

a rapid industrial and commercial development. Its major centers are,
in fact, separated by such distances as to require a prohibitive use of
initial capital to create a rapid transport system
and efficient. Beyond that, Italy's immediate access was the Mediterranean,
which modern trade had long since made a secondary transit route.
But over these drawbacks the one that proved to be most evident
for Italy prevailed: the scarce possibilities of exploiting the soil. In
reality, about a third of the peninsula's surface could not be cultivated
due to the chain of the Apennines. Where cultivation was possible, the
land was largely (as in Basilicata, Calabria and areas of Sicily) already
exploited for centuries, while elsewhere torrential water courses, or
drought, did not allow effective use .
But the most significant of the deficiencies was the lack of any
premise for industrialization, i.e. the lack of the necessary mineral
resources: at the beginning of the century, the overall Italian mining
production was equal to one twentieth of that of Germany, and about
half was supplied by the sulfur obtained from the Sicilian mines.
In 1897, Germany produced one-fifth of the world's total iron ore,

while Italy's production was only 0.10 percent. In 1898, Germany
produced 10,928,430 tons of coal, while Italy produced 341,327. 1
It is sufficient to compare the economic development trend of Germany
and that of Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century to evaluate
the enormous significance of this disparity in the availability of raw
materials.
Along with this crushing poverty, and at least partly as a consequence

of it, the level of illiteracy was very high. Even where it existed,
'compulsory elementary education was not observed in practice, so that
in 1900 a good half of the Italian population could neither read nor write. In
most of southern Italy, where the rural population lived in extreme poverty,
illiteracy was the rule. Afflicted by a perennial lack of food, accustomed to
deprivation, burdened by incessant work, those regions lacked the most basic
level of education and consequently were unprepared for the competitive
challenge launched by the new century.
Self-government, as conceived in the West, is based on the assumption that

effective education is the necessary, if not the only, condition for the successful
completion of representative democracy. The parliamentary system
established in 1870 in unified Italy found itself having to deal with the
vast problems deriving from poverty and those relating to an electorate not
only with a regional structure, but also illiterate.
In order to deal with such a disturbing situation, the right to vote, limited by
wealth and educational requirements, was initially granted only to about two and
a half percent of the population. From 1882, however, the conditions for voting
became less stringent and seven per cent of the population enjoyed the right
to vote. Finally, in 1913, suffrage was extended to just under nine percent of
the population; however, only sixty per cent of this fraction
he took advantage of this right, because some did not vote in obedience to the
papal decree which forbade Catholics to take part in the elections, while many
others renounced to exercise their prerogatives, disappointed by the
parliamentary system itself.
There is no doubt that during the last thirty years of the nineteenth century Italy
enjoyed considerable economic progress. Milan developed a solid textile
industry and took over from Lyon as the textile center of Europe while
Genoa took over from Marseille as the most important port in the Mediterranean.
A railway network connected the peninsula to the great trunks of central

Europe through the construction of impressive engineering works
managed to overcome natural obstacles. As a result, trade, both domestic and

foreign, was increased and national wealth gradually grew.
But as late as 1914, Italy's per capita income, calculated in standard gold units,
was only one hundred and five dollars while that of Great Britain was three
hundred and twenty-seven dollars and that of France one hundred and eighty-two
dollars.
Since the great mass of peasants and workers lived at a level of pure survival, the
workforce became one of the most important items of Italian exports.
From 1876 to 1880 the annual emigration was approximately one hundred thousand
workers; from 1881 to 1886 it reached about one hundred and fifty thousand;
from 1887 to 1894 to about two hundred and fifty thousand and from 1895 to
1900 it reached the level of three hundred thousand, continuing to increase until
1907, the year in which seven hundred thousand Italians left their homeland
to look elsewhere for a more satisfactory standard of living. 2 The constant
increase in emigration highlights an effective worsening of the position of the
Italian working classes.
Ruled by a government that actually served the interests of a select and

restricted clientele, the majority of Italians considered the state, at best, as the
executive trustee of the bourgeoisie or, at worst, as a camarilla of profiteers.
The behavior of many members of the Government corroborated this opinion: in
fact, Italian parliamentarians frequently had measures approved for
their exclusive economic advantage while corruption was rampant; the elections
of 1894 marked the height of political immorality: the electoral campaign was
conducted on a personalist basis and it was revealed that members of the
highest echelons of government were involved in the Banca Romana
scandal. 3
Naturally this malpractice was also common to other parliamentary

regimes, but in the conditions in which Italy found itself at the time, it had disastrous
consequences.
In an ascending social system, corruption and profit in the conduct of the

Government may even have little importance but in Italy, where the
majority of those without the right to vote were in conditions of
perpetual poverty, the evident corruption of governmental spheres constituted
the clearest proof that state interventions
they served particular rather than general interests: as a result, the

central government never managed to gain the trust of the vast majority
of Italians. Italy thus seemed destined to develop within the ambit of a
society disjointed by insurmountable class differences.
Although in Italy only the start of a vast Hindu strialization had been
given, revolutionary socialism had a large diffusion among the underprivileged
classes.
Excluded from the state, tormented by pressing reasons for discontent

that the government and the bourgeois Italian Parliament largely
ignored, the disgruntled workers turned to anarchy and socialism. Only
later did the ruling class understand that it was not the appeal of a doctrine
or a criminal predisposition that led these men to embrace subversive
theories.
Giovanni Giolitti, at the time he wrote his memoirs, recognized poverty

as the primary cause of the adhesion of the masses to socialist parties.
For years the constitutional parties were unable to offer dissidents without
the right to vote the possibility of redressing discontent with government
action. The socialists offered them the last chance they could resort to:
revolution. 4
In Italy universal suffrage was introduced only in 1912, but by that

time revolutionary sentiment had already consolidated itself in fairly well
organized political formations. Their explicit program of defense of class
interests was an unexpected opposition to the evident classist
concerns of the Italian minority government. Since the working classes actually
had no access to politics, wait
politicians characterized every manifestation of Italian economic life to

the point that strikes were often called for issues from which no economic
advantage was to be expected.
When Giolitti finally offered reformist socialists, such as Leonida

Bissolati and Filippo Turati, to enter the government, it was not
possible for them to accept, because acceptance would have been
interpreted by the Italian working classes as a betrayal. These belated
attempts to dispel the political frustrations afflicting Italy remained
unsuccessful, and World War I found the nation torn apart by chronic
class struggle. Italy entered the 20th century weighed down by endemic
poverty and a minority parliamentary regime that aggravated
the discontent of the poor.
But if internal politics caused a climate of tension in the structure of the

system, foreign policy was no less disastrous, since in foreign affairs Italy
could hardly aspire to the role of great power: the state was in an
economically backward position, badly organized and badly
managed. In 1878, Italy emerged from the Congress of Berlin with "clean
hands," but empty, while the major European powers had taken over vast
colonial domains.
In 1881 France occupied Tunis and this fact greatly impressed the Italian
government. The Italians had always considered Tunisia as a natural
appendage of the peninsula, being the population
tion of Italian origin far numerically superior to the French one. However,
both England and Germany were trying to interest France elsewhere,
in order to remove its energies from their respective spheres of interests
and Tunisia was the ideal place. As a result France, with the connivance
of the other major powers, managed to establish its protectorate over the
disputed territory and Italy harbored a sense of discontent and humiliation.
More important than discontent and humiliation was the sense
of isolation that the episode gave to Italy, making it feel ever more
confined to its Mediterranean borders.
The growing pressure of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans, the expansion

of France in North Africa and the advance of England in Egypt, from
which Italy had been excluded by her lack of clear-sightedness and by

the fickleness of her policy, produced an even greater sense of national
frustration. This sentiment was exacerbated by the defeat suffered by the
ill-equipped Italian army at Adua, Ethiopia, in 1896, when Crispi
halfheartedly embarked on an experiment in colonial expansion.
The best the nineteenth-century parliamentary government could do was

a series of agreements which ensured Italy some advantage on the
international level. Starting from substantially weak positions, unsafe and
potentially isolated Italy had to resort to a policy of expedients: it
signed defensive treaties with Austria-Hungary and Germany and signed
a similar agreement with France at the beginning of the century.
Whether this agreement with France was compatible with the
commitments undertaken with the Triple Alliance remains an
unresolved question on the historical and diplomatic level. However,
the major European powers and the right-thinking Italian class were
convinced that the Government was pursuing an uncommendable
policy of base Machiavellianism, ready to sacrifice principles for any
immediate advantage. Such agreements, of course, reflected a careful
assessment of Italy's international possibilities. Italy, the weakest of
the "great powers", in a system of equilibrium between rival alliances,
could hope to improve its international position only by placing itself, with
its modest contribution, on the side of the stronger. But, in the rapid
changes of situations that characterized the beginning of the
century, this policy required prompt and unpredictable changes in
alliances. Italy, unable to take initiatives in international politics, had
to limit itself to assuming the unflattering role of "jackal", while the major powers undertoo
Italy in the eyes of the great powers, and of the Italians themselves,
became a nation of "mandolin players".
Not even the war fought by Italy against Turkey in 1911, with the consequent
conquest of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, increased its moral stature;
the sense of one's own inferiority continued to torment the sensibilities
of the Italians. A growing distrust resulted
towards the parliamentary regime which had to take responsibility for the
weaknesses in domestic and foreign policy.
Everything contributed to weakening the confidence of the masses in the Governments
who had alternated in power after the unification of Italy: the growing intensity
of class struggle internally, the formation of bands of rioters in the South,
organized subversion in the North, the ever-increasing sense of detachment
between governed and governing , the notorious corruption and nepotism of
the ruling class and, finally, a sterile and sometimes humiliating international policy.
At the beginning of the century, historical circumstances created a social

substratum favorable to three potentially revolutionary
forces: 1) anti-parliamentarism; 2) an intransigent revolutionary socialism; 3) an
exacerbated nationalism. Each of these currents, while retaining its own
independent physiognomy, was, in a certain way, intimately connected
to the others. The intellectual exponents of one could also appear to be
exponents of the other and there was an interesting, and sometimes
disconcerting, identity of intellectual substrate among them.
Originally quite distinct, the three revolutionary forces eventually merged to form
the most revolutionary amalgam of the century: historical Fascism.
Reconstructing the initial doctrine of Fascism means above all redoing the
ideological history of these three fundamental components.
ANTI-PARLIAMENTARISM AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL TRADITION

PROTOFASCISTA
The identification, even precise, of the historical forces that have prepared the
ground for a particular ideological system does not explain to us the
correspondence of the latter to a given factual situation nor the genuineness of
the theories that compose it.
The value of ideas is independent of history. Ideas are the natural object
of impartial criticism regarding their historical influence or origins.
More than half a century ago, Vilfredo Pareto, although he was

convinced of the intervention of very important unknown causes in the
determination of human behavior, warned us to distinguish the causes
by which a certain ideological system comes to be dominant in a given
historical period, its veracity or falsehood, of its greater or lesser intimate
coherence and of its particular historical development. 5
However, it can be instructive to know how, on a historical level, some

of the most disparate concepts have influenced the behavior of man in
society: a valid judgment can only derive from an in-depth
examination of the intrinsic content of those concepts, and of the their
particular history.
It is important to know why Italy, at the beginning of the century, was

so receptive to the anti-parliamentarism of Gaetano Mosca (1854-1941)
and Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923); but it is equally important to understand
the intellectual process by which the ideas took on that particular
form and to evaluate the merit* of the ideas themselves.
First we will deal with the history of these ideas, rather
than the circumstances which made them popular. On the other

hand, mjAitre we will mention their intrinsic content in general in passing,
we will leave the judgment on their validity to the specific task of
those who are scientifically interested in human behavior.
Our attention will be focused on the work of Mosca and Pareto to the extent
that they contributed to the formation of the fascist ideology; both, in
fact, each in its own way, directly or indirectly, endorsed Fascism with
their authority.
For the purposes of our exposition, we must examine Moscow's ideas

first, but that does not mean that he should be accorded intellectual
precedence. The specialists have engaged in a long, tedious and, as
far as we are concerned, sterile debate about the priority of Moscow's
formulations over Pareto's. 6 Mosca's ideas had been ripe since 1881 and
the text of his Theory of Governments and Parliamentary Government
was completed in 1883 and published in 1884. In 1885 he had
perfected his masterpiece, Elements of Political Science (translated into

English as The Ruling Class), which was published in 1896. About the
same time Pareto published his Course in Political Economy which
anticipated his later ideas. 7 Many of them bore a marked resemblance to
those of Moscow and later influenced the thinking of Benito Mussolini.
If we focus on the ideas that influenced Mussolini, the question of priority

becomes purely academic. All the ideas that were decisive on Mussolini's
thought and on fascism can be found in the books of Ludwig Gumplowicz
(1838-1909), an Austrian scholar certainly known in Moscow and
probably also in Pareto.
Such ideas and some similar concepts are heralded, among others, in the
writings of Henri Saint-Simon, Hippolyte Taine and Carlo Marx; however
they are extensively developed only in Gumplowicz's work. The extent
of Gumplowicz's influence on the formation of fascist theory has been poorly
assessed. It now seems certain that almost all of Mosca's ideas and, at least
indirectly, those of Pareto, which initially constituted an important part
of the intellectual content of Fascism, derive from his.
Therefore we are not interested in establishing whether the priority

belongs to Pareto's ideas rather than those of Mosca, or vice versa, since
everything that constitutes the interest and meaning of the present
exhibition must be sought in Gumplowicz's previous works.
Substantially all the ideas traditionally attributed to Moscow are found in
Gumplowicz Grundriss's books der Sociologie and der Rassenkampf, both
apparently published in 1881, 8 two years before the Moscow Theory
appeared and many years before the publication of the Course in
Pareto. Gumplowicz's book Grundriss der Sociologie published in 1885
together with the Rechttstaat und Socialismus fully explains the essence
of his theoretical conceptions.
If one compares these conceptions with the essential content of the

Moscow Elements, one cannot help but notice a remarkable correspondence
between them. The same can be said of some formulated theories
by Pareto, although the whole content of his works is broader and more comprehensive.
Gumplowicz, Mosca and Pareto thought and acted according to the positivist tradition of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They considered scientific
investigation as the discovery of the laws of regularity that govern phenomena
and emphasized the fundamental distinction between the study of these
regularities and the judgment on their morality and their value. This distinction, even
in our sophisticated age, brings to mind images of callousness and cynical indifference to
truth, beauty and goodness. Consequentially.
Mosca and Pareto have been described as "Machiavellian," both by their supporters and
by their detractors. 9
Still today, the science that studies human behavior makes an analogous, necessary
distinction between theoretical and normative assertions. Although our analytical and
methodological system is more complex and our judgment on the subtleties
of the theoretical structure is more developed, nevertheless we believe that the only
task of the scientist should be the dissemination of "hypothetical" or theoretical
problems, rather than normative ones. Monitoring procedures rely, in one way or another,
on observations to confirm or disprove scientific claims. 10
In principle, the scientist's moral sense must never influence the truth or falsehood of
an empirical affirmation, nor the evaluation of the explanatory force, or the prophetic
power of a set of connected knowledge.
Understood in this way, the Machiavellianism of Mosca, Pareto and Gumplowicz appears
harmless.
It is necessary to dwell on these reservations, because these men were anti-

democratic in a serious and interesting sense, and we exaggerate in
continuing to believe that anti-democratic people are, at best, wrong.
'But there is no reason to believe that each of them was no more than a
scientist devoted to social problems, seeking the truth as he understood
it.
ELITE
Working independently of each other, or in collaboration,

Gumplowicz, Mosca and Pareto had reached the conclusion, very
important for the evolution of fascist social and political thought, that: "in all
regularly constituted societies, in which there is which is called a Government,
besides seeing that its authority is exercised in the name of the
universal people, or of a dominant aristocracy or of a single sovereign...
we find another very constant fact: that the Governors, i.e. those who
hold and exercise public powers are always a minority, and that below these
there is a large class of people, who never participate regularly in
in any way to the Government, they do nothing but submit to it: they can be called
the governed". uh
The above formed Mosca's central thesis in The Theory and he

repeated it in the Elements: "Among the constant tendencies and facts that
are found in all political organisms, there is one whose evidence can easily
be manifest to all: in all societies, starting with those that are moderately
developed and have just reached the dawn of civilization, up to the most
cultured and strongest, there are two classes of people: that of the rulers
and that of the governed. The former, which is always the least numerous,
performs all the political functions, monopolizes power and enjoys the
advantages associated with it; while the second, more numerous, is
directed and regulated by the first in a more or less legal way, or more or
less arbitrary and violent... ». 12
Pareto, in turn, in Socialist Systems, 13 which was published in 1902,

maintained that human psychological characteristics are distributed
according to a normal Gaussian curve. 14 As already in 1897, he
affirmed that men are by no means equal either physically,
intellectually or morally: 15 these characteristics of theirs are
distributed according to a normal distribution curve: the most gifted individuals
occupy the upper part of this distribution curve, while the great majority
of the population remains in a position of mediocrity and inferiority with
respect to the average of the characteristics under consideration.
On the basis of these premises, combined with the affirmation that it is

possible for the most gifted men to rise on the social ladder, Pareto
concluded that society will always be organized in the shape of a
pyramid, with an aristocratic elite at the top, in a strategic position, and
at the base the vast majority of the population. 18 According to
Pareto's conception, therefore, society is composed of a minority elite that
governs and the remaining majority that is governed. The selective process
of the class that constitutes a particular historical elite is naturally
determined by the needs deriving from the social conditions of the moment.
In a primitive community, founded on hunting or fishing,
The elite is made up of the minority of the population particularly skilled in

these two activities; even in a society of thieves, for example, the most
skilled thieves are destined to make up the elite. However, it is clear that in
both cases the structure of the social organism remains unchanged, that is,
in the shape of a pyramid, at the top of which are the best. If this were
not true and if the circumstances were so different that the most competent
did not constitute an effective elite, and if society did not offer its most gifted
members the possibility of ascent, it would be doomed to perish, not
only because it would fail to overcome the difficulties of existence, but
because the best, excluded from the éZite, would become a dissident
and revolutionary minority. Therefore, either the end of society or a
violent change of the elites would result. This is one of the aspects of the
phenomenon that Pareto called the "circulation of the elites". 17
In general, this circulation involves the permanence of social forms,

while the molecules that compose them are in motion. Neither
the result was a conception of society in constant dynamic tension,

perennially characterized by a dominant minority and a majority
subject to it.
As we have already pointed out, such a social vision can be found in the
previous work of Gumplowicz who, since 1881, had stated that
"The State is not the mass, but the governed mass (beherrschte Masse)" which
does not govern itself, but adapts itself to "the will of the governing
minority (herrschenden Minoritaet)". 18 The same thesis is discussed in Der
Rassenhampf, which appeared some time before the Moscow Theory. The
phenomenon of domination and subordination (Herrschaftsverhaeltniss,
Herrschaftsorganisation) was, according to Gumplowicz, a constant
and universal historical fact. 19 Furthermore, the struggle for domination
constituted the driving force of history, "the pivot around which all history gravitates".
In 1885 these concepts were formulated in the belief that « the state is a social
phenomenon constituted by elements which behave according to social laws. The
first step is the submission of one social group to another and the assertion of
sovereignty; and the dominant nucleus is always the least numerous. But the
numerical inferiority (of those who govern) is compensated by the mental
superiority and by a more solid military discipline [...] The State therefore is
constituted by the control organized by the minority over the majority
[•••] There is, universally, a minority who commands and a submissive majority...
» 20
Within the state, that is, in organized society, the elements that constitute it
struggle for domination. When social and historical circumstances undermine
the functioning and strategic position of the ruling class (for example, when
a society transforms from a military to an industrial one), a new elite
prepares to conquer positions of privilege.
History presents us with an unbroken chain of such substitutions (einer
unendlich kette kuenftiger Herrschaftsumwaelzungen). 21 The image recalled
by these concepts is that of a social pyramid (Gumplowicz uses the same analogy
used by Pareto in the Corso) composed of elements in dynamic tension ( ewige
Spannung der Kraefte). 22
The evident similarity between Gumplowicz's theories and those of Pareto

also concerns the statements, the references and the very form of the discourse.
Remarkable is the fundamental distinction made by Gumplowicz between
humans and animals: the characteristic that distinguishes animals, he argues, is
that they have never learned to exploit members of their own species and
that they have never been able to organize themselves hierarchically, nor
to exercise dominance over animals of their own kind. 23 Pareto

literally makes the same distinction between man and beast; 24 only men
are able to organize, and to exercise, a force of protection and initiative
in society, through a hierarchical domain. All human civilization is based
on this ability: 25 is the same conclusion to which Gumplowicz's
arguments lead. He believes that civilization and hierarchical
organization are related to cause and effect, as one is inconceivable
without the other. 26
This identity of form and content makes us think that Pareto
knew, at least, the previous work of Gumplowicz who, even if Pareto

never mentioned him, exercised a notable influence on Italian
thought. j
Angelo Vaccaro's The Basis of Law and the State, published in Turin in
1893, was written under the influence of Gumplowicz, as were
Critical Essays on the Sociological Theory of Population (1886) and
Prime lines of a Program of Sociology by Icilio Vanni (1888). 27
These works, with that of Moscow, openly inspired by Gumplowicz,
suggest that Pareto, even if he had not read Gumplowic^, was
probably very familiar with his theses, known to him through Italian
sources, even before he wrote in 1895 the Course and certainly before
he published his Systems in 1902.
Most probably it must have happened that Gumplowicz, Mosca

and Pareto had some critical concepts in common and that
Gumplowicz was the first to fully express them. A more in-depth
analysis demonstrates that the differences that appear at first sight
are groundless: that is, that Moscow, at least initially, was only interested
in defining specifically political facts (the dominant minority was
called by him the "political class"); that Pareto conceived his circulation
of elites in terms of competition and selection of individuals; while
Gumplowicz was concerned with preferences of general and group sociological pheno
Initially Mosca was exclusively interested in the political class, which
he identified in the Government 28 and, consequently, his
conceptual field of application was narrower than that of Pareto,
who was interested in the elite of the Rulers and the non-rulers, and of that Of
Gumplowicz who conceived of the aristocracy as the guide of an

entire social organization. Since 1895, when he wrote the Elements, it
nevertheless appeared evident that Mosca had deepened the study of
sociological questions and the seventh chapter of his Elements opens with a
reference to Buffon, according to which social animals show a constant
disposition to organize themselves in groups autonomous in constant struggle
with each other. Moscow claims that:
'It seems that an instinct much like this makes its influence felt on men. In
fact, they have the natural inclination to fight, but this only sporadically assumes
the individual character, that is, of a single one in war against a single
one; because even fighting man remains an eminently sociable animal.
We therefore usually see men forming themselves into nuclei, among which
there are leaders and followers; and the individuals, which each group
composes, are especially close to each other and in harmony and vent their
pugnacious instincts against those who are part of the other nuclei ». 29
This aptitude for organizing oneself not only characterizes primordial

relationships, but also "underlines" "the formation of all the divisions and
sub-divisions ... which arise within the same society and give rise to struggles".
30 These groups constitute the "social types", animated and organized by
"political formulas" which support them: that is, by a complex of maxims,
precepts and their justifications which constitute the points of reference for
governing the behavior of individuals
and of the community. Moscow says in this regard: «Humanity is divided into
social groups, each of which is distinguished from the others by
beliefs, feelings, habits and interests which are special to it. The individuals who
belong to one of these groups are united among themselves by the consciousness
of a common brotherhood, and divided from the other groups by more or less
antagonistic and repulsive passions and tendencies. As we have already
hinted, the political formula must be founded on the special beliefs and strongest
feelings of the social group in which it is in force, or at least of the fraction of
this group which has the pre-eminence.' 31
Here, of course, the social problem is treated broadly, and Moscow regards
Gumplowicz as one of its main sources. In fact, the resulting theoretical
exposition presents all the characteristics which,
as early as 1875, they appear in Gumplowicz's Rass und Staat; Mosca's

book differs from the latter only in some secondary aspects and in the
different approach it gives to the various topics.
The book's focus was on what we would now call political sociology, while
Gumplowicz's focus was on general sociology or macrosociology.
However, for both the fundamental unit was the "group", and this is very
evident from the works of both (although Mosca sometimes falls into
theoretical individualism). Society conceived as an organic whole of social
groups united by similar, characteristic and clearly distinguishable ideas,
beliefs and interests.
Within each particular historical society, well-defined needs pave the

way for the predominance of specifically gifted social elements.
This strategic minority exercises dominion over society through the
administrative and executive bodies of the state. When historical
circumstances change and therefore those capabilities that previously had
a great strategic and functional importance are no longer needed, or when
society enters a long period of transition, during which the old ruling
class gradually transforms itself through the of those elements of the
subordinate class who are possessed of the requisite new aptitudes, or a
period of violent disorganization ensues during which a
new ruling class, opposed to the old, successfully wages a revolution. 33
The fact that these transformations involve entire classes, groups,

"social types", is specifically indicated by Moscow's reference to the
revolutions of the lower classes, organized and directed by their own ruling
class. 34
Moscow has thus modified the concept of « ruling class ». The aristocracy,
which he originally configured within deliberately narrow limits and which
he had called the "political class" ultimately comes to be any elite that
organizes the components of any particular social group for the
achievement of certain collective goals.
The sphere of application of the concept of Moscow's "political minority"

is therefore generally the same as that of Gumplowicz's "dominant minority"
and the Pareto elite.
The ruling class of the majority ruled in revolt not
it participates in the Government (which according to Mosca is the

monopoly of the governing minority) and therefore it cannot be
said that it is made up of people belonging to what he had previously
defined as a "political class". They are only individuals, particularly
gifted, belonging to a new elite, exactly in the sense of Gumplowicz
and/Pareto.
Moreover, the social types of Moscow operate in exactly the same way
as Gumplowicz's "heterogeneous social elements". History becomes the
arena of warring groups. Intersocial conflicts are resolved only with the
use of force. Intrasocial confrontation takes the form of political
struggle, in which each social type seeks to grab a larger sphere of
influence in the exercise of political control.
Even from a simple superficial analysis of Pareto's systems, an

analogous theoretical conception can be obtained. What initially
appears to be an analysis in terms of competition between individuals
within organized society turns out to be a struggle of groups for power.
Pareto says: «In every time and in every place, the history of the
past and observation of the present show us men divided into groups,
each of which generally procures economic goods, partly by producing
them directly, partly by despoiling the others groups... » 35
That Pareto was not referring only to primitive relations between

and within groups is inferred from his reference, in this context, to the
"infinity of groups" struggling for power in modern society.
Each of these groups coalesce around affinities, prominent racial

characteristics and cultural attributes, and immediate material
interests. Each group fights for power and social privilege.
To have chances of success in the struggle, the members of each
group must be animated by a spirit of group solidarity, by a strong spirit of
understanding, even of personal sacrifice, towards their "like" (their like),
38 and by a prejudicial distrust capable of
support the planned use of force against outside groups. 37 The set of feelings
necessary to regulate individual and group activity finds its expression in a
functional myth that Pareto would later define as "derivation", i.e. verbal
reactions which are the variable manifestation of relatively stable predominant
attitudes, or " residuals » invariable. 33 The justifications put forward by
the conflicting groups constitute illogical sets of ideas which, in
reality, "are nothing but the very transparent veil of exclusively earthly interests".
39 Thus Pareto speaks of the "religion" of socialism, of the organizational or
functional myth of the working class, as the most appropriate firm to support their
class interests and for the defense and satisfaction of group interests.
Thus the social struggle, apparently conducted on a doctrinal basis, fails to

highlight, in effect, the conflict of interests. 40
For all three theorists, Gumplowicz, Mosca and Pareto, the conflict within the
group takes on a different character from that of the conflict between groups, and
it is this difference that distinguishes the type of society.
A society shattered by internal wars between groups, social types.
classes, factions or social strata, is not vital. Open and violent struggle causes
obvious dysfunctions. Only under the sovereignty of the state and under
the rule of law is it possible to establish a modus vivendi. When humanity
reaches a certain level, even a minimum, of civilization, the warring groups no
longer destroy each other, but one of them gains dominance and
proceeds to exploit the vanquished, to whom an inferior place is reserved in
a new wider and more complex social order. The victorious group assumes
sovereign power and establishes relations governed by laws between the
heterogeneous social elements. These relationships, imposed by force,
define the rights and duties of the various constituent elements of society. 41 In
this regard, Gumplowicz stated: «The hostility between different social elements
of different strengths is the first condition for the creation of rights; conditions,
imposed by force and accepted out of weakness, when peacefully persisted,
are transformed into rights... It is erroneous and disappointing to believe that
rights have been or can be equally shared. They arise only in the
relationships that are created in the state;
they express these relationships and give the measure of their

inequality; it is therefore necessary that some force peacefully maintain
this state of inequality; therefore suitable institutions must be
created and defended incessantly". 42
DREAMS ARE MASSIVE
Once the relations between the various social elements are regulated
by norms which provide for sanctions, the struggle between
groups takes on a particularly "ideological" aspect. The feuding social
elements strategically appeal to "moral sentiments" in order to
secure a tactical advantage in the endless social confrontation.
For clarity of exposition, we will call "myth" any set of ideas which are
invoked to determine common individual duties and obligations within a
group, by means of a hierarchy of practical values.
We will call the "organizational" or "functional" myth the one intended to
attract consensus towards a new elite which opposes the
dominant elite and the norms that derive as a consequence of the
acceptance of the latter's myth.
Instead, we will call "statutory myth" the one that refers to the political
formulas used to legitimize the rules of obligation on which the established
order is based. Thus, the rising bourgeoisie, when it contested the
power of the feudal nobility, appealed to "popular sovereignty" and "human
rights". These myths served as organizational belief systems. 43 When the
bourgeoisie achieved social and political dominance, the myth of
"popular sovereignty" ceased to be revolutionary and reformist and became
a statutory myth, an important moral, i.e. conservative, force aimed at
legitimizing the newly established order.
But the alternation of statutory myths is only a superficial aspect of the

perpetual alternation of the elites. The fact that the "divine right of kings"
could no longer legitimize the rule of the feudal nobility only meant that
historical circumstances had so damaged
and, in the long run, debilitated within the hitherto dominant

minority, that the road to succession was open.
During the struggle, force is used judiciously, but open violence threatens the entire
social structure, and is therefore only used very cautiously.
An astute new elite organizes the have-nots of a multitude of subordinate social elements
with the watchwords of organizational, functional umwlito. These masses can
be mobilized in the service of revolution or reformism even against their real
interests, since it is in the nature of the masses to be basically passive, illogical,
ignorant and easily misled by slogans and emotional appeals.
Lacking energy, character and intelligence, they become^the instrument of social

change, 44 and, as an instrument, they are always at the service of the ends of the
elite who organize them. Gumplowicz, Mosca and Pareto insist with the same force
on these points: Mosca, for example, affirms: «...Also assuming that the
discontent of the masses succeeded in dethroning the ruling class, it would necessarily
have to be found... in the bosom of the masses themselves another organized minority
fulfilling the office of that class... In fact, the prevalence of an organized
minority which obeys a single impulse over the disorganized majority is fatal.' 45
Gumplowicz puts forward the same thesis: "The masses always need unity and
organization partly because of their large numbers and partly because of their
indolence. Since the final result of the social struggle depends on discipline, the
minority is at an advantage. as it is few in number [...] 46
These ideas, articulated in a theoretical context, provide an interpretation of society, the

state and social change.
Society is a system of ordered relationships between heterogeneous social elements.

The order is backed up by state-imposed fines on violators. Each component element
of society is kept alive by a feeling of self-sufficient group in certain historical and social
circumstances, a particular social element acquires the upper hand. In the course of
its ascent it can mobilize various other elements of society to its service. One of
the most effective techniques employed for this purpose is the strategic use of
functional myths. These myths, in fact, convey energies, provide precepts
and
maxims of conduct, establish tactical goals and transform a motley

crew into a machine for the conquest of power. Once in government, the
organized minority tries to maintain its power. The functional myth can
become a statutory myth or, depending on the circumstances, a new myth can
be studied for this purpose.
Whatever the course of events, the inevitable result is the domination of a
new elite, an aristocracy, in fact. 47
In primitive societies, in which hunting and war characterized the life of the
group, a handful of warriors or hunters became the dominant elite. Their
behavior is governed by a set of beliefs that establish the laws of approval
and disapproval. The "warrior's code" becomes the functional myth. For the
purpose of manta rays
To seek stability in the communities they dominate, they propose a

statutory myth that traces their right to power back to the gods or an
eponymous hero. The subordinate classes are either made to
derive from that hero's cadets, or are blamed for some presumed
hereditary fault that justifies the superior status of the dominant minority and
the inferior status of the majority. As long as the majority of the subordinate
class remains convinced of the legitimacy. the continuity of the
domination of the ruling minority is ensured under the established social orderings.
When this rationalistic complex stabilizes itself in a system of beliefs
and norms, the priestly caste makes its appearance and provides the
regime with substantial moral support. 43 And when, under
the pressure of modified social and economic conditions, the situation
changes, a new element is formed within the subordinate population
that aspires to domination.
Certain conditions can, for example, increase the social importance of

the intellectual, commercial and entrepreneurial elements within an organized
community, and a military class is gradually replaced by an
intellectual, commercial and productive aristocracy.
The statutory myth that had prevailed until then is no longer respected,
while opposing claims are made. Once the transition has taken place and a
new kind of relationship has been established between the social elements
which better responds to the needs of a given historical situation, a new period of
stabilization. A new statutory myth is proposed that offers the moral bonds that can hold
society together. The new myth represents the interests of the new aristocracy, but
must also refer to the factors, moral and material, which represent its sustaining
force. Neither the functional nor the statutory myth are rational in themselves. They
must first and foremost reflect the relationships that actually exist between the
various elements of society, that is to say, establish the rules governing duties and
rights, but they must also refer to the eternal feelings that characterize man as a social
animal. Men must develop some minimal sense of group solidarity, without
which any group would splinter into warring factions.
The references to the feeling of nationality, to tradition, to historical memories,

to fidelity to the dynasty, to cultural affinities, constitute the basis of a sense of group
solidarity which often has the upper hand over the effective immediate material interests
of the various social elements which 1 make up the largest group. 48
By their very nature, the myths they organize or legitimize are never only the product
of reason. Indeed, they must satisfy too many social needs to be an exclusively
intellectual product.
Nor is there any relationship between their intrinsic rationality and their durability.
In many cases, they endure despite their apparent irrationality or arationality.
Their function is only to mobilize feeling and to provoke and regulate action. Let them be
called "political formulas", "derivations" or "fantasies", they constitute, in every
case, a necessary and inevitable factor of social stasis or evolution.
This theoretical explanation is completely based on a critical concept:

Vetnocentrism. We purposely use this term, one of the most used and most widely
accepted concepts in sociology 50 Its modern formulation is attributed to
contemporary William.
Graham Sumner . 51 The fact is that this concept occupies a prominent place in
the work of Mosca and in that of Pareto and, even before Sumner wrote Folkways, it
can be found in the work of Gumplowicz with
not too generic meaning. In reality Sumner knew Gumplowicz's works very well
and quotes them often. 52
Ethnocentrism indicates the predisposition, on the part of any

community, to conceive common characteristics and interests as an initial basis
of reference for establishing a hierarchy of comparative values.
The individual, through a process defined as "socialization", identifies

himself with his group in whose habits, customs and customs he finds the
criterion for orienting himself in the macrosocial world of individual and group
relationships. Ethnocentrism is therefore the generic term which indicates the
general predisposition of individuals to identify themselves with a myth,
with the normative system of their community.
Anthropologists use this concept as a working tool to explain the tribal

attitudes of primitive men, while sociologists and social psychologists, more
frequently, extend its scope to all the attitudes manifested within
the group by each social element, whether of an economic, racial, political,
cultural or hereditary nature.
Ethnocentristic tendencies have great survival value. They

strengthen a group's ability to survive because they predispose the
individual to conform to group constraints and to sacrifice in the service of the
community. By identifying, in fact, the individual with the characteristic values
of his own group, the latter increases his self-esteem. Any threat to the
group is regarded by him as a threat to his own person.
Gumplowicz was the first to highlight these "constant psychological tendencies"

and called it "ethnocentrism" (Etlinocentrismus). 53 In Der Rassenkampf he
used the neologism « singenism » ( Syngenismus ) to indicate the same set
of predisposing characteristics and continued to use it throughout the rest of his
essay production.
Its meaning always remained that of "ethnocentrism," since "singenism"

signifies feelings of social affinity within the group, self-sacrifice, and devotion to
the natural social community. That is, it indicates the
self-esteem with which each Community supports itself. Its opposite is a form
of distrust of outgroups, a latent or overt hostility that is at best indifference
or tolerance. 54
Each autonomous group is the product of an interweaving of material and

moral factors, such as common interests, biological descent, equal territorial
origins, evident cultural affinities of language, customs, habits and beliefs.
55
For Gumplowicz, it was of paramount importance that men can be actively

organized into autonomous groups, whether these be hordes, tribes, city-
states, nations, castes, classes or political parties. He conceived of man as
a social animal, by nature.
Identification with the norms of the group closely binds the individual to his
community. What we currently call "sociality" was called by Gumplowicz
"mimicry", "imitation", "suggestion" or simply "education". 55
.
When the works of Scipio Sighele and Gustave Le Bon appeared in the
last decade of the nineteenth century, Gumplowicz immediately cited them
as evidence of man's natural disposition towards group life as a social animal.
57 Collective psychology provided exhaustive explanations of man's
behavior in the various social groups he belonged to and also explained how
the masses could be dominated and led to action by organized minorities.
Scipio Sighele and Gustave Le Bon provided the theoretical

complement necessary for a broader vision of the processes that
regulate the identification of the individual with his community.
Le Bon's "collective hallucinations" (under whose influence men act), the

"images" which recall other "images which have no logical connection with
the first ones", were so similar to the concepts of Gumplowicz, Pareto
and Mosca on group myths and collective feelings, which cannot go
unnoticed. Le Bon's conception of a society composed of governed masses,
dominated by "collective hallucinations
», and by a ruling elite, was not at odds with the undemocratic

conclusions common to the three thinkers.
As soon as Le Bon's Psychologie des foules and Sighele's The

Delinquent Crowd were published, respectively in 1895 and 1891, their
conclusions became part of the theoretical structure of Gumplowicz's and
Pareto's thought.
To the Italian intellectuals, disillusioned by the parliamentary system

which seemed to operate at the service of minority interests, aware
of the constant interclass tensions and aware of the irrationality and
suggestibility of the masses that made up both the rural and urban
population, the theory proposed by the works of Pareto and Mosca it
provided a lucid vision of intuited reality. Gumplowicz* also
contributed largely to this vision, whose thought, in fact, during
almost all the following fifty years, had greater influence in Italy than in
any other part of the world. His ideas, as we will demonstrate, recurred
regularly in the theoretical literature of Fascism. Gumplowicz imagined
society as a complex system of elements directed by a state
apparatus, responding to the will of an organized and dominant minority.
Potential clashes between groups constantly threaten the stability of

society. When changed material conditions put a dominant é/ite at
a disadvantage, society witnesses a turnover of elites. Every challenge
of this kind is led by a minority who organize themselves to mobilize
the masses in their service. Each minority proposes a functional
myth, a myth that can act as a stimulus to rebellion
Lyon, during the transition periods between the Government of the elite
in power and that of the new elite and as a principle of legitimacy
when the latter has consolidated its domination. Behind the facade
of representative institutions and parliamentary systems, bourgeois
government in Italy represented just such an affirmation of an elite.
Gumplowicz, Mosca and Pareto understood that such a thesis

unmasked the fakes of democracy. All the parliamentary systems had
managed to do was to have masked the reality of minority rule.
Any political movement that promises effective democracy, the 'government of
people', and every political theory which seriously corrupts the political and
social order as a consequence of a rational and voluntary contract speculates
on illusions and sophisms.
The disorganized, disunited and ignorant majority cannot carry out its will
in modern society, any more than it can have contractually renounced
its "natural freedom" in the "state of nature" to ensure the rule of law. These
are political formulas, moral fantasies, statutory myths of bourgeois dominance.
It is strange, and even important for our purposes, that Gumplowicz, Mosca
and Pareto were essentially conservative thinkers. Gumplowicz
conceived a class society, with clearly defined hierarchies in terms of quality
and prestige as the natural and inevitable social environment of man.
Pareto was a laissez-faire economist who believed that social relations
within groups were governed by feelings and interests, rather than by the
normative ideals that constitute their outward appearance. Ultimately,
Moscow too proved to be a "conservative liberal" in favor of the highest degree
of freedom for individuals and groups compatible with the laws and rules
that govern man in society.
58 No one could be considered to represent the interests of the lower or
working classes. And yet, Gumplowicz, Mosca and Pareto had great
influence on the intellectually active and politically aggressive socialist
factions in Italy. The living personification of this relationship was Roberto
Michels (1876-1936), a revolutionary socialist. Nine years older than
Mussolini, Michels represented the point of contact between the anti-
parliamentarism of the conservative right and the anti-parliamentarism of
the revolutionary left.
GEORGES SOREL
In 1911 Michels published his Zur Soziologie des Partelwesens in der

modern Democratie which appeared in Italy in 1912 and was
translated in England in 1915 under the title Political Parties. At the end of
his study, Michels specified that he was not the first to support the concept of
"oligarchic tendencies" in society. The theory that a leadership team is
absolutely essential to political and social life reaffirmed,
it wasn't hers.
« Gaetano Mosca, the most authoritative supporter, among the living, of

this sociological concept, is, together with fVilfredo Pareto, to whom
contends for priority, the ablest and most eminent exponent. He recognized,
as precursors of the sociological assumption, Hippolyte Taine and
Ludwig Gumplowicz ». 59
Michels went on to affirm the theory that society cannot exist without a dominant
minority; whereby the State is the executive organ of an organizing elite which
creates the order governed by morality and the law which constitutes the
structure of community life; whereby the masses provide the elementary
energy, but not the directive will, for social change.
« Far from opposing or replacing the materialistic conception of history, it

complements and reinforces it. In fact, there is no substantial
contradiction between the doctrine according to which history is the testimony of
an uninterrupted series of class struggles, and the doctrine according to which
the same struggles invariably end in the creation of new oligarchies which
merge with the old ones. The existence of a political class does not conflict with
the substantial content of Marxism, if one considers it not as an economic
dogma, but as a philosophy of history". 60
Let us not dwell here on establishing whether this compatibility

actually exists. The important thing is that many SRs claimed that it existed. The
Italian Socialist Revolutionaries in Italy were very willing to admit, with Marx,
that history is the history of class struggles and that "all previous historical
movements", as Marx maintained, "were movements of minorities, or in the
interest of minorities" . They were equally willing to admit, with Marx, that
"law, morality, religion are so many [class] prejudices behind which are hidden
the pitfalls of so many [class] interests" and that "the executive power of
the modern state is nothing more than than a board of directors for affairs
common to the whole bourgeoisie.' 61 According to Marx and also
according to Pareto and Mosca, the substitution of a class, like the partisan
spirit, was the consequence of social and historical forces wholly
independent of the will and conscious guidance of men.
*Both Marxists and non-Marxist anti-parliamentarians saw parliament as

a means of class and category dominance. For the revolutionary
socialists, it was obvious that the proclaimed "popular sovereignty" was a
trap, an aspect of the political fiction through which the middle class sought
to legitimize its minority government. What was needed to make this idea
revolutionary was the belief that society had entered a phase of revolutionary
transition and that a new elite was challenging the rule of the bourgeoisie.
In socialist publications the names of Mosca and Pareto appeared
more and more frequently and Gumplowicz's ideas, together with those of Le
Bon, became currency in current use among the radical elements of Italian
socialism. But these ideas and the convictions that made them revolutionary
had to condense around a name: the name of Georges Sorel.
Of all the social and political thinkers of the fruitful period that preceded the
First World War, Georges Sorel (1847-1922), the most important
theoretician of revolutionary syndicalism, was also one of the most obscure
and more interesting. Because of the difficulty of his style, when speaking
of his social thinking it is important to clarify in various ways what is meant.
First, Sorel was a notoriously bad writer. 62 He was, among other things, an
autodidact who expounded his ideas with such disorderly enthusiasm that he
often left the reader completely unable to reconstruct their order and
relative importance. Much of his thought was more psychological than
logical and, consequently, many essential premises of his arguments were
implied and his discussions became so truncated as to be perplexing. When
one examines the complicated mess of his life's work, it becomes difficult to
classify. He was, at once, a defender of the proletariat and of a
singularly transformed suggestive Marxism, and a staunch supporter
of bourgeois virtues; defender of radical and anti-Semitic libertarianism;
radical revolutionary and traditionalist; revolutionary socialist and
defender of the monarchy. The list of these seemingly contradictory conceptual
positions shows that it is no wonder that some influences have been
thought to be traced back to his thinking not only on classic Fascism
but also on Leninism and even as some say, on National

Socialism. 63
Our interest, however, will turn only to that Sorel whose ideas directly
influenced the political maturation of Mussolini. Our discourse, in any
case, rather than providing an exposition of Sorel's thought, will tend
to reconstruct the existing relationship between the two men.
Sorel is generally known only as the author of Reflexions sur la violence,

a good part of which was published by him in the first absolute edition in
Italy, between October and November 1905 with the titles The struggle of
class and violence and Lo general strike and later republished in pamphlet
under the title The general strike and violence, with a preface by the
Italian trade unionist Enrico Leone. 64 It was in this work, which exerted
an immense influence on Italian radical thought in the period before
the First World War, that Sorel developed his most characteristic
ideas on syndicalism. It's an important job as much for what it doesn't
say as for what it does say. The conceptual basis of his exposition
is almost completely hidden: therefore, if the reader is not aware of this
basis, Sorel's ideas take on such a precariousness and inconsistency as
to cast doubt on his enormous influence on the development of Fascism.
The main edition of the Réflexions came out in 1908 in France. The
work dealt mainly with revolutionary tactics and organization. In this sense,
Sorel's sphere of interests was more limited than that of Gumplowicz
and Pareto, who dealt with macrosociology, and the focus of his attention
was narrower than that of Mosca, whose interests concerned
political sociology. Sorel was a tactician of the revolution and self-
described as more interested in method than in purpose. As a lactic,
Sorel had a constant distrust of "professional intellectuals" who
apparently were concerned only with proposing
an apocalyptic vision of the future society. 65 He argued that the

emphasis on this particular problem was purposely designed to
benefit a particular class of non-producers: i.e. the creators of
utopian theories and speculative fantasies. These intellectuals present

themselves as mentors of revolutionary socialism only to become its masters.
66 Intellectuals exploit their ability and experience to formulate obscure
speculations on the future organization of society, with the aim of making
themselves indispensable to the proletarian revolution. Soon, the
intellectuals monopolize the leadership of the revolutionary movement
and organize themselves in a closed circle on the basis of their specific
interests. In this way a rotation of minority political elites will have taken
place within the proletarian organization. 67 Sorel feared the
domination of intellectuals within the revolutionary proletariat, because
he recognized that, in general, society is characterized by the
phenomenon of the domination of minorities. All history is the history
of the struggle for domination by minorities. 68 These minorities, whatever
their origins, try to gain control of the state, which holds the exclusive
monopoly of force in the political structure.
The state is the instrument of effective social control and, as such, is

the contested goal in any historical case of social conflict, 69
because it allows those who have achieved social domination to
enact the aspirations of the dominant minority into law. Its explicit
function is the exercise of force, and the "objective of force is
to impose a particular social order in which the minority governs..." 70
Sorel's theories give us the image of a man who, as a social animal, is in

constant conflict between groups and within the group itself. Since the
State has always existed and "always, in fact, organized wars of
conquest...", society finds itself eternally in a condition of conflict, now
open, now veiled. 71 The alleged "unity of society", which only makes
possible conflicts between different societies, about which law professors
and "bleating democratic moralists" pour rivers of eloquence, is a fiction,
a political formula to accustom the inert and incapable masses to
political control. 72 Only a Europe "stupid by humanitarianism" can
get caught up in the "democratic swamp" in which such elementary truths
are not recognized. 73 The truth is that society itself is the arena of
group rivalry. Each group, when it is vital, is moved by an autonomous
esprit de corps, and possesses "that audacity of the noble races,
that mad, absurd and
spontaneous audacity ... showing contempt for the tranquility of the body, for
life, for comfort » in the struggle for domination. 74
This point of view is not incompatible with Marxism.
Classical Marxism, in fact, conceived the history of humanity as a painful

story of incessant class struggles, in which the elites fight for power and
conquer it when the totality of the forces at their disposal crushes their
adversaries. Once power has been conquered, the will of the minority
who conquered it becomes law for everyone. 75
The simple outline of this interpretive and explanatory theory is
equally compatible with the concepts of society and social dynamics

common to Gumplowicz, Mosca and Pareto. Revolutionary syndicalists
like Angelo Oliviero Olivetti could very well connect the names of Marx,
Pareto and Gumplowicz without arousing surprise among the men of the
radical left of the Italian socialist movement. 78 All of these theorists were
convinced that the history of society could only be written in terms of group
antagonism and that violence provided the motivating force for change.
Relationships within society, established with violence, are codified in law
and supported with force. Olivetti maintained that "violence is force seen from
a particular point of view. The repression exercised by those who dominate
is force and is translated into Law; the resistance of those who are
dominated is called violence.' 77
This distinction was made by Sorel as early as 1903 and reappears in the
Réflexions. 78 Pareto proposes a similar theory in the Systems of 1902
and systematically develops it in his subsequent Treatise. 19 Similar
beliefs underlie Moscow's conceptions of "juridical defence", a balance
between warring social forces, which allows the prevalence of relations
regulated by law to have the most unchallenged dominance over the interests
of particular social elements. The concept implies that the Law is the
codified expression of the will of interest groups. Sorel, for his part, formulates
a similar theory in the Introduction à Veconomie moderni. 90
Such ideas were found in Gumplowicz's books long before the appearance of
the youthful Moscow Theorist. Strength, according to Gumplowicz, is
prior to the law and constitutes its foundation. (« ... am Anfang nicht das
Recht war, will probe die Gewalt... »). 81 Force is limited only by an
opposing force.
« Rights are a social creation, a form of community life generated by the

conflict of different social groups of unequal strength... [Each] group moves in
the direction of its own interests, seeks to protect and favor them, to increase
its own power and to obtain a corresponding influence in the State... In other
words, each participates in the sovereignty solely and exactly in proportion to
his own power.' 82
Gumplowicz, Mosca, Pareto and Sorel unanimously rejected the

liberal, contractual and democratic conception of the state, society and the
law. In this their ideas were compatible with those of Marx and this
compatibility explains why the Italian socialists could pass from one to the
other without any theoretical difficulty. Equally interesting, however, are
the differences between their theses.
Classical Liberalism held that the ultimate repository of sovereignty was the
individual. Individuals enter into agreements with their own kind, each of
whom is the custodian of certain natural and inalienable rights, to form a
State which is ultimately responsible to the contracting parties. The sovereignty
delegated to the state is limited by the positive and natural rights possessed
by the contracting individuals. Even the Marxists, as well as
Gumplowicz, Mosca, Pareto and Sorel, denied the validity of such a conception.
According to them, the state arises when among the elements
| irreconcilable conflicts arise. Thus, the state arises from conflict. It is the
mechanism used to impose the will of a dominant minority on a defeated
and powerless majority. 83 Classical Marxism does not, however,
conceive this relationship as an exemplification of the primacy
of force as such. 84 Such an interpretation would be simplistic.
According to Marxist theory, the relationship between social elements is

determined by the prevailing economic relationships which ultimately
depend on the stage of development reached by the forces of
production. Marxism held that political power, i.e. the rotation of elites, depends on the
economic power and that legal relationships derive from economic relationships.
The social elements set in motion during periods of social change draw their
energy from the changes that take place in the economic basis of society.
If a new protesting elite emerges, this means that the. productive forces
have superseded the productive relations created to meet the needs of an earlier
system of production. The vitality, organization and definitive success of this
new social force are the consequence of the previous economic development.
Taken together, these theses affirm the supremacy of economic over moral and
political evolution.
All the thinkers we are interested in opposed the claim / of classical Marxism
to consider a single factor. Gumplowicz, Mosca, Pareto and Sorel, in almost
the same words, rejected the monocausal theory of social evolution.
All of them argued that the various determinants of historical variation are
interdependent. Sorel considered economic determinism, however complex
its theoretical formulation, fraught with difficulties. As early as 1898 he had
opposed determinism, which weakened the explanatory theses of orthodox
socialism.
85 He maintained that Marx himself, like his orthodox followers, had made use of
vague and ambiguous formulations in the construction of the theory which made
his reasoning equivocal; from the study of these misunderstandings it was
evident that an empirical fact would have invalidated many of the fundamental
propositions.
Carrying the theses proposed by Benedetto Croce in Historical materialism and

Marxist economy to the extreme consequences, Sorel rejected Marxist determinism.
86 At the time he wrote the Réflexions he could come to the conclusion that «
there is no process by which the future can be scientifically predicted, nor
which authorizes us to discuss whether one hypothesis about the same future is
more valid than another; it has been amply demonstrated by many famous
examples that the greatest men have committed gross errors in their
desire to foretell even the nearest future.' 87
As a result, at least in part, of these beliefs, Sorel's thinking moved inexorably from
a theory of society to a theory of
reasons. In attempting to express his ideas succinctly, he was

irresistibly drawn from the determination of the economic factors
operating in society to the consideration of the psychological or
subjective factors which govern the behavior of man and
moral criteria by which the behavior itself is to be evaluated.

88 Sorel was, in reality, what the French call a moralist. The main
concern of the "apologist for violence" was the moral life. More
specifically, he not only intended to discover what constitutes moral
life, but also "to determine whether there is a mechanism capable of
guaranteeing the development of morality." 89 If such a
mechanism were known, social changes could be assessed more
accurately.
Morality, according to Sorel, automatically implies autonomy.

Moral approval or disapproval cannot refer to unfree actions. If an
individual does only what he is forced to do, there is no moral
approval or disapproval. Morality automatically implies the possibility
of human determination of world events. 90 For a satisfactory ethical
theory, therefore, an explanation of human actions is needed that
allows for meaningful choices, that admits the possibility of
alternatives of action ^determined, ultimately, by the will of
the moral agent. Sorel believed he knew at least the first
formulations of this explanation. «To say that we are acting», Sorel
affirmed, «implies the fact that we are creating an imaginary world
which is in front of the actual world and is made up of actions, which
depend exclusively on us. In this way our freedom becomes fully
comprehensible". 91
This "ideal world" is not a description of things, the product of a

cognitive evaluation, but the expression of a determination to act, an
affirmation of will 92 which ends in social upheavals. The guide to
action is provided by the image of that "world" which men, organized
in groups, accept as a normative ideal. This "ideal world" was Sorel's
political "myth". Its descriptive content is not important in itself, but
only insofar as individual and collective action is governed by it
as if it were an objective representation
and exact than an objective possibility. The myth had an explanatory

function in Sorelian's theories of motivation and collective organization.
Sorel's theories are the result of the confluence of various currents of

European anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism, markedly influenced by
the thought of Henri Bergson; his conceptions ultimately assumed the main
features of William James's pragmatism.
Furthermore, some of Sorel's ideas reveal a surprising affinity with those of
«Friedrich Nietzsche. 93 All these men lived and wrote in an era in which the
anti-positivist and anti-intellectual currents tried in every way to open their
way.
Among it became increasingly evident that the study of society had not, in
any sense, reached the level of maturity of the classical natural sciences.
Ordinary sociology showed very little forecasting capacity and was
able to exert only a very weak interpretative force. The prevailing
attitude of the critics of sociology was profound skepticism at best. The only
attempt at resistance to positivism, in the study of society, manifested itself
in a critique
methodology that sought to split science into the now familiar classifications
of Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften. Methods suitable for
one were considered unsuitable for the other. The natural sciences sought
to discover the regularities, reducible to laws, which govern material
and mechanical processes, while the "human sciences" were concerned
with the individual or collective voluntary reactions of "spiritual agents".
The most radical form of anti-positivism manifested itself in the anti-

intellectual movement which numbered among its most prominent
followers Bergson, James and Nietzsche. The use of the term "anti-
intellectualism" has considerably obscured the nature and intentions of
the movement, which stimulated some of the finest minds at the turn of
the century. Sometimes the term 'anti-intellectualism' is understood to
mean 'irrationalism' or 'mysticism', but such an identification is
clearly wrong. All the anti-intellectuals employed reason in their analyzes and
interpretations, and both Bergson and James vigorously denied that their
theories involved any form of abandonment of reason as such.
The anti-intellectualists did not reject reason but attributed it an instrumental

and creative function, tending to interpret its products not as
discoveries, but as discoveries to be applied flexibly in practice. In
this sense they were opposed to the mainstream positivism of the late
nineteenth century, which had embraced a crude interpretation
of the "representationist" theory of perception. For the positivists, only
that which sufficiently "reflects" or "represents" an "external world"
was true. On the other hand, anti-intellectualists tended to
be pragmatic; they judged truths not as the reflection and representation
of an "objective reality", but as happy creations, systematic anticipations
of experiences which enhance and facilitate the life of the individual and
of the community. The anticipations that successfully guide
man through experiences are true, and the measure of truth is the capacity
for prediction confirmed by "irreducible and well-defined facts".
For the anti-intellectualists, the truth could only be this. To this end,
they made use of abstract concepts and logical abstractions, in an
attempt to anticipate the consequences, but they always and
regularly resorted to concrete details that confirmed the truth and meaning
of the concepts and abstractions. Abstractions, universal concepts,
categorical definitions, logical constructions employed in this way
neither "reflect" reality nor "represent" any immutable truth. Euclid's
geometric system, for example, is only one of the possible interpretations
of physical space and itself is only one of the infinite possible geometric
systems.
If we define our universe as "Euclidean", it is because of the

instrumental convenience that it derives from this system. Only in this
sense is Euclid's system true. But it cannot be held true as reflecting
or representing one world more adequately than another, since the world
cannot be asserted in an absolute sense to follow a geometrical
system. 94
Historically intellectualists can be considered as those thinkers

who accorded epistemological priority and importance
ontological to reason, in the sense that its results were conceived by them
as reflecting a higher and more substantial reality than that of the senses. This
attitude is considered typical of Platonism; but it is equally typical of positivists,
who held that true theoretical statements are perfect copies of "objective
nature".
The anti-intellectualists opposed this particular theory of reason and not

reason as such. Such theories must be regarded as "particular" because they
impoverish the full meaning of experience and give sensory experience a
secondary importance for knowledge, or posit as a postulate an empirically
inaccessible metaphysical reality which is therefore extraneous to and
antecedent to experience.
At the same time, a similar but not identical current of thought, anti-
rationalism, came to influence the development of social and political thought.
As with Anti-intellectualism, the term "anti-rationalism" is frequently used in a
derogatory sense. Sometimes the term "irrationalist" is also used to
indicate those thinkers who. at the beginning of the century, they began to
become aware of the coercive and neurotic factors that govern individual and
collective behavior.
Again, a distinction needs to be made between the theoretical explanation, given

by psychologists and social theorists, of the variables that influence
external behavior and the methods used to identify the variables themselves and
to link them together in a theoretical context.
The "anti-rationalists" or the "irrationalists" were, in general, individuals who

had become convinced that the "unconscious", "instinctive", or
"paralogical" elements play a function of primary importance in
determining individual and collective reactions to the conditions
environmental.
Freud and Nietzsche are usually counted among the most important theorists
of antirationalism. In their case, it cannot be said that the term "irrational"
exactly expresses their methodological principles. Both used rational systems to
formulate what they believed
gnoseological propositions which, taken together, constituted the theory of

human motive.
An analytical distinction must undoubtedly be made between

anti-intellectualists and anti-rationalists on the one hand, and trans-rationalists
on the other. We use this latter term to indicate that category of philosophers
according to whom only a source external to reason and qualitatively
distinct from the experience of the senses can supply men with the "truth". The
justification of their gnoseological theses is based on 'faith', the 'intuition', the
'emotion' or some particular infallible 'illumination'.
Starting from the aforementioned distinctions, Bergson could be defined as

trans-rationalist anti-intellectualist, Nietzsche and James anti-intellectualists,
anti-rationalists but hardly trans-rationalists. However, it is problematic to classify
Sorel. What interests us most is the rico
acknowledgment of the fact that his political and social thought is easily
understandable, without having to resort to particular epistemological
complements. As early as 1905 Sorel stated that, in theory, a rigorous "science
of society" is impossible.
The realities that sociologists should consider are so complex, and every
historical and social event is the result of such an intricate confluence of
factors, that any prediction is impossible. However, as we have already
noted, he went even further and argued that no cognitive process can
guarantee the greater validity of one hypothesis about the future, compared to
another. Sorel, influenced in this by Croce, conceived of history as a form of art
that has no scientific or particularly prophetic claim. History is the ideal
reconstruction of the past, valid, for those who live in a given period, to the
extent that it is useful for their current activities. 90
History is therefore a collective myth. It is the projection into the past of that
"imaginary world" which provides the basis for the determination to act: "History
is really interesting if it is considered as the means of coming to know the
rules that particular human groups have probably followed in their lives; but it
cannot have as its goal
predicting future events based on past events. Ultimately, history is nothing

more than the psychological recapitulation that allows us to reason on the
planned organizations, on the legislative reforms and on the tactics that a
given class should follow to achieve a given purpose... ». 96
History, therefore, is only a form of social myth, and the purpose of myth is to
provide the foundation for determining actions. The social myth is formed by
a "set of images" capable of evoking "as an undivided whole the mass of
feelings which correspond to the different manifestations of the
war waged by Socialism against modern society". 97
The myth has the same organizational function as military service: both
prepare the individual for a collective work in which everyone's action has a
meaning if it is the indistinct consequence of the whole. 98 The social
myth specifies exactly what is expected of its proponents. 99 It provides the
basis for the expression of moral judgment and the evaluation of the merit of
each act. The myth provides what Sorel calls "ideological unity" and
which every revolutionary force must possess if it is to fulfill its historical
function. 103 Myth is, therefore, essential to human activity. Only in this
sense can it be spoken of as "truth", because it has no descriptive gnoseological
pretensions nor is it subject to analysis. It provides the basis for the
determination to act, for the readiness to make the future as the
creative will would like it.
It is quite clear that the definition of historical and social theory as myth is
concerned with formulating the outline of a precise theory of
motivation which has gnoseological pretensions. It may be true or it may be
false that men take collective action under the impulse of social myth.
The myths thus conceived, that of the cata
strophic Marxist revolution, or that of the French Revolution or that of the

Italian Risorgimento, for example, are specifically historical forces; an
explanatory and prophetic study of historical and social events which includes
synthetic observations referring to the myths is more complete than those
which do not take them into account. Sorel tells us that the « theory of science » which is not
conceives of the influence of myth on collective reaction offers only a

"mistaken idea of the forces that actually govern humanity." 101
This view necessarily assumes that one study of human behavior

is more accurate than another. Consequently, a choice between
more or less adequate hypotheses about the future would seem possible.
If both of the two categories of formulations, Luna accepting, the other
excluding critical and informative criteria, regarding the importance of myth
in provoking behavioral reactions, were equally true or equally false, both
would be actually devoid of empirical significance. Sorel's opinion,
according to which the myth provides a more founded explanation of the
motives, would be untenable.
This confusion affects all of Sorel's examination of the myth. On the one
hand, he affirms that myths, to be effective, must represent "all the most
heartfelt tendencies of a people, of a party or of a class, tendencies
which recur to the mind with the insistence of instinct in every circumstance
of life". life", through which men "modify their desires, their passions and
their mental activity". 102
The myth "must be composed of a set of images which, only by means of

intuition, and before any analysis, are able to evoke the whole mass of
feelings" of a party, a sect or a class. 103 Now, these tendencies or
feelings must be, in some way, experienceable, otherwise Sorel's statement
would have no empirical significance. The theory of social myth requires,
in principle, that we know which myth can be the most effective in
any given historical and social circumstance; knowing this, however,
one would be in a position to choose among mutually exclusive
hypotheses about the future. But Sorel fails to resolve the contradiction.
In fact, if all the hypotheses about the future are equally
founded or unfounded, his thesis, according to which an authentic
myth evokes dominant tendencies and feelings, cannot be proven. In
reality, there is a doubt that this assertion is deliberately meaningless. If
Sorel claims to have exactly identified the forces that make humanity act,
then predictions of the future that take these forces into account must be,
in a sense, truer than those that do not. The location of
Sorel can be considered as a set of anti-rationalist theses underpinned by

an anti-intellectualist theory of truth, but his program cannot be considered
trans-rational.
This is Pareto's interpretation of Sorel's theory. According to Pareto,

Sorel's importance lies in the scientific contribution he gave.
The myth of Sorel was nothing more than a particular case of what
Pareto in his Treatise called "derivation".
The myth was a collection of images expressing those feelings

that drive men to act. It was a descriptive concept within a specific theory
of motivation, the value of which could be established by ordinary
experimental methods. 104
Sorel denied, in fact, that reason prevails over sentiment. Based on

this belief, he argued that sentiment represents an important
historical force. Such a view, so far as the nature, origin and logic
of feelings escape classification, could, at best, make the future contingent,
but it could not, unless a number of particulars were introduced.
epistemological premises, lead to the conclusion that the future is
completely indeterminate.
Sorel's treatment of social myths is a particular application of his general

theory of motivation. The individual and the community are stimulated
by myths, "artificial worlds" of which he spoke in 1900 as an "imagined
future". 105 These imagined futures shape the individual's reaction
patterns. He knows what his duties are. His life takes on moral value
and significance.
In the case of individuals, these paralogical constructions are ephemeral

and 'generally vanish from our minds without leaving any trace in our
memory; but when it is the masses that are deeply stimulated,
then it becomes possible to trace the elements of the type of
representation which constitutes a social myth.' lOS
Sorel's declared aim is to "discover the sentiments which urge the

masses to transform themselves into groups...". 107 But this is the
process of theory building in social science. No trans-rational

statement is made. The methodology employed is what Pareto defined
as logical-experimental.
At this point in the analysis, Sorel's conception of the social myth differs
very little from the theory of "collective hallucinations" on the basis of
which men act, developed in the work of Gustave Le Bon.
Sorel reviewed, in November 1895, Le Bon's Psycologie des foules
whose influence on his thought increased in the following years. 108
Le Bon had spoken of "collections of images" which induce social

elements into activity. 109 Such a collection of images is non-logical in
the sense that its elements do not necessarily need to be
intrinsically connected to each other.
The function of this complex of images is not gnoseological, but

evocative. The rational examination of the assumptions and the critical
evaluation of the facts are useless when trying to understand the
reasons for collective behavior.
«Everything that strikes the imagination of the crowds is presented in the

form of a sensational and very sharp image, devoid of any superfluous
explanation or simply accompanied by a few wonderful and
mysterious facts: for example, a great victory, a great miracle, a great
crime or a great hope. The events must be offered to the masses as a
whole, without ever indicating their genesis.' 110
These images exhaust the entire field of collective knowledge and tend
to make men act in a certain way. Social elements are dominated by
such images that are essentially inaccessible to reason. They possess
the despotic and sovereign strength that comes from being
indisputable. They provide the motivations for collective action,
and as such constitute the "moral forces" that are poorly understood
by social theorists, convinced of the primary influence of reason on
man's social history. "It is precisely these forces which constitute
the mainspring of history." m
Le Bon's thesis, like Sorel's, represents an attempt at theoretical

construction. Both authors are anti-rationalists in the sense that we have
previously clarified. Both try to base their analyzes on explanatory
locutions that make myths the expression of collective feelings, and
feelings the manifestation of the variety of factors that hold a group together.
Le Bon speaks of hereditary, individual and race factors; of social and

ecological factors, of traditions, institutions and education. 112 Sorel
proposes a similar thesis and identifies in race, nationality and tradition the
factors that keep the group together. 113 Le Bon gives greater importance to
racial factors while Sorel is more cautious in this regard. But neither of them
deems feelings and myths, formulas and illusions expressing feelings
insensitive to detailed analysis. Feelings, for them, are the consequence of the
interaction of a limited number of biological and social factors.
In their theses it is important to distinguish between the theory of

action, and the description of the way men actually act. Neither Sorel nor
LiTBon were, in this respect, trans-rationalists. Both believed that they had
successfully rationalized the main motives of collective action.
The anomaly, in Sorel's thesis, is found in the affirmation of the fact that the
myth would give life to an intuition that would be, in a certain sense, truer than
the truth.
It is difficult to understand exactly what "the intuition of Socialism that

words cannot render us with absolute clarity" could be. 114
It is enough for Sorel only to identify Socialism with the myth, to support
what he resolutely affirms: namely that "no effort of thought, no progress
in knowledge, no rational induction will ever be able to dispel the mystery that
surrounds Socialism". 115
Analytically this is true. myths are not rational, they are not descriptive but
evocative. They lead the masses to action. They specify, online of
maxim, what is expected of a class of men devoted to the cause of

socialism.
But to affirm that, thanks to this awareness, one reaches a "total

knowledge" superior to any reasoned consideration, is to confuse, not clarify.
Sorel, when he argues that "intellectualist philosophy" cannot explain why

a man sacrifices himself for a cause, is only affirming
that only one partial interpretation, based on a model of man understood as

an active, exclusively rational being, is wrong.
The opposing explanation that he offers, true or not, is perfectly

understandable: various and certain factors lead man to identify himself
with a particular community. This community is underpinned by a belief
system that has all the obvious emotional characteristics of religion in
that it is dogmatic, simple, and imperative. In community service, the
individual can find reasons to perform unique and wonderful deeds of
self-sacrifice. It remains a mystery why any concept of particular intuitive
knowledge is necessary for this thesis.
The fact is that Sorel's social theories are fully compatible,

considering his particular interest in revolutionary tactics, with those of
Gumplowicz, Mosca and Pareto. He was deeply convinced that the
history of society is the history of group conflicts and that the state is the
instrument of a dominant minority. He was equally convinced that a
revolutionary social element (in his case, the proletariat) can come to power
only if organized and directed by an elite that usefully mobilizes sentiment
by means of an irresistible social myth, a paralogical deduction or a
unifying political formula. which in itself is in no way true, from the point of
view of knowledge. All his considerations were expressed with images
typical of the war. He spoke of "small groups whose elements have been
rigidly selected, through tests that confirm their vocation..."; and he
spoke of "chosen troops" who organize and push the "inert mass" into
combat. 116 This "less numerous and well-selected elite directs the class
, struggle; it's composed by
those who guide proletarian thought by creating the concept of unity
ideology which the proletariat needs in order to carry out its revolutionary
work... ». 117
In this sense it is no different from Pareto's "antagonistic" elite. Its presence

is also evident in the work of Gumplowicz and Moséa.
Gumplowicz speaks of it as a "new minority" and Moscow defines it as
the "ruling class" of the proletariat.
Sorel conceived of society as a "multiplicity of antagonistic forces"; these

forces are made up of social elements each animated by an exclusive
and selfish group spirit. Precisely this group spirit, according to Sorel,
provides the basis for moral activism. The morality of a community is the set
of precepts, maxims, orders and prohibitions, implicit in the belief system
that supports it. This morality gives strength to the group in its vital
activity, an activity characterized by an unceasing struggle against outsiders to
the group. According to Sorel, therefore, "moral duty entails, in
substance, antagonism towards those who do not belong to the same
group: not only hidden grudges and malevolence, but open aggression".
118
The myth of Sorel provides a sense of solidarity with and belonging to a

particular sect, nation, stratum or social class, and gives individuals belonging
to these groups an exceptional sense of dedication and commitment.
He convinces them that they "have dedicated themselves to an enterprise."
serious, exceptional and sublime; and only on this condition will they be
able to bear the innumerable sacrifices imposed on them... ». 119
Such convictions make life heroic, and this reason alone suffices to make it
"considered of incalculable value." 120 All of which explains why Sorel
believed the myth had such deep moral significance. 121 Myth creates, in the
mind of man, the psychological state which leads to nobility and heroism:
"The social war, by appealing to the sense of honor which automatically
develops in all organized armies, can eliminate those feelings evil against
whom the moral sense would be powerless". 122 War and conflict, in
fact, create the ideal conditions for moral life. The social myth imposes
sacrifices and the
discipline without which man would lose any moral character, due to his
natural tendency to degenerate. 123
The coercive tendency of political democracy to defuse conflict

provoked Sorel's moral disapproval.
Political democracy, with its unitary madness, obscures the real lines of
struggle in modern society. It tends to undermine the moral fiber of all social
elements and rewards guile and hypocrisy rather than heroism, righteousness
and personal sacrifice. Democrats appeal to force, organized authority, and
therefore affirm that there is no social conflict.
Instead, Sorel argues that organized force is only systematic and

institutionalized violence. The terms of the struggle are obscured and the
moral tension necessary for an ideal life is made to vanish by the claim that
the organized force used by the state is somehow more moral than the
violence used by a new social element that opposes it.
According to Sorel "the greatest virtue is the heroic (i.e. aggressive)
action performed with a feeling of impersonal dedication to the ends of a
small and delimited group, united in ardent solidarity and stimulated by a
passionate confidence in its final triumph, in some decisive confrontation
». 124
It is clear that, according to Sorel, the perfect moral life is one lived in the
ethnocentric community. Sorel's model of man reveals all the
characteristics of Gumplowicz's group syngenetic animal, moved by a sense
of friendship within the group and. of hostility outside it.
Organized around a functional myth, human life passes in a state of high
moral tension, in an affective condition of great importance.
From everything Sorel says, it is evident that these myths can set in
motion tribes, castes, social strata, sectors, parties and classes.
Consequently, the association of the social myth with the proletariat is a
contingent relationship.
Every collective activity requires an organizational or functional myth.

Sorel applied his study to the organization of the proletariat because
he believed that the proletariat was endowed with primordial energy.
But in 1910, disillusionment with Syndicalism led him to join the nationalist
Action Franqaise.
It was possible that other social elements also developed myths
suitable. What Sorel was looking for was a factor of social regeneration and it
did not necessarily mean that this factor had to be the proletariat. It
could have been any organized group of enthusiastic fighters united by the
closest solidarity.
These fighters would have been the Homeric heroes of our decadent
age; they would view life as a struggle and not as a pleasure or pleasure-
seeking.
« Morality is not condemned to perish because the forces from which it springs
change; it is not destined to become a mere list of precepts, as it can still
be enlivened through union with an enthusiasm capable of overcoming
all the obstacles, prejudices and needs for immediate enjoyment which
oppose its progress". 125
Sorel's interest in tactics and his concern for moral regeneration

must not overshadow the fact that the model of man and society he conceives
are fully compatible with the fundamental theoretical conceptions advanced
by Gumplowicz, Mosca and Pareto. Through Sorel, the latter's ideas
became very important building blocks of radical socialist thought in Italy.
Consequently, in Italy, the radical socialists manifested a single character and
their thought revealed a single content.
Under this influence, Marxism was completely transfigured, while Sorel's thinking
served equally well to animate non-Marxist revolutionaries.
Sorelian social theories also managed to provide the rational basis for all the
other social opposition forces that proposed an alternative for the future.
One of these revolutionary forces, formed under the leadership of Enrico

Corradini, was Italian nationalism.
THE SOCIOLOGICAL TRADITION PROTOF ASCI STA AND THE

NATIONALISM
Enrico Corradini (1867-1931) represented the intellectual expression of

Italian nationalist sentiment in the period preceding the First World War.
In 1909 Sorel called him "a remarkable intelligence," a man who "perfectly
understands the value of my ideas." 12S Corradini, already an adult, had
deeply suffered from the humiliating defeat suffered by Italy at Adwa
against the Abyssinians, in 1896. Personal experience among the Italian
emigrants in South America further soured the wound.
Everywhere he found Italians working as woodcutters and water carriers in
the service of foreigners. Hundreds of thousands of Italians had abandoned
their homeland under the torment of poverty. Once beyond national
borders, they received no protection against discrimination
against the peoples they served from the weak and inefficient Italian
government.
Corradini interpreted the misfortunes of Italy almost exclusively in
political terms: national misery was in the first place the consequence of an
incompetent government, guided by a political philosophy according to which
the state was the representative of purely individual or particular interests
and did not pursue goals or have interests that were predominantly national.
The Government only reflected the class, party, category or individual
interests which, at the particular moment, had brought it to power. As a result,
his policy was inconsistent and erratic.
The political ineptitude of the Italian government had allowed England to control
Egypt, while Austria and France extended their spheres of influence into the
Balkans and North Africa respectively.
While aggressive northern nations grabbed colonies in the

underdeveloped world, Italy became even more impoverished by
the massive emigration of its workers. A more energetic foreign policy
would have ensured Italy the greatest quantity of raw materials necessary
to allow the nation to enter into valid competition with the most
advanced industrial powers. The availability of the necessary raw
materials would have favored the massive industrial development of the
Peninsula and the working capacity of the Italians would have
resulted in their material advantage and in the greatness of their homeland.
Only under these conditions would the pressing internal problems be

resolved and Italy's position as a great power assured. 127
More important for us is the concept that Corradini had of the nation, of the
state and of the historical and social forces that produce every change,
since his considerations synthesized intellectual elements taken
directly from the works of Pareto, Mosca, Sorel 128 and, ultimately, by
Gumplowicz himself.
In 1903 Corradini, beginning his political activity with the foundation of II

Regno, drew on the mature thought of those men, and his conclusions
derive from reasoning which contains premises drawn from their works.
Corradini judged man as an essentially social animal, a member

of organized societies of similar beings (our similar). This similarity
can derive from an affinity of racial or ethnic origin, from territorial
origins, from cultural affinities or from economic interests. 129
The tendency to associate is called by him the "instinct of association"

and manifests itself in the form of attachment to one's own community and
enmity towards foreign communities. 130 In complex communities, that
is, made up of different social elements, groups can be catalysed
around cultural affinities, economic interests or ethnic characteristics,
and society thus appears as an agglomeration of groups rather than as an
organic unit. This happens when cohesion is not governed by
external pressures.
Corradini affirmed that the development of an organic and integral national

community was the result both of external pressures and of the
predisposition of individuals to identify themselves with a community of few
members. 131
This tendency to identify with a community composed of selected elements

derives from the circumstances of human life. The limited
availability of means of subsistence and the satisfaction of one's needs,
combined with the potentially unlimited aspirations of men, create,
through a period of evolution, a situation which inevitably results in
conflict between groups.
When men lived a primitive existence, the struggle for life was open and
continuous. In the struggle for existence, cohesion within the group has
immediate survival value. Driven by basic necessities, humanity became a
race of warriors. 132 Only individuals capable of identifying with a
compact and autonomous community could survive such a difficult natural
selection.
The subsequent competition for the conquest of living space and means of
sustenance determined an evolutionary substitution of isolated
elements, which favored those who were more willing to integrate into
communities of strong and disciplined warriors. Thus men were characterized
by the "instincts" not only of association but also of struggle and conquest.
133 As active members of a society men developed a particular
aptitude for friendship within the group and hostility towards outgroups. Such
circumstances lead to the autonomous social organization imposed by a life
of relentless and ruthless struggle.
From a central nucleus of diffusion each group radiates outwards.

Only those who demonstrate superiority in some area survive and
achieve dominance. The defeated are assimilated and come to benefit,
to different extents, from the concessions of the conqueror. Thus humanity
reaches its highest level of civilization. 134
The constant challenge of external pressure, the devotion to the community

with which each one identifies, act as stimuli to achieve results that ensure
the survival of the group. The expansion spreads these results beyond the
confines of their original source. This diffusion constitutes what
Corradini called the "sacred function" of imperialism. 135
Corradini claimed that life's circumstances had defined the nature, extent and
scope of the struggle between groups; contingent circumstances could,
however, obscure the true features of the struggle. The fight is continuous,
but its aspects can vary.
Groups that have achieved domination through violence will, once

security is attained, promoters of enlightened doctrines of universal
harmony which will aim to maintain their domination outside the struggle
itself. The exemplification currently used by Corradini was taken from the
European history of his time: those nations that had taken possession of
colonies all over the world, now strenuously opposed any further violent
territorial conquest, becoming proponents of negotiation. 138
By contrast, a weak and defeated people, reduced to impotence, will preach,

like the ancient Israelites, a doctrine of resignation.
intent on tormenting conquerors with the inhibitions that

accompany a bad conscience.
A disconnected and incapable community, devoid of the vigor required for

life, tries to survive even at the cost of sacrificing mankind. This way of acting
masks the desire for domination with the preaching of piety. 137
None of this is original. All these assertions, at the beginning of the century,
were commonplace among "social Darwinists" and Corradini had drawn them
from the works of Pareto, already known at the time. But the whole
ideological whole is clearly Gumplowicz's; and it is evident that Corradini
knew his thoughts, either directly, or through one of his Italian popularizers.
A passage from The Will of Italy
, clearly recalls Gumplowicz. Corradini
states: a Throughout history the state has been a class domain. The
ruling class of a nation originally derives from a foreign and conquering
people who impose themselves on an invaded and conquered
people with whom the conquerors finally merge to constitute a
nation… ». 138
This thesis is exactly that of Gumplowicz. Not only do Corradini's ideas

refer to this tradition, but they specifically defend Gumplowiczian views.
The remaining theses of Corradini do not differ from Pareto and
Mosca and indeed derive from them, as we know from direct testimony.
The superiority of feelings, Pareto's "constant inclinations", conflicts
inside and outside groups, the function of organization and statutory
myths, government (in minorities, are all ideas that Corradini had in
common with (|these thinkers.
Corradini's thesis places greater emphasis on the need for

organization for social struggle. Successful struggle necessarily
involves organization, and this in turn requires discipline and hierarchical
social arrangements.
Such an organized community is preeminently vital, since close

solidarity is the prerequisite and the first requisite for struggle and
domination. Such an organized community, be it a class, a sect, a party
or a nation, becomes a factor of historical evolution. The struggle for class
progress takes the form of revolutionary socialism, or, in its most
radical expression, revolutionary syndicalism, which represent the
theoretical rationale of the class struggle and provide the working myth
for the leading organizations of the working class. The myth in turn
provides the principles on which the association is based and
offers the incentive for maintaining a strong moral tension.
« And the trade unionists see the general strike in a grandiose

and religious way, and there is a whole moral of the general strike,
because it requires discipline, patience, a spirit of sacrifice, a spirit of
solidarity with the future from the workers... Sorel call this a sublime or
heroic morality.' 139
For Corradini the syndicalist myth became exemplary, it constituted his creed
of solidarity, 140 and represented for him, the maximum of realism
political and social. As such, it was opposed to bourgeois liberalism which, at

best, constituted a statutory myth behind which a minority government hid,
and which in its decadent form tended to disarm the new rising elite. Furthermore,
liberalism was remarkably unrealistic and not at all convincing. Its rationale was
based on a false concept of men, according to which man is only an
individual and society a contractual aggregate of individuals.
In its conflict with the aristocracy of pre-revolutionary Europe, this vision of

man had served to activate the masses into the service of the bourgeoisie and
to oppose the "producers" to the "non-producers", the "disinherited" to the
"oppressors of class". For some time it represented the basis of rational
principles for a new solidarity between the rising social elements produced by
the changed conditions of society. Once established, it became the
justification for the basest selfishness, a selfishness that threatened
the viability of the larger social complex that is the nation state. 141
In its most modern decadent form, the liberal idea makes personal gain the
only yardstick for moral worth: that which enhances the private well-being of
the individual is worthy of approval, that which requires self-sacrifice and
discipline merits blame. Liberalism thus threatens the very existence of society.
More challenging myths cause competing social elements to form within

the body politic, and the social structure is drawn into the strife of groups. The
resulting disintegration of the nation-state causes a weakening in the face
of external forces and the consequent decline of national wealth makes the
struggle for the possession of available goods more bitter. The conclusion, at
best, can only be general misery and, at worst, the end of the nation.
Before the process reaches this stage, a new elite organizes the available
social forces behind a new myth and society is pushed
towards the revolution. Thus liberalism has as its ultimate result either an
international defeat or an internal revolution. 142
Corradini's critical assessment of liberalism is developed in the work of Scipio Sighele

(1868-1914), who was one of the founders of the doctrine of collective psychology,
understood as a discipline, and of nationalism, conceived as a political ideology.
On the basis of his researches, published in 1891 with the title The
delinquent crowd , Scipio Sighele formulated the critique of parliamentarianism
as early as 1895 143 and therefore anticipated Le Bon's analysis by several
years. 144
Both thinkers developed what Gabriele Tarde had anticipated on this subject,
particularly in his Les lois de Vimitation, published in 1890.
Sighele's fundamental thesis was that an adequate explanation of group

reactions could not be based on analyzes that referred to single individuals. The
laws governing group phenomena are irreducible and refer only to group analyses.
He particularly criticized Herbert Spencer's thesis that the character of any

human aggregate is explicable in terms of the character of its individual
components. 145 Sighele denied that an adequate analysis could be derived
from this individualistic assumption. 140 To raise this methodological
objection, he chose precisely that passage in which Gumplowicz, almost at the
same time, had formulated the same objection. Gumplowicz wrote:
"Herbert Spencer is in error when he maintains, with regard to human society, that
the characteristics of individuals (taken as individuals) determine the characteristics
of the aggregate they constitute. The ratio is precisely the opposite; the
characteristics of the group, its interests and its perspectives determine the
characteristics of the individual... Aristotle conceived this relationship more
precisely when he said that the whole necessarily comes before its parts ».
147
The connected action of several men associated with each other did not
produce a sum of influences, but, on the contrary, the result was a product, completely
in its own right.
Mimicry, suggestion and contagion were influences that made the mental products
of the group different from the reactions of the individuals who constitute
it, taken individually. The crowd performs acts that its members would
never approve of if they acted individually.
The anonymity of the crowd, its undivided responsibility, are factors that
intervene to modify, in a sensitive way, the collective reaction: moreover, the
feelings manifested clamorously and vigorously lead, through suggestion, to a
moral contagion.
The ability of the individual to identify with the community in which he finds security
and strength further leads to imitation.
When the members of a group express feelings of solidarity, the power of

suggestion causes an influence against which the isolated individual is absolutely
powerless. The result is a unanimity of opinion that has epidemic dimensions.
Individuals within the group are therefore more subject to affective solicitations
than to the appeals of reason. All these interdependent influences reveal the decisive
importance of emotional factors on group behavior.
What is valid for heterogeneous crowds is also valid for organized groups, for
assemblies, for parliaments and for committees. The larger the group, the greater
the effectiveness of its influence on the individuals that make it up.
Starting from this founded premise, Sighele formulated objections of principle
against parliamentarianism, aimed not at the specific defects of the system,
but at the system itself. 148
In essence, parliaments are collective assemblies and therefore also subject

to the laws of collective psychology. Even in the hypothesis that only the most
intellectually and morally gifted men enter Parliament, the results of their
deliberations would never reflect the sum total of their intelligence, but would be a
collective product, a consequence of the strong influence of mimicry and moral
contagion.
And the fact is that, unfortunately, the men elected as representatives of the
people are generally chosen by a public opinion (made up of men of mediocre

culture. The candidates obviously (year leverage on potential voters with
the lowest intellectual denominator, or rely on their influence to attract the
changeable and therefore easily influenced collective sentiment. 149 The the
prevalence of lawyers in the legislatures of all parliaments confirms the decisive
influence of oratory and histrionics in the course of the elective procedure.
In this way, a representative legislature is not only open to all group influences, so
prejudicial to the exercise of dispassionate discernment, but is also composed
of mediocre men. Already the normal distribution curve of intelligence suggests that
an assembly of this kind is substantially composed of men of mediocre ability:
his election system totally confirms this result. The mutual influence produces results
which, at best, represent the average intelligence of the members of the legislative
body, while, at worst, the result is less than what one could reasonably
expect from any single member.
The activity of a large group allows for a degree of anonymity which allows the
individual to yield to the outside influences of material and personal interests.
The emotional atmosphere created by public oratory, and the constant danger of
group suggestion and sentimental contagion, preclude the practical use of
intelligence. Indeed, it is unlikely that any law will be enacted which, at least in part,
is the consequence of a dispassionate assessment of reality. «The
parliamentary regime», according to what Le Bon said in terms almost identical to
those of Sighele, «is the expression of the idea, psychologically erroneous, but
generally accepted, according to which an assembly of many men has greater
capacities than that of a small number of individuals who decide wisely and
independently on a given matter". 159
^ Parliamentary assemblies are characterized by intellectual

laziness, suggestibility, and the exaggeration of indiscriminate
contagion.
The fact that parliamentary oratory reaches, through the press, the mass
of those who elect deputies leads them to further lower the intellectual
level of their oratory, in order to exercise greater influence on the
maximum number of voters possible.
Since the electorate is composed of individuals subject to the

influence of feeling rather than reason, the appeal that will be
attempted to exercise towards them will tend to arouse enthusiasm,
rather than to illustrate the complex political and social problems.
The resulting rhetoric has as its only fixed points the explicit material
interests of individual parliamentarians. Principles will be set aside, precepts
will be abandoned, maxims will be modified under the influence of the
conceptual vagueness with which the matter is to be conducted. But
the material interests remain and the whole enterprise essentially becomes one
systematic pursuit of fulfillment of narrow and particular material

interests. 151
Since each MP pursues personal interests, which are the only thing he
holds unshakably loyal to, the assembly will be subjected to a great deal of
conflicting demands.
Since the majority do not share the particular interest to which each
individual is linked, the latter will try to convince others by conjuring up
sentimental but conceptually empty images in them using hyperbole,
ethical declarations and radical simplifications.
Eloquence of this kind has an enormous effect on the assemblies thus

constituted and from this derives "immorality of person - immorality of
party - immorality of government - all this is the necessary and fatal
consequence of a system which seems designed to make men
worse." instead of improving them". 152
All this can only be mitigated when the assembly is animated by the vivid
spirit of a man of genius, who, endowed with political acumen,
inflexible will and indomitable courage, he can come to dominate it. If a man of
this level were to propose a program of national regeneration, and if, by
virtue of the high esteem in which he is held, mobilize the heterogeneous mass
of parliamentarians with whom he must subsequently implement it, the
Fatherland would have found the way. of greatness.
Sighele concluded: "Happy are the ages and peoples who possess a genius
who polarizes all desires, all feelings and blindly draws the crowd after him!" ».
153
According to Sighele, man is a social animal, sensitive to the influence of the

group and willing to be guided. Sighele's studies on collective psychology
clarify the meaning of many propositions used in popular works by social
theorists of that period.
Among the various elements that lead to the formation of a stable

group, Sighele was particularly interested in those of a psychological nature.
The main force that sustains the group is group affinity or collective suggestion.
Individuals try to identify with the collective. During the two generations
following Le Bon and Sighele, social psychologists spoke of 'social
facilitation', 'relationship' and 'identification' to indicate the set of characteristics
of behavior to which Sighele was referring. But collective reactions
arise from perception and suggestion which, in turn, originate from one
or more agents. Sighele spoke of meneurs and menés, to indicate those who
determine the suggestion and those who undergo it.
By its very nature, the collectivity can have only a few leaders as a genuine
elite. A large number of leaders would give rise to a conflict between the
proposed ideal types, and the unity of the community would be compromised.
As a consequence, minorities come to govern majorities, be they temporary

collectivities, heterogeneous masses or stable, homogeneous and
organized masses. Said minorities can point out to the masses
inert sublime and heroic ideals, and lead the community to manifest
characteristics that could not have been foreseen by examining the individual
component individuals.
This whole ideological complex was not only compatible with the theses set out by
Pareto in the Systems of 1902, but rather completed them, so much so that Pareto
cites the works of Sighele and the subsequent works of Le Bon. 154
Gumplowicz, for his part, in the second edition of Die sociologische Staatsidee ,
published in 1902, devoted almost an entire chapter to Sighele's ideas, while
Sorel's conception on the social myth and on the organization of
collectivities, formulated at the beginning of 1903, based on the thesis of Le Bon. 155
When Sighele joined Corradini to found the Nationalist Association, he brought with ,
him all this set of ideas which by the time of the first congress of the Nationalist
Association, in 1910, had by then been transformed into organic doctrine.
It was not difficult for Corradini to recognize the affinities between

revolutionary syndicalism and nationalism.
Sorel's ideas configured a world in which groups struggled for dominance, each
led by an active minority who mobilized the inert masses in their service. Sorel
identified the new elite as an aristocracy of the proletariat, and the rising collectivity
as the working class. Revolutionary syndicalism was the doctrine of a solidarity
tending towards power, defined in terms of class. Corradini accepted Sorel's thesis,
but identified this historical collectivity in the nation rather than in a class. He
argued that the known historical evidence indicated that the main antagonists
of the twentieth century would be nations.
Rather than a struggle between the proletarian and capitalist classes, the future
would see the clash between proletarian and plutocratic nations.
As early as 1897, in the second volume of his Corso Vilfredo Pareto had
,
argued that the problems of the lower classes concerned the increase of national
production rather than its distribution. In essence, he meant that a sharp increase
in the gross national product would improve conditions for the working classes,
more than a socialist program of wealth redistribution could. 158
Corradini also constantly referred to this thesis: the socialist program

could adapt to the conditions of advanced capitalist countries, in which
maldistribution could be a real problem, but it was unsuitable for
underdeveloped countries, such as Italy. Italy did not need internal class
struggle; the latter would only further weaken its international position and
cripple its productive potential. What was needed, rather, was national solidarity
and a vast program of social and economic upliftment. Corradini's worries
therefore concerned more the problem of production than that of distribution.
157
He argued that the factors that give rise to a group, such as the
ethnic identity, geographical ties, cultural affinities create national and not class
solidarity.
The nation constituted the authentic and vital unity of similar (the Nation
[is]... maximum unit of the maximum number of our similar). 158
The solidarity and ethical aspirations of Sorel's syndicalism, in order to be

effectively framed in the ideological context of the twentieth century, must
have national unities as their subject.
Nationalism, like syndicalism for that matter, was anti-democratic and

anti-parliamentarian and its organizational and tactical principles accorded
with what was known of man's collective life. Sorel fully understood the
grave organizational and moral responsibilities of the privileged elites,
and the myth of the general strike provided the moral framework for
arriving at the sublime and heroic ethics which the nationalists aimed for. 159
But for this a broadening of the question was necessary. Originally,

Sorel had held that the agent of moral regeneration should be the
proletariat, when, in reality, it was the nation. Nationalism required
only that attention be focused on the nation rather than on any of the
particular classes that made it up.
The imperative of the moment was national solidarity rather than
international class solidarity. The internal unity, desired by the
revolutionary syndicalism to wage an effective class struggle, had to

concern the nation. Internal national unity had to be fostered and
supported in order to prepare effectively for the international struggle
and to be able to lead it. The nationalists conceived of the terms of the
confrontation in terms of proletarian nations versus capitalist nations.
This transformation of class unionism into national unionism was already clearly
,developed in 1909. 160
Indeed, Corradini affirmed: We can imagine a trade unionism that stops at

national borders and does not go further; that is, it ceases to operate
internationally and operates only nationally. The workers unite, but no longer
all over the world, but within the confines of a nation; they unite to conquer
domination, not of the whole world, but of the nation. When this happens
in the meantime, the main term of opposition between the two
doctrines will be suppressed.' 181
The myth of the proletarian general strike was replaced by that of the
victorious international conflict. 162 This new myth establishes the duties
of each citizen who, almost intuitively, understands what is required of him.
In this way the nation becomes an association animated by a high moral
tension. The shapeless aggregate of men formed by inert and irresolute
masses amalgamates into an intact and compact organism. Each
individual undertakes to defend and improve the life of the community.
"Nationalism is, in essence, a school of moral values...". 183 Like revolutionary
syndicalism, it would like to see men engaged and disciplined, aimed at the
satisfaction of interests other than their immediate well-being; had been
conceived as a radically anti-bourgeois movement, and,
consequently, anti-liberal and anti-democratic: it was an aristocratic conception,
which imma
ginava that a minority of willing men could be an example to a shapeless

aggregate of individuals.
The common denominator of solidarity is the faith system which affirms the
unity of all and the command of some. Liberalism had reduced the nation to a
collection of many individual consumers interested only in obtaining easier
access to the economic goods available. The nation was no longer a
community, but a conglomeration of elements competing with each other and in
mutual antagonism. The state was reduced to serving the selfish

interests of individuals and groups. The result of the introduction of the
liberal system into Italy had been the shameful immorality of the
representative bodies, the humiliating weakness of the nation in the face
of the international assembly, and growing poverty. A corrupt parliament,
the painful emigration of Italian workers, the decrease of Italian
influence in the Mediterranean sphere were considered effects of liberal
politics. Italy was a community in disintegration, lacking common values
that could give it a rule of conduct.
During the first decade and the first half of the second decade of the
twentieth century, Corradini had synthesized the elements we have been
discussing into a set of related propositions which provided the
doctrinal basis for a movement of mass solidarity. He expressed the
ideas then current in the intellectual environment; as these ideas spread,
and came to influence peripheral groups, they became simpler and more
emotionally charged.
The most characteristic example of this evolution was manifested

in the literature and activities of the Italian Futurists, led by FT Marinetti
(1876-1944).
The 1909 Manifesto of Futurism was little more than an exacerbated

expression of Corradini's Italian Nationalism. The manifesto proclaimed:
'We want to sing of the love of danger, the habit of energy and temerity.
Courage, audacity, rebellion will be essential elements of our poetry.
Until now, literature exalted thoughtful immobility, ecstasy and sleep.

We want to exalt the aggressive movement, the feverish insomnia, the
running step, the somersault, the slap and the punch...
There is no more beauty except in struggle. No work that does not have
an aggressive character can be a masterpiece. Poetry must be
conceived as a violent assault against the unknown forces, to reduce
them to prostrate before man...
We want to glorify war - the world's only hygiene - militarism,

patriotism...
We will sing the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure or riot ».

164
Futurism was therefore the literary expression of nationalism pushed to

hyperbole. His "only political programme" was "pride, energy and national
expansion" which followed the Corradino "There is only one [nationalist]
programme: that of the greatness of the country". 165
The war was considered a great challenge, a "moral hygiene" which

would restore to men the heroic attitude which liberalism and democracy
had weakened, allowing their virile energy to be supplanted by parliamentary
intrigues. 16S
The only historical value of parliamentarianism had been

negative; parliamentarianism had made it clear how false it was that
the masses could govern themselves.
Parliament is the instrument of the lowest class interests, interests that hide
behind the facade of a people's government. 167
Only the "intoxicating intuition" of revolution and war could restore the
true vision of life understood as a continuous struggle. This alone could
invigorate men. Violence thus becomes a moral necessity, it tears
away the veil of fiction which hides the truly vital forces which have
made life into the reality of progress and development that it is*. 168
Against the disorganization of bourgeois society, the Futurists offered the

corrective of violence; against the torpor and drowsiness of Italian life they
proposed struggle, war, the "formidable symphony of shrapnel".
All these explosive expressions represent the protest of men who suffered
from a serious inferiority complex, but they were also paraphrases of
Corradini's theses; they were Wagnerian references to a Sorelian myth
of heroism and virility; were the invocation of a new aristocracy,
an aristocracy of merits, compatible with the needs of a technical age, a national

aristocracy drawn from all strata of Italian life, an aristocracy animated
by the myth of Italy's greatness. 169
Futurism provided the bizarre accompaniment for those themes which for more
than a decade had been current in Italian intellectual life. Its extravagances
did not obscure this reality and, consequently, Futurism, at least temporarily,
won the adherence of men like Giuseppe Prezzolini and Giovanni Papini, men
who greatly influenced Italian life and letters through newspapers such as
Leonardo, La Voce and Lacerba. These were the same men who had collaborated
with Corradini in publishing the Kingdom. They were nationalists and had
drawn Italy's attention to the importance of the works of Gaetano Mosca and
Vilfredo Pareto, they were the men who had popularized the syndicalist ideas
of George Sorel and who would publish the writings of a socialist in the pages
of their newspapers revolutionary, then little known: Benito Mussolini.
THE PROTOFASCIST SYNTHESIS
Current ideas in Italy in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the First
World War were synthesized in the political sociology of Roberto Michels. His Zur
Soziologie des Parteiwesens, published in 1911, appeared in the Italian edition
in 1912 under the title Socio
logic of the political party in modern democracy. In the years preceding the
publication of this work, considered his main contribution to political
investigation, Michels collaborated with writings that partially anticipated his
theses and were substantially based on the works of Gumplowicz, Pareto,
Mosca, Sorel, Sighele and Le Bon, to Italian and German specialized and
socialist newspapers.
Michels devoted himself above all to the study of the nature of political parties
but his interpretation was based on a vision of man and society, also shared by
còldroTtèncnrid^F^lTbiàmò already briefly examined.
Michels's fundamental thesis was that our age, marked by mass political parties,
is an age in which the oligarchic tendencies of human organization
become more evident.
Democracy', he argued, 'leads to oligarchy and necessarily contains within

itself an oligarchic nucleus'. 170 This happens because society is the arena
in which the struggle of groups takes place, in a continuous struggle for the
affirmation of a group. This being the case, organization becomes a very
important strategic and tactical necessity.
But the organization needs a sufficiently stable hierarchical order,

in the form of government by a dominant minority. The measure of
success in any protracted conflict will necessarily depend on the level at
which the struggle is waged, based on group solidarity, disciplined
obedience, and sound, firm leadership.
Michels said that solidarity is the by-product of passion, mimicry or

suggestion, a conclusion "brightly debated" in Sighele's work, Against
Parliamentarism, and in Gumplowicz's, Sozialphilosophie in Umnss.
"
1 11 This statement confirms Pareto's general thesis according to which
an association of men cannot exist without an elite that dominates and
directs it. 172
The democratic doctrine, according to Michels' analysis, constitutes the

statutory mjto of the governing minority. By spreading the fiction that
sovereignty resides in the electorate, the dominant minority, while effectively
granting the masses the dubious privilege of periodically choosing new
masters, persists in its position of domination by allowing elected representatives
to become part of the privileged minority.
At best, in a period of crisis, a revolution can transform the relationships

between classes, categories and social strata, to the point of bringing a new
ruling minority to power. But this does not mean that society is constituted
on a more "democratic" basis than it was previously. A new minority, free
from ties to the previous one, succeeded the latter in the dominion.
The factors that lead to these situations are varied. First of all, the
insignificant number of those interested in political issues. Most people, in
fact, are too silly, or too unwilling to be interested in politics. Consequently,
only a minority participates directly in the organizational and administrative
work of political parties: in these
same parties, only a minority takes part in the process from which
decisions are born.
In general, such decisions require an active interest and a degree of expertise

that systematically excludes the great majority. Furthermore,
communities are always looking for leaders who relieve them of the
responsibility for making choices. This is especially true in times of crisis
which cause situations of particular importance. The garment then
becomes the object of mystical passion and is exalted as the embodiment of collective idea
Since the mass party influences public opinion with writings and words,
the ideal leader will be endowed with this ability, just remember
Gambetta and Clemenceau in France, Gladstone and Llovd George in
England, Crispi and Luzzatti in Italy. And today we could cite many even
more convincing examples, if they weren't anachronistic in the sense
that they would be post-Michels.
Collective feelings are influenced by emotional stimulus. As a result, an

organizational or functional myth is formed that captures the collective
imagination. Such a myth is a set of statements that are not necessarily
logical or true, but effectively stimulate sentiment.
They need only have sufficient logic to provide the basis for general
principles of political action. Their main function is to reduce the collective
will to obedience. The inability of a disorganized mass to regulate its
political behavior effectively constitutes the natural pedestal for the role of
leader and determines the need for the organizational myth. 173 The mass
party therefore undergoes a transformation and becomes a hierarchically
organized oligarchy. Democracy tends to produce, particularly in crisis
situations, a plebiscitary Bonapartism.
Michels considered revolutionary syndicalism a typical example of such a

process. Sorel had highlighted the endemic oligarchic tendencies
of democracy and had affirmed that bourgeois parliamentarianism
constitutes the hegemony of a minority linked to particular class
interests. As a result, syndicalism was explicitly anti-democratic and
anti-liberal,174 and sought to elude the control of the
minority, shifting the axis of working class politics from political to economic
struggle. However, by renouncing the political struggle, the
syndicalists found themselves thoroughly engaged in the economic
struggle, a struggle so arduous as to require an almost military
organization. The economic strike tends to facilitate the formation of
organizational cadres, of a directive elite. Starting initially from the
aspiration to free themselves from any external and hierarchical
control, the syndicalist organizations rapidly transformed into disciplined
armies, under the absolute leadership of a dominant minority.
The characteristic passivity of the working masses led to a

minority organization of the trade union cells. Union organizers made
a virtue of necessity as soon as they realized that the masses were too
large in numbers, too immature politically to understand the
nature and significance of the struggle that awaited them.
The defeat of the dominant minority therefore had to be the work of a

vigilant, enterprising and combative antagonistic minority.
In 1909, AO Olivetti and the Italian revolutionary syndicalists spoke

openly of the advent of socialism as a result of the action of the working
class elites. 175
The events only confirmed Pareto's opinion, according to which associations,

by their very nature, must present a hierarchical structure and an
oligarchic configuration. This appears most particularly evident in mass
political parties. « These phenomena would demonstrate, beyond
any possibility of discussion, that society cannot exist without a 'dominant'
class * and that the ruling class, although itsOcomponents
' politics ' are subject
to frequent partial renewals, nonetheless constitutes the only factor
that has sufficiently lasting effects in the history of human development.
From this point of view, the government or, if you prefer, the state, can
only be the organization of a minority. The purpose of this
minority is to impose a 'legal order' on the rest of society, which is the
result of the ruling minority's demands for domination and exploitation
of the mass of helots and which can never truly represent the majority. '
The majority is therefore permanently incapable of governing themselves.

Even when the discontent of the masses culminates in a successful attempt to
wrest power from the bourgeoisie, this happens, says Mosca, only in
appearance; from the masses always and necessarily arises a new
organized minority which rises to the rank of ruling class. The majority
of human beings, subjected to perennial protection, are therefore
predestined to submit to the dominion of a small minority and must be
satisfied with representing the pedestal of an oligarchy". 176
Michels' analysis developed in 1915, with the evaluation of the effect caused
by the First World War on the articulation of organizational myths.
Although these myths are not necessarily true, in the sense in which a scientific
theory is normally considered true, they must, in some way, correspond
to a certain reality, evident and compelling, in certain circumstances of the life
of a community. The socialist parties had organized themselves around
the concept of "class", attributing to it a predominant importance
compared to others. In a situation of latent or overt class struggle, this
concept exerted a powerful influence on the imagination of the masses. But
with the catastrophe of 1914, the validity of the class as a point of reference
for the organization and for the political struggle dissolved definitively. 177 .
The socialist parties of the various warring nations decided to identify

themselves with their respective nations, rather than with the
international working class. Historical circumstances contributed to stripping
the myth of the class struggle of its functional and organizational capacity: the
favor of the masses could only be won in the name of a more urgent and
compelling reality: the nation.
The concept of "nation" was to constitute the ideological essence of

twentieth-century political organization. So Michels passed
from the ranks of socialism to those of Italian nationalism: a few years later,
as one of the leading sociologists of fascist Italy, he defined the nation as a
"community of consensus in the interest of the country. This community,
subject to the laws of mass suggestion and therefore variable in emotional
manifestations, is the only one that counts.' 178
A particular overlapping of theories and historical factors provided a minority

political party with its functional myth: the same myth served, after
coming to power, to legitimize domination. The functional myth became a
statutory myth.
THE PROTOFASCIST THOUGHT | AND THE FASCIST DOCTRINE
René Albrecht-Carrié has recently argued that, considering the most

important circumstances in the first two decades of the present century,
the advent of Fascism was the "perfectly logical consequence" of the
Italian political life system. 179
We affirm here, however, that Fascism was something more than the
inevitable logical consequence of the circumstances that accompanied
Italian political life; it was the perfectly logical consequence of the
mutual actions and reactions of intellectual, social and political currents.
For a variety of reasons, contemporary commentators have

overlooked the influence of political ideas on the development of Fascism as
an ideology. Marxists dwell on an analysis limited to the class and
consequently focus attention above all on the nationalistic
components of the fascist ideology, since nationalism had obvious origins in
the discontent of the Italian bourgeois class; 180 and instead pay little
attention to the currents of proletarian thought that contributed to the
formation of the fascist doctrine, and to the proletarian participation in its
ranks and in its leading cadres.
Tracing the doctrine of Fascism to exclusively nationalistic

origins means using considerable violence on the facts and giving the
wrong impression of a marked discontinuity in the evolution of Mussolini's
thought.
Non-Marxist commentators sometimes follow a similar analytical

procedure. In order to formulate an unsupported moral accusation, the
doctrine of Fascism is traced back exclusively to the origins most likely
to disturb the public's sensibility: Marinetti's Futurism, 181 for example.
The attempt to reduce the fascist doctrine, even
in its original expressions, to a simple variant of Futurism, it is a gross deception.
However, it is characteristic of non-Marxist commentators to rule out the possibility

that Mussolini or Fascism were influenced by some social or political conception. In
this respect judgments such as those made by Roy MacGregor-Hastie are symptomatic.
He states: Mussolini went from philosopher to philosopher as from woman to
woman,
drawing from each nothing but momentary pairings. Mussolini had neither philosophy,
nor politics, nor program: he adapted to these human disciplines as he adapted to
other things. His unbridled opportunism eventually enabled him to create a party machine,
and his instinctive understanding of the semi-literate masses enabled him to devise
the trappings, the glittering boots, the slogans and the noise.' 182
Roy MacGregor-Hastie's judgments in 1963 repeat the judgments formulated a quarter of

a century ago by Gaudens Megaro: «All Mussolini's somersaults and moral doctrinal
deviations contradictory political , all his outward fidelity to various and
theories become understandable only if one bears in mind that he ideas any respect, not
even insincere, unless he can use them as tools for his ambition for power, unless
he can convince himself of the identity between an idea and his will to power. 183
Such judgments could be drawn from at least a dozen other authors. The confidence with
which they are formulated is impressive; in fact, discriminated generalizations
are always risky. A rebuttal destroys them. Let us ask ourselves, for example:
was there at least one philosopher from whom Mussolini got something more
than a momentary satisfaction? Did he ever conceptually understand the psychology
of the collectivity? Were his knowledge of the masses completely instinctive
phenomena? Was Mussolini's interest in theory exclusively cynical and selfish?
184
The truth is that Mussolini's thought evolved over time: passages taken at random from
what he wrote or said in different periods of this evolution can give the impression of
contradiction. Anyone who has
sufficiently familiar with the thinking of any thinker, he knows that it is

easy to document these kinds of "contradictions" and just as easy
to explain them for what they are.
What is most typical in Mussolini's thought is disorder. He was not a deep

thinker, but primarily a journalist. Most of its production takes the form
of short articles for the daily and weekly press. Rarely did he venture into
a larger exposition of his ideas. In this way it happens that we dwell only
on the outlines, on the outline of Mussolini's "vision of the
world", and when we try to develop his ideas in their details we find
ourselves having to consider an enormous quantity of fragmentary and
fleeting impressions. The reconstruction work is tiring and the
result is not completely satisfactory.
Mussolini liked to imagine himself as a political realist, a

Machiavellian, what in Italy is called a Tempista, a man who "feels the
pulse" of an era.
All of this was in a sense true. He was extremely sensitive to the

political and theoretical environment in which he lived, he reflected
its moods and ideas and often gave people the impression of leading them
where it seemed they intended to go. This was often the cause
of confusion.
Mussolini's interlocutors reported the impression that his positions

were also theirs. In reality, during the conversation it simply
happened that Mussolini had not wanted to discuss questions of
principle and theory, considering them extraneous to the problems
of the moment. This was the "anti-dogmatism" that so attracted George
Bernard Shaw; this was the characteristic of Fascism which won so
many sympathies in England and America. One can approve or disapprove
of it at will: it can be deplored as 'unprincipled' or exalted as 'pragmatism'
which prevails over dogma'.
Our aim here is not to blame or exalt but to try to establish the
cognitive significance that can responsibly be attributed
to Mussolini's doctrinal formulations. AND
It is normal for men to try to justify their conduct, and in this respect Mussolini
did not deviate from the norm.
One of the main arguments made in this volume is that an evaluation

of classical Fascism is essential for a proper understanding ÿ of the twentieth
century. Fascism, whatever it was, was the first clear totalitarian nationalism of
our time. His theses were articulated with admirable frankness and can
be studied just as easily.
If the challenge of totalitarianism to democratic government is the most

remarkable event of our century, we feel it is our duty to deal with its first protagonists.
Their theses have been echoed and will be echoed again throughout this
century.
B knito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was the eldest son of Alessandro and
Rosa Maltoni Mussolini.
He was born in Dovia, in Romagna, on July 29, 1883. In March of that

same year, Carlo Marx died in London and Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, known to
history as Lenin, was then a teenager. Adolf Hitler would be born six years
later. Gaetano Mosca had just completed the Theory, while Ludwig
Gumplowicz had already published his classic Der Rassenkampf and
Vilfredo Pareto was preparing the Course for printing.
Revolutionary socialism had begun to spread the feeling of class struggle

among the Italian working classes. The movement of the working class was
the result of enthusiasm rather than serious intellectual preparation and
in many Italian houses the names of Mazzini and Garibaldi accompanied
that of Marx.
In such a house. Mussolini spent his childhood. Alessandro Mussolini was

a revolutionary like many others in Romagna, during the troubled years that
marked the end of the nineteenth century. 1 At that time revolutionary
socialism, under the influence of Bakunin, had taken on more anarchist than
Marxist attitudes, more of idealism than specific theoristism, drawing
inspiration from a lifestyle rather than an economic investigation. This was
Alessandro Mussolini's socialism. Largely
self-taught, he enjoyed considerable prestige in local socialist circles.

In May 1889 Alessandro began to collaborate with the socialist weekly
Rivendication and in February 1891 he gave the following definition of socialism:
«Socialism... is open, violent and moral rebellion against the human order of
things currently constituted. It is Science and Texcelsior that light up the world. It is
reason that imposes itself on faith. It is free thought that rebels against prejudice. It
is free love that takes over the legal contract. It is the free pact between all
men to live a truly civilized life. It is true justice that sits sovereign on
Earth.
In our opinion, socialism is a sublime harmony of concepts, thoughts and actions

that precedes the great wagon of human progress in the
his triumphal march towards the great goal of beauty , of the right . of truth".
Socialism was an ideal, an affirmation and a way of life that could only be
realized through an open and violent revolution by the oppressed. All of it was
anarchist in orientation and violent in intention, it was anti-religious, anti-clerical and
anti-bourgeois, it was populist and pervaded by moral sentiment.
In this environment, little Benito spent his formative years.

As he himself later said, on his father's death, his ideas were the only heritage that he
had left him. 3 At the time, Mussolini's family was absolutely poor and had
nothing more than the bare necessities.
This atmosphere fueled his natural aptitude for rebellion; revolutionary literature
provided them with further intellectual nourishment.
Still a child Mussolini came into contact with the writings of Marx.
Alessandro Mussolini read aloud to his son the passages from the first chapter
of Capital, published as a compendium by the anarchist Carlo Cafiero. Under
such influences, particularly those of his father, Benito Mussolini became
fatally a revolutionary. Like all the people of Romagna he was violent, irreducibly
devoted to politics, obsessively sincere and overbearing. Even the sweetness of
his mother, a patient, for
as inflexible a schoolmistress, she could hardly prevail over the inclinations

which the influence of environment had consolidated.
At seventeen Mussolini officially entered the Socialist Party; at eighteen he

graduated from the Technical School of Forlimpopoli. He was a rebel, but a more
than capable student; he showed a particular aptitude for history,
geography, literature, and moral philosophy.* He read widely and apparently well;
in fact, it is known that he had carefully read Roberto Ardigò's Morale dei
positivisti and a history of philosophy by Francesco Fiorentino. The students who
knew him at the time remember that he often withdrew for a long time,
alone with his books. In class, if the subject didn't interest him, he devoted himself
to reading one of the pamphlets or books his desk was always stocked with.
In December 1901, at the age of eighteen, his first short article was published in
the teachers' trade journal / school rights. 5
After graduating from the Regia Scuola Normale di Forlimpopoli,

Mussolini continued to study on his behalf. If we exclude the periods in which he
studied languages in particular (French, German and Latin) and a short period of
attendance at the University of Lausanne, he had no other regular education. His
readings were directed towards topics of a political nature that interested
him. His writings published in the period between 1902 and 1914 show that he had
devoted his attention above all to socialist literature in Italian, French and
German. A notable part of this literature was reviewed by him in various
Italian socialist newspapers, and such
reviews clearly demonstrate his full knowledge of the subject matter and substance
of the subjects. Even Megaro, his severe critic, speaks of Mussolini during this
period as "a young man of uncommon intelligence and discernment..."
The period from 1902 to 1914 was for him a period of impressive intellectual
activity; in these twelve years Mussolini wrote articles dedicated to the theory of
Socialism, to contemporary politics, reviews and comments which now fill
seven volumes of the collection of his works.
He wrote three long monographs: The man and the divinity (1904), Il Trentino
seen by a socialist (1911), John Huss the truthful (1913), and a novel.
Claudia Particella, the Cardinal's mistress (1910). 7 He translated at
least eighteen works from French and German, including Peter
Kropotkin's Paroles d'un révolté (1904), Karl Kautsky's Am Page nach der
sozialen Revolution (1905), and Wilhelm Liebknecht's Karl Marx under
der historische Materialismus (1908). , as well as a large selection of
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's poems. He also began to write an
ambitious History of Philosophy, which, however, he did not
finish. In his private correspondence there are references to
works by many Italian authors and there is also talk of translations of
selected passages (of which, however, there is no trace) from the
critique of Arturo Schopenhauer to the ethics of Kant and Fichte. 8
All of this material has received little attention for a variety of reasons.
The first and foremost of these was the great difficulty of viewing it up
to a very recent date. The collection of Mussolini's works published before
the Second World War, and at that time declared definitive, does not
actually include some of his publications prior to 15 November 1914. 9
The collection could therefore not be considered definitive in any sense. 10
All available material from this early period has been used in strange
ways. Ivon De Begnac in his Life of Benito Mussolini speaks of this early
period and quotes some passages from Mussolini's writings prior to Fascism,
as does Gaudens Megaro in his book Mussolini in the Making.
De Begnac uses selected material from this early period to argue that
Mussolini was always a fascist, while Megaro uses material from
different eras to demonstrate that Mussolini betrayed his early beliefs.
Fascist biographers profoundly distort Mussolini's thought to
establish its coherence while Megaro cites contrary examples to demonstrate
its inconsistency. Neither of the two procedures adequately
configures the thinking of the young Mussolini. Apologists see in him only
the fascist, while detractors see only an interweaving of contradictions.
The truth, as frequently happens, lies somewhere in between. The young
Mussolini, as we will clearly see, was not before 1914
by no means a fascist, and even after that date he underwent a remarkable evolution.
In fact, it would be difficult to establish the main lines of the fascist doctrine before
1921. On the other hand, since 1902 some of Mussolini's doctrinal principles
were such as to make an equation between his socialism and the orthodox one
that we well know problematic.
let's ski. Throughout this period its evolution was gradual and quite consistent.
Mussolini's political views in 1914 were singular, but not personal. In fact, a
whole current of Italian revolutionary socialists was undergoing the same
evolution. Mussolini was one of many socialist intellectuals whose ideological
journey would end in Fascism. Meanwhile Lenin, repudiating orthodox democratic
socialism, was carrying a current of the international socialist movement towards
Bolshevism. Only in 1924, after Lenin's death, did Leninism become the
system of thought as we understand it today.
It is essential to remember that in early 1914 Mussolini was only thirty years
old, roughly the same age as Marx when he wrote the Communist Manifesto.
If one compares the ideological complex of young Marx with that of Marx in his
maturity, one can evaluate the scope and significance of the change,
which can be documented in perspective. Mussolini's thought presents an analogous,
albeit more significant and sensational development. The evolution of Lenin's thought
followed the same process. Certainly Lenin's judgment on the implications of
Marxism underwent considerable modifications even after he had written The
State and the Revolution in 1917, at the age of forty-seven. n Alfredo Meyer
was only one of many commentators who denounced the measure of "extreme
unease" that The State and the Revolution still arouses among Leninist ideologues.
12
For more than a decade, between 1902 and 1914, Mussolini carried out his
training in the midst of the masses. Between the ages of nineteen and thirty-one,
the populist anarchist ideas inherited from his father underwent the evolution, which
would later result in Fascism. Today, that process can be followed with considerable
precision. It begins with a conception of socialism very similar to that of
Alessandro Mussolini, modified
successively from the revolutionary syndicalism of men like Arturo Labriola, to

finally become the national syndicalism of the revolutionary wing of
Italian socialism.
In this chapter we intend to expose the initial stages of this evolution from
anarchist Socialism to Fascism and trace the general lines of the political and
social thought of the young Mussolini. In the course of this exposition it will
become clear that much of the literature devoted to Mussolini's thought
contains many critical errors and inexact judgments. In general, the truth
lies somewhere between the conflicting claims of the apologists of
Fascism and those of the orthodox Marxists, its detractors. To cite a few
examples, Rino Alessi stated in 1939 that "Mussolini in fact was never a
Marxist" and Margherita Sarfatti, his first "official" biographer, maintained that
Mussolini was more attracted by Babeuf's and Proudhon's theses than
by those of Marx. On the other hand. Paolo Alalri, a doctrinaire Marxist, stated
that "Mussolini's socialism never had an authentically Marxist character (since he
had read nothing of Marx except the Communist Manifesto)". 13
Actually. Mussolini as a young man accepted all of Marx's fundamental

theoretical and interpretative propositions. His writings published between
1902 and 1914 contain innumerable references to Marx, only seven references
to Babeuf and eight to Proudhon. During this period his writings, and what we
can know of his readings, indicate a deep interest in Marx's ideas, which far
outweighs any interest in other thinkers. Unquestionably, therefore, Marx was
Mussolini's starting point. If this fixed point is neglected, it is not possible
to adequately reconstruct his thinking. He was not only a convinced Marxist, but
also among the best prepared. His publications contain constant references to
the works of Marx and Engels, and he mentions, in particular, all the most
significant passages in Marx's writings then known. Mussolini refers to Marx's
writings in the /Vene Rheinische Zeitung; the Thesis on Feuerbach, the
Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law, the Contribution to
the Critique of Economic Policy, The Class Struggle in France, as well as
Capital and the Communist Manifesto.
14 Many other
times he not only alludes to the Poverty of Philosophy, 15 but also gives it
extensive citations. 13 He also cites the Contribution to the Critique of

Economic Policy, the correspondence between Marx and Engels, Marx's articles
in the New York Tribune and the Communist Manifesto 11
We also find references to Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in

England in 1845, quotations from the Anti-Duehring and from Engels' famous
introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France. 18 Mussolini not only
had a profound knowledge of the Marxist authors of the period, including Karl
Kautsky and Wilhelm Liebknecht, of whom he translated some works, but he
had also read the works of scholars such as G.
Plekhanov, Rosa Luxemburg and critics of Marx come Werner Sombart.
Only after having given a definition of the "true character of Marxism" could one
therefore state that Mussolini's socialism never had a truly Marxist character. But
giving such a definition is an arduous undertaking, possibly achievable from an
exclusively doctrinal point of view. To say then that Mussolini never read
anything other than the Communist Manifesto is simply false. Whatever one
thinks of Marxism today, Mussolini was regarded by other socialists as a theoretician
of Marxism. He became one of the leaders of Italian socialism, at least in part, by
virtue of his recognized competence as a socialist intellectual.
According to the valid judgment of Roberto Michels, the Italian literature linked to
Marxism, as can be seen from the writings of that period, validly held up in terms of
quality and quantity the comparison with the German one: the Italian socialists were
therefore capable of judging the theoretical preparation of Mussolini. 19 It is a fact
that Italian scholars gave life to a literature that enjoyed international fame. Antonio
Labriola, in 1896, published his essay on the materialistic conception of history
which was soon followed by socialism and philosophy. 20 Also in 1896,
Benedetto Croce published his critical essays on Marx, which were later brought
together in the volume Historical Materialism and Marxist Political
Economy. During this period, an infinite number of similar works of commentary and
criticism were very common, and yet Mussolini's Socialism had been accepted as
radical socialism, but no less Marxist for this.
The elements which, in retrospect, reveal themselves to us as the seeds of

Fascism, were considered no more heterodox than the opinions of many trade unionists,
all equally held to be Marxists.
The Mussolini of this period could be described as a radical Marxist socialist, an

exponent of the Marxist views of the time, shared by a considerable number of
compatriots who were considered, and considered themselves, Marxists. In this
sense, therefore, Mussolini was a Marxist.
However, there are elements of his thought destined to generate growing theoretical
and doctrinal tensions, as long as they remained framed in Marxism however
understood. When, at the outbreak of the First World War, he definitively broke
with Socialism, Mussolini had already synthesized the principles that would
constitute the conceptual essence of the fascist doctrine.
Edoardo Susmel is probably right in considering 1914 as the critical moment in

Mussolini's evolution. In fact, before that date Mussolini could be considered, quite rightly,
a Marxist socialist; 21 but the new orientation had gradually matured in the decade that
preceded his decisive stance. The break with socialism manifested itself with
Mussolini's explicit recognition of the influence of national sentiment on man's political
and social evolution. Socialism could no longer represent a means that could satisfy
Mussolini's conceptions. His socialism had undergone a qualitative change as a result
of the precipitating suspension of theoretical changes which had been accumulating in
him since 1902.
THE YOUNG MUSSOLINI AND CLASSICAL MARXISM
Immediately after graduating from the Regia Scuola Normale di Forlimpopoli,

Mussolini obtained a position as elementary school teacher in Gualtieri, where he
remained from February to June 1902.
From July 1902 to November 1904, he emigrated to Switzerland where he worked as

a laborer and took charge of the socialist organization. Here he published his first
socialist article and dedicated himself deeply to those currents of thought that were to
have a decisive influence on his subsequent evolution. Both Megaro and De Felice
speak of the decisive influence that revolutionary syndicalism had on Mussolini between
the ages of nineteen and twenty-one. 22
At the end of 1904 Mussolini returned to Italy for military service. In

1906 he returned to teaching elementary and middle schools. In 1909, for a
period of about nine months, he was in Trentino where he worked as a socialist
journalist and as an organizer of the workers.
In 1910 he returned to Romagna, his native land, where he directed a
socialist weekly. At the Socialist Congress of Reggio Emilia, in 1912,
he was recognized as national head of the revolutionary socialist wing and
was appointed member of the Executive Committee of the Social Party
list. That same year, at the age of twenty-nine, he became editor of the
^rant// the official organ of the Socialist Party.
Mussolini's rise from a simple member to a Party leader was a

consequence of his many abilities. He was a gifted orator, an expert and skilful
journalist, able to inspire confidence. Smart and well prepared.
Mussolini, like Lenin, had the natural ability to reduce complex problems to
their simplest formulas. A restless and intolerant personality, he had
the disposition and qualities to dominate and not to be dominated.
Mussolini read a lot and wrote prodigiously. His first article, as we have seen,
was published when he was only eighteen. At twenty-one he published his first
long essay entitled Man and the Godhead which contained the arguments
against religion he made in a debate with Alfredo Tagliatela, a Christian
socialist who carried out Protestant propaganda among Italian workers
who emigrated to Switzerland. In this early essay, Mussolini explicitly
intended to "contrast the forces of darkness with those of light, the
absolute with free thought and dogma with reason..." an understanding that
echoed the sentiments of Alessandro Mussolini, his father.
Under the influence of the revolutionary syndicalists, with whom he had

initially united, Mussolini's Marxism did not stop at the level of simplicity at which
his father had left him. His early writings undoubtedly highlight the influence of
his father and of trade unionism and serve to confirm the young agitator's
Marxist orthodoxy. Together with the theoretical formulations scattered
throughout his writings ranging from 1902 to
1908, the theses proposed in Man and the Godhead are an example of
classical Marxism as it was generally understood in the early twentieth century.
during this first period. Mussolini accepted a form of positivism then

widespread among free thinkers and Marxists. He sided decisively
with positive science and fought against metaphysical speculations and
non-empirical presuppositions. He stated that science provides the
inescapable proof of the fact that the universe, "far from being the work of
the theological and clerical god, is nothing but the manifestation of
matter, unique, eternal, indestructible, which never had a beginning, which
it will never end. Matter has 'ways * in which it is
(reflects in the great city of the human soul; ways that are transformed
evolve, migrate from shape to ever more chosen shape. In this immense and
continuous process of dissolution and reintegration, nothing is created,
nothing is destroyed. Life, therefore , life in its universal meaning is nothing but
a perennial combustion of eternally new energies. The universe is
explained as a movement of forces. All the phenomena studied by
physics (heat, light, sound, electricity) can today be traced back to vibration
more or less intense than matter. This is governed by eternal and
immutable laws which know neither morality nor benevolence; which
do not answer man's complaints and prayers, but upon him ruthlessly reject
his fate. These laws govern everything. : from the smallest to the most
complex phenomena, from the appearance of a comet to blossoming
of a flower. Against them man can do nothing. He can get to know them, to use
them, but he cannot stop their beneficial or evil action. Who could
prevent the precipitation of water vapor which gives dew?
Who could stop the earth, in its eleven simultaneous movements? Who
could oppose the flow of the tides or block the sunlight?
Evolution dominates the 'modes' of matter. Through it, from the 'colorless cell *
which represents the first moment of animal life, we arrive, through
successive transformations, up to its highest expression: man'. 23
These ideas are naturally common to a considerable number of writers from

the beginning of the century: but they are also the cosmological theses
proposed by "dialectical materialism" and are found formulated almost
in the same terms in Engels' Anti-Duehring. 24
In this context, Mussolini developed his concept of man and society.

Man, said the young Mussolini, is the by-product of an organic process: the
characteristic that distinguishes his species is reason, which depends
on the weight and structure of his brain, the final result of a long
evolutionary process. As a thinking animal, man is also a social animal
and, by nature, is part of a community. 25 » Mussolini asserted: « The only
one can never be unique in the Smethyrian sense of the word, because
the fatal law of solidarity bends him and overcomes him. The instinct of
sociability is, according to Darwin, inherent in the very nature of man.' 26
This is evident in the vagueness of the terms "individual" and "society" and
their qualifying adjectives "individual" and "social". The individual is
inextricably linked to his community and every effort to separate him from
his social environment, as, for example, the social contract theorists
had attempted, had failed. 27
« The definition of man as a social animal is, of course, common to many

philosophers and is also a staple of Marxism. * Marx, in the writings that
Mussolini probably knew thoroughly, maintained that "man is the human
world, the state and society" and that the essence of man is "the ensemble of
social relations". 28 Today we have greater possibilities than Mussolini
had then to know how seriously Marx professed this conviction.
In Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts (which were only published in full

between 1930 and 1940) Marx maintained that "the individual is a social being...
His life is... an expression and confirmation of social life.' 29 In the notes
written for his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy he reiterated:
«Man is, in the most literal sense of the term, a zoon politikon, not
simply a social animal, but an animal that can become an individual only
in society». 30
o According to Mussolini, individuals organize themselves into groups

that have similar and common characteristics, interests and needs. An
incessant struggle for existence activates these social elements and makes
the world a "great battlefield" between rival groups. When society
reaches a particular level of economic development, the conflicting interests of
different groups generate within society a clash that can take multiple
forms. 3 v
« All men who have identities of interests tend to defend themselves

collectively in order to have greater guarantees of success. This principle
demolishes individualism, which has by now been reduced to being the
theory of literature on vacation... Cooperation [distinguishes] two
contradictory minds: one positive, the other negative. The first manifests
itself through the solidarity practiced between the members of the group, the
second in the struggle against the other antagonistic groups ». 32
'* With the growth of capitalism, the disparity of interests which divides the
proletariat from the bourgeoisie becomes more and more evident.® The fact
is that « there are more or less profound differences between the interests
of the various parts of the social aggregate... » which generate class struggle.
33 « Class difference produces a class interest, interest a contrast,
antagonistic contrast the class struggle... The proletariat, or the new class...
is the result of capitalist production... socialism. .. germinates inevitable from
the new economic relations... » 34
$ Socialism is a real fact because it responds to the new productive

conditions inherent in industrial development itself. 35 The thesis supported by
Mussolini is the fundamental concept of classical Marxism. «...Material
interest», said Mussolini «is the main driving force behind human actions
and...all the ideological superstructures of society (art, religion, morals) [are]
the reflection and result of the economic conditions and more
precisely of the economic mode of production". § 3
6 These are distinctly Marxist theses and, combined with previous

cosmological conceptions, give rise to a scheme of dialectical and
historical materialism that socialist theorists can consider absolutely faithful to
Marxism^ And even Mussolini's particular practical applications of
these theoretical convictions tended to be decidedly marxists.
For example, Mussolini interpreted morality as a superstructural

element that can be explained starting from the ecological and
economic conditions of the moment.
« The morality that arises in these conditions will be able to live and
exercise its dominion as long as the real conditions that determined it persist;
but with the disappearance of these conditions, it becomes an anachronism...
every age has had its own 'morality... » 37
As society enters a new era, the old morality can only serve as a formula for
curbing the revolutionary violence of the rising class. Understood in this sense,
morality can be not only reactionary but also profoundly immoral.
For example, in periods of low productivity, the calls of religion to the principles
of self-denial and acceptance of sacrifices, have some reason to exist. With
the advent of new productive forces, such norms serve only to ensure the
survival of already outdated discriminatory class relations and the
unnecessary oppression of man by man. In opposition to these norms a
new ethics is born based on the needs that the changed material situation has
determined in the human community and to it
suitable. This is the « human morality » of which Mussolini spoke and the
whole treatment of the subject is the paraphrase of Engels' thesis
in AntiDuehring. 38
The nascent proletariat, animated by the new imperatives, organizes itself for
a more general social revolution, vaster than any previous uprising,
a revolution which must lead to the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the
abolition of the state which today acts as if it were a "committee for the
defense of of the wealthy classes". 39
These theoretical concepts, combined with specific tactical attitudes, and

imbued with socialist values, constituted a fairly coherent and orthodox
Marxism.
Mussolini, as a young man, insisted on the irreconcilability of class

differences and the inevitability of class struggle. He was an internationalist by
sentiment, fiercely anti-religious, especially anti-Christian, and openly
collectivist. 40
All these elements, drawn from the articles published by Mussolini before the
age of twenty-six, legitimize the opinion that he was a trained Marxist and
convinced. Both apologists and detractors, each for their own reasons, have
tried to hide this reality, but it must be added that Mussolini was a Marxist
who differed from the others. Already in his very first articles there are
elements that are ill-suited to classical orthodox Marxism. In retrospect, they
assume singular importance as constituting the points of tension which ultimately
changed the whole theoretical system.
Already from 1903-1904, when he was about twenty-one years old. Mussolini
formulated two conceptions which, considered in retrospect, seem to
constitute a starting point for his more mature social and political convictions.
In an essay written in 1903 he declared: "Psychology has shown that feelings are
dynamic motives for human actions." 41 While not giving excessive value to this
statement, however, it seems to constitute the starting point towards an anti-
rational theory of human motives, which does not accord well with classical
Marxism. Apart from anything else, Marxism had an essentially rationalist view
of motive. On various occasions Marx and Engels had argued that the ultimate
triumph of socialism was based on the "intellectual development of the working
class" 42 and in numerous critical examples, both had asserted that the
proletariat would be led to revolution by a clear understanding "of the
problems. 43
It was, of course, Pareto in Socialist Systems (published in 1902) who

advanced the opinion that the fundamental causes governing human
conduct are feelings. The appearance in his articles of the term elite used in a
specifically Pareto context suggests that Mussolini may have read the
Systems. This concept of the elite is the second of the two concepts
mentioned above. In April 1904 Mussolini affirmed that "the socialist
revolution" must be "initiated by [a] minority". 44 In July of that same year, he
specifically defined that minority as a "proletarian elite". 45 In October he
quoted the titles of two volumes of Pareto 46 and in the same period he attended
two courses
taught by Pareto at the University of Lausanne. Gaudens Megaro and H.

Stuart Hughes are both mistaken when they suggest that Mussolini never
actually attended those lectures. 47 In a letter to a
friend, dated 5 January 1923, Pareto wrote that "Mussolini spent some time
in Lausanne and came to my courses, but I did not know him personally". 48
It is almost certain that in that period Mussolini read Pareto's Systems and it
is also certain that he was sensitive to the latter's influence. Mussolini
during his stay in Switzerland dealt with the study of Social Science. In
this regard, we have not only his testimony, but also that of those who knew
him at the time. 49
In 1908 Mussolini defined Vilfredo Pareto's «theory of elites» as «the most

ingenious sociological conception of modern times» and affirmed that «history
is nothing but a succession of dominant elites»; and he continued: "Progress
has been made possible by the fact that the vanguards of mankind have
not stopped to sleep a lethargic sleep in the stages of civilization gradually
reached." 50
Pareto had proposed a conception of the world as a perpetual clash between

social elements vying for domination, and went on to add that the twentieth
century witnessed the advent of a new class, led by an elite that challenged the
minority rule of the bourgeoisie. Pareto conceived the ensuing struggle as a test
of strength in which the weakest were bound to succumb, a theory which
fully accorded with Mussolini's view on the class struggle.
Mussolini affirmed: « The socialist revolution [is] a pure and simple matter
of 'strength'... No agreement is possible between [bourgeoisie and
proletariat]. One of them must disappear. The least strong will be 'eliminated *.
The class struggle is therefore a question of 'strength *'. 51
Mussolini did not hesitate to call his conception « a new socialist

conception, a profoundly 'aristocratic' conception yf. 52 Naturally Pareto
had used the terms elite and artistocracy interchangeably. Having
made at least some of the essential elements of Pareto's thesis his own, it
was not difficult for Mussolini to judge "magnificent" 53 Alfredo Oriani's Ideal
Revolt. Oriani's ideas were distinguished by their aristocratic quality.
"In every age and in every human group, the excellence of some individuals
made them rulers over the others, who by obeying instinctively traded
freedom for a new security... The instinct of the race and the need for history
thus created in the aristocracy a class responsible for everyone's life ... the
aristocracy had to think and want for others ... »
Only through the merits of such an elite can the mass of men be elevated to
the highest spiritual endeavors.
« The aristocratic function is therefore double; to develop the idea that forms
the essence of a people, and in that to shape one's character. There is often
antagonism between political virtue and moral virtue: at certain moments the
heroism of race or nation must be merciless towards the vanquished destined to disappear...
Whatever the form of government, an aristocracy always formulated its laws.'
54
Mussolini's adherence to these ideas is only significant in retrospect.

At the time it was not considered strange for a socialist to profess such ideas.
First, there was a strong Blanquist current in the Marxist tradition (which
reappeared in Lenin's formulations). In Marx's essay dedicated to Hegel's
philosophy of law and published in 1844, there are clear hints of the imminence
of a proletarian revolution in the retrograde Germany of that period. Germany
was an industrially backward nation and Marx already spoke of a proletarian
revolution. AND
clear that the revolution should have been made by a minority. At that time, the
German working class was still in its infancy and constituted only a minority
of the total population. Nonetheless, Marx proposed an alliance between
philosophers and proletarians to overthrow the established social order and
raise humanity to its true stature as a human race in a "universal emancipation".
"Philosophy," Marx maintained, "represents the mind of emancipation and the
proletariat its heart." 55
Before the revolution of 1848, an entire generation of French revolutionaries

had been nourished by the radicalism of Babeuf and Buonarroti. Among these
August Blanqui, who conceived the revolution, tactics and
revolutionary organization in an elitist sense. Indeed, he believed that the
revolution was the result of the efficient organization of the most radical members
of the prolecariat, led by declassed bourgeois intellectuals. This
union of mind and heart would overwhelm everything in its path and
establish a minority dictatorship that would elevate the passive and inert
masses.
Between 1844 and 1850 Marx and Engels were clearly influenced by this
doctrine. 56 Many of their statements on the revolution in countries with a
mainly agrarian structure cannot be understood if one does not think of a
form of minority dictatorship. A majority revolution could only be good for
those countries where industry has reduced the majority of the population
to proletarian conditions. In nations with a predominantly
agricultural character, the peasant masses should have been led by a
proletarian minority, since it was believed that the peasants left to
themselves were intimately reactionary. Thus, while this does not
represent an exhaustive and exclusive interpretation, one could rightly argue
for the existence of a Blanquist or aristocratic tradition in classical
Marxism.
In any case, Mussolini's full adherence to Pareto's particular theses with

which we are dealing was not an unusual fact, nor was it considered
heterodox.
During his stay in Switzerland, Mussolini had established working contacts

with the revolutionary syndicalists led by Arturo Labriola. In the same
period, Sergio Panunzio (1886-1944), three years younger than Mussolini
and still a student, joined the Labriola Socialist Avant-garde, with
which Mussolini collaborated assiduously. At the Socialist Congress in
Zurich in March 1903, Mussolini met Angelo Oliviero Olivetti (1874-1931)
who had soon joined the trade unionists. Labriola, Panunzio and Olivetti
exerted a considerable influence on
Mussolini: Panunzio and Olivetti were later numbered among the

most important doctrinaires of Fascism.
The revolutionary syndicalism they represented constituted the radical wing

of Italian Socialism, and was formed by anti-democratic, anti-
parliamentary, activist and ultimately elitist currents, in which Mussolini
felt fully at ease. The anti-democratic and anti-
parliamentarian theses of revolutionary syndicalism had their origins
in orthodox Marxist theory and in the particular historical and

political circumstances that characterized Italy at the beginning of the
century. The founders of classical Marxism, even in their most mature
writings, made it clear that a democratic republic represents the most
sophisticated and most pernicious expression of bourgeois
power. Behind the facade of democratic institutions, the
bourgeoisie exercises its domination by bribing public officials, allying
government and finance and inextricably involving the state in the
affairs of national and international capitalist enterprises. In essence,
Engels asserted, "the ruling class governs directly by universal
suffrage." 57 To mask its domination, the bourgeoisie creates political
fictions, aimed at convincing the exploited class that any rebellion
would be "the lowest ingratitude towards its benefactors, who are its exploiters B. 58
The whole mechanism of public elections, at best, had value only as

an indication of the maturity of the working class.
But when it becomes evident that the class consciousness of the
proletariat has reached such an awareness of its own interests that it
poses a threat to the essential interests of the wealthy classes, the
wealthy classes become defensive, and only a violent revolution can
resolve the issue. Elections, parliaments, the entire complex of
bourgeois democratic institutions serve to camouflage the
domination of the minority over the majority it produces for a class that
no longer has the vital office necessary to govern.
The Italian historical and political conditions seemed to confirm this

analysis. Gaetano Mosca had discovered that "democratic theory" was
a subterfuge to hide the reality of minority government. The conduct of
Italian parliamentarians confirmed his judgment: parliament was
plagued by corruption and its members often, if not regularly,
only served their own particular interests. Italy's industrial and commercial
advances in the last two decades of the 19th century had brought
little benefit to the working classes, while limited suffrage made it
mathematically impossible for the working class to implement
substantial changes in government or existing production relations
that regulated the distribution of economic welfare in Italy. 59
The trade unionists were therefore decidedly opposed to allowing

themselves to be drawn into parliamentary manoeuvres. The reformist
socialists, who instead wanted to improve legislation through parliament,
were considered traitors to the class interests of the proletariat. Any participation
in the mechanism of parliamentary government was considered by the sinda
calisti as an attempt to give a semblance of legality to the machinery of class

exploitation. They aimed to strike directly at the structures of the bourgeois
state, through the autonomous organizations of the workers.
The main weapon would be direct action, the strike, and finally the general
strike which would force all capitalist enterprises into inactivity. 60 These
assumptions constituted the theoretical and tactical basis of trade
unionist activism.
The decision to resort to the strike as the most important revolutionary

weapon of the proletariat involved some ancillary considerations.
First and foremost among these, the fact that the effective
mobilization of the working class required organization and the trade
unionists heeded Engels' admonition: 'Anyone who speaks of combined action
is speaking of organization; but can there be an organization
without authority? ». 61 The answer was obvious: an efficient
organization cannot do without authority: and this authority, i.e. the authority
of a strategic command of the social struggle, had to be assumed by a minority
of class-conscious leaders, by those whom Panunzio called "a new social
aristocracy".
In July 1909, in the columns of Pagine libera (a publication in which Mussolini

also collaborated) Olivetti observed:
"We do not intend to formulate a programme, but only to state a fact, and a fact
which could not be otherwise because the unionistic mentality can
only mature in the factory and in intensive industrialized agriculture: it
therefore supposes large-scale industry and the intense vibrancy of capitalist
life, inevitably has to leave behind all the gray area of small industry and
small agriculture, crafts, petty bureaucracy: forms of domestic wage
labor, etc.: that is, a whole mass specifically proletarian, but incapable for
its very structure and economic position to feel the veins and pulses of
that special revolutionary idiosyncrasy which is syndicalism. This is a state of

mind rather than a doctrine, a way of social sensitivity which tends to translate
itself into an operating will. And p, however, requires on the one hand a
finesse of sensitivity which unfortunately cannot be found in everyone; on the
other hand a concentration of energies which the same physiological and
historical conditions of the working classes prevent from being a common
thing, much less universal. It would be a wonderful thing if all the
workers were aware of their condition and willing to change it. But who does
not understand what a terrible unattainable dream this is? Out of a
thousand men caught in the flock, nine hundred adapt themselves to any
misery. And they tolerate being slaves, servants, proletarians. Of the hundred
survivors, most seek individual salvation and strive to ascend separately
to higher regions without coordinating their effort with any collective
movement or ideal aspiration. There remains a small handful that
is being handed down through the centuries from one generation to another the
torch of an ideal of improvement, of integral humanity [...]. Aristocracy?
Why not? But aristocracy not proclaimed by laws or lying on the possession of
material wealth; but true aristocracy of blood and nerves open to all the strong.
[...] So elite
frankly human, because it is made up of those who have the most humanity in
their hearts and brains. [...] Since every social struggle is a clash between
two minorities on the inert body of the great anonymous mass, so every
now and then we admire audacities that seem miraculous, catastrophes
that give us the impression of the unexpected, and are only caused by the
adhesion of the great beast to a triumphant and vibrant idea. The
representative men in the story are those who possess the solemn and
mysterious charm which rouses and enthralls and lifts the sleepers. [...] But
an idea and an action must emanate from the avant-garde handful... » 82
In the context of the era, Mussolini's elitism was not unusual, either
10 were his references to Pareto. The ideological complex which

inspired the intransigent revolutionaries of the Socialist Party shared some
critical elements with the theses of Pareto and Mosca. The presence of
Roberto Michels among the revolutionary syndicalists confirms this fact.
During that period, 63 revolutionary syndicalists considered Michels
a "revolutionary comrade" and Mussolini knew him as such.

H. Stuart Hughes is wrong when he insinuates that Mussolini 'has never
heard of [Michels]'. 64 Mussolini, in that period, was not only familiar with
Michels' works, but he also reviewed them for the socialist newspaper II
Popolo, L'uomoeconomice e la cooperazione. 05
This work, written in 1909, forms the basis of Michels' classic study of
the oligarchic tendencies of modern political organization.
The main thesis of Michels's The Economic Man was taken from
Gumplowicz:
1) the abstract individual of the social contract theory is a fiction;
2) the quintessence of the human animal is sociality;
3) as a member of an organized group man is led to group solidarity which

manifests itself in friendship towards the group he belongs to and in hostility
towards external groups.
We have no direct evidence that Mussolini ever read Gumplowicz,

but we have previously pointed out that the ideas of Pareto, Mosca and
Michels have elements in common with Gumplowicz's theses; the
knowledge that Mussolini has of Michels' ideas demonstrates in him
an at least indirect knowledge of those of Gumplowicz.
We have already mentioned that trade unionists such as Olivetti did not
hesitate to connect the names of Gumplowicz, Pareto and Marx, and
this is also true for Panunzio. Panunzio who collaborated with the Labriola
newspaper in the period in which Mussolini's collaboration was also
more active, to support his social and political opinions, specifically mentions
11 Grundiss der Sociologie e il Sociologische Staatsidee di Gumplowicz

nelle edizioni francese e italiana. 86
The same Panunzio also mentions the works of Icilio Vanni, a disciple of
Gumplowicz, whose ideas he introduced in Italy in the last quarter of the
19th century. Since Panunzio, as we will see, would later become one of
the main ideologues of Fascism, this direct connection with i
Gumplowicz's concepts is of fundamental importance for reconstructing the

genesis of the fascist doctrine.
Olivetti and Panunzio were among the main theorists of trade unionism;
the conceptions they expounded contained elements derived from the
works of Mosca, Pareto, Michels and Gumplowicz. At this point it is particularly
interesting to dwell on the possible influence that scholars of community
psychology, such as Le Bon and Sighele, exerted on the young
Mussolini. Since the syndicalists were sympathetic to the theories of
Gumplowicz and Pareto and welcomed men like Michels into their ranks, the
formulations of Le Bon and Sighele can be considered to have exerted some
influence.
In the case of Panunzio we have clear proof of this. In the same passage
in which he explicitly refers to Gumplowicz, he also mentions the
"psychological laws" illustrated in the works of Tarde, Le Bon and Sighele.
Any scholar who has read Gumplowicz's Sociologische Staatsidee
could hardly try to make the theses of Le Bon and Sighele their own. Mussolini,
in later years, said that ever since he was a student at the Regia Scuola
Normale in Forlimpopoli, he had nurtured a "profound interest in the psychology
of the masses... the crowds"; and then specified: "One of the books that struck
me most was Gustave Le Bon's Psychology of Crowds." 67 Unfortunately, when
the volume was first published, he did not have the opportunity to review it
for one of the periodicals and newspapers to which he collaborated
between 1902 and 1914, but it seems evident that he read the book during
this period, or in the immediately preceding years. However, there
is no direct evidence that he read Sighele; but Le Bon's work contains so many
of Sighele's concepts that Sighele even accused Le Bon of plagiarism.
Mussolini's recognition of the value of Le Bon's study implies a similar evaluation
of Sighele: and this consideration is important to explain the maturation
process that led Mussolini to Fascism. Le Bon, like Sighele, was anti-
parliamentarian, anti-democratic, anti-rationalist and, again like Sighele, elitist.
The atmosphere of syndicalism was fully engaged with such ideas. If such
concepts had not been conveyed through Gumplowicz's work, they would
have penetrated through Pareto's Systems which regularly harked
back to Le Bon. If not then
had been introduced by neither of these sources, they would nevertheless

have become elements of syndicalist doctrine through the work of Sorel.
THE YOUNG MUSSOLINI AND GEORGES SOREL
Sorel, of course, was the recognized master of revolutionary

syndicalism. His ideas probably had more appeal in Italy than in his native
France. Mussolini knew Sorel thoroughly since 1904 and placed him on
the same level as Marx, Engels, Labriola and Kautsky. 68 Pini, Susmel and
De Felice believe that Mussolini read Sorel's Réflexions in Switzerland,
between 1902 and 1904, but this hypothesis seems wrong to us. 69
Whatever I read in that
years, it could not have been Sorel's Réflexions as the book was published
for the first time in Italy in Divenire Sociale in 1905, after Mussolini had left
Switzerland. Sorel's work was published in 1906 in French in the Mouvement
Socialiste and then again in Italy in the form of a pamphlet entitled The
general strike and violence, with a preface by Enrico Leone. In 1908
appeared the French edition entitled Réflexions sur la violence, and
in 1909 a subsequent Italian edition entitled Considerations on violence,
with a preface by Benedetto Croce. It was this last edition that
Mussolini reviewed for II Popolo that same year. 70
This review, which was entitled The General Strike and Violence, referred
to the 1906 edition and suggests that Mussolini had already read Sorel's
Réflexions in the previous edition. After all, as a trade unionist, he
could hardly have ignored the first treatment of a theme which constituted
an essential element in the debates on trade unionism.
Mussolini's review of Il Popolo demonstrates his intimate knowledge of Sorel's
ideas; he not only refers to earlier works by the same author, including
the Ruine du Monde Antique and L'Introduction à VEconomie
Moderne, but, as Megaro points out, reveals a profound understanding of
Sorel's ideas, in all their conceptual breadth, and treats them in a
particularly penetrating way. 71
Mussolini discussed those aspects of Sorel's work which were to remain

the basis of the social and political views of his mature period.
In the very first paragraph, he observed that Sorel does not offer a doctrinaire
"system," but deals instead with problems that force the reader to
abandon the role of spectator and engage in action. This "pragmatist"
attitude remained fundamental in Mussolini's political activity; it was the
same pragmatism that characterized the thought of the greatest exponents of
trade unionism. As early as 1902 Mussolini, already under the influence of
Labriola, had maintained that syndicalism rejected "formulas" and sought only
the solution of problems. 72 This was the position taken by all the major
exponents of trade unionism.
Mussolini then gave much importance to the Sorelian conception of the myth.
A myth is an "idea" capable of making the masses active. It provides the
masses with an action guide for the realization of specific collective programs.
11 Christianity, for example, accustoms Christians to obedience and teaches

them the observance of moral duties in anticipation of the apocalypse.
Similarly, the French Revolution and the Italian Risorgimento were
stimulated by political myths. All these myths raised the masses to a
conception of life understood as a struggle, as a sacrifice, as a conquest
and as an overcoming of oneself. The Sorelian myth of the general strike,
which prepares the masses for the suppression of the state and private property,
is a typical social and political myth.
The Sorelian myth tended towards the creation of a unitary revolutionary

movement which was at the same time anti-democratic, anti-speak
deserving and anti-humanitarian, in the sense that it opposed

conventional and bourgeoisie hypocrisies.
The institutional apparatus of the parliamentary and democratic state, with its
periodic electoral ploys, was seen as a mask for class oppression; his
humanitarianism and pacifism were seen as expedients to keep the unruly
and exploited masses calm. Socialism, in order to survive as an ideal
and for its organizations to be successful in the social struggle,
"must have the
courage to be ruthless". Socialism must have the strength of its convictions

and must know how to defend them with violence from the debilitating
impostures of the ruling class which controls the main media outlets
and holds the monopoly of institutionalized force. The violence of the
proletariat was to assume the character of the violence which accompanies
a just war. It was a necessary, surgical violence: its function was to eradicate
the evils that afflicted the social order, as it was constituted.
The state was an organized force which imposed the will of the
bourgeois minority on the social order. Once legitimized, that force had
tended to perpetuate itself. His influence had pervaded and corrupted
everything. 73 Democracy had become a statutory myth of the system. The
leaders of the new classes were drawn into the parliamentary arena and their
activities were conditioned by the "rule of law," a law which codified the
property relations of capitalism. The result was an ephemeral and attenuated
reformism which tended to improve rather than abolish the system.
The myth constituted the organizational formula of the opposing class:

"Socialism no longer represents a system located in a more or less distant
future, but constitutes an apprenticeship in revolutionary preparation in
the continuous and violent class struggle".
This conception of revolution would necessarily have alienated the

consensus of sentimentalists accustomed to moderation, of reformists
inclined to compromise and of intellectuals convinced of the efficacy of reason.
The prospects of this struggle were designed to attract only men endowed
with energy and prepared for new hierarchies of values: new men who
had the cult of the heroes of antiquity, and who were ready to conceive
their labors as something solemn, terrible, sublime.
Fifteen years after writing the review of Sorel's Réflexions, Mussolini

stated: « I owe what I am... to Sorel [...] He is a great Master who, with his
harsh theories on revolutionary formation, has helped to shape the
discipline, the collective energy, the power of the masses, of the fascist
cohorts ». 74
Indeed, Mussolini's mature concept of the mass solidarity movement was

an example of a particular application of Sorel's functional myth.
In early 1914, in the months preceding his break with the Socialist
Party, Mussolini fully expressed his thoughts on the nature of the
revolution and on the organization for the social struggle.
“There are those who want to wait for the absolute majority to make the
revolution. Is absurd. First of all mass is quantity, it is inertia. Mass is
static; minorities are dynamic. And then the economic organization
cannot claim to gather all the workers who can be organized into
the trade union [...]
« For me the problem is here: it is a question of opposing a socialist and

revolutionary minority to the bourgeois minority. After all, we are governed
by a minority; those who make politics in Italy and in all civilized nations,
those who govern are a minority, and there is an enormous mass
that suffers. Well, if this huge mass of apathetic, indifferent people accept
and suffer a regime of iniquity and injustice why shouldn't they accept a
better regime?
We must create within the proletariat a minority large enough,

conscious enough, audacious enough to take the place of the
bourgeois minority at the right moment. The enormous mass will follow
and suffer it.' 75
Considerations of this kind could also be drawn from the works of

Gumplowicz, Pareto, Mosca, Michels or Sorel.
Gumplowicz in the Rechtstaat und Sozialismus says the same

things in essentially the same words. What distinguishes Mussolini's
social and political concepts from those, for example, of Gumplowicz and
Moscow is his preoccupation with "motive." In this respect, his greater
familiarity with the works of Pareto, Michels and Sorel is reflected in
the following passage, written in January 1914:
« First of all, 'theoretical consciousness' can only be a privilege of small

minorities, a luxury of scholars, who are, in a certain way, outside of
reality; but the large masses called to found the new kingdom need not so
much to 'know' as to 'believe'. In the mind of the proletariat, the
'theoretical consciousness' of socialism will always be amorphous,
rudimentary, coarse: just as to be good Christians there is no need to have
read and understood all theology, so one can be excellent socialists while
ignoring the works and masterpieces of socialist literature, while being
completely illiterate. The sans-culottes who stormed the Bastille
probably had no 'theoretical conscience'.'
« The Social Revolution is not a mental scheme or a calculation, but, above

all, an act of faith ». 76
From 1902, when the first clues of his conception of socialism were
already beginning to appear, until 1914, two themes became increasingly
important: 1) the nature of the human motive and the psychology
of revolution; 2) the nature of the revolutionary struggle, ie the relationship
between leaders and followers. Under the direct influence of Pareto, Michels,
and eventually Sorel, Mussolini's concepts matured until, in 1914, they
formed the guide for organizing a mass revolutionary movement. In the
maturation of his ideas the influence of Labriola, Panunzio and Olivetti
was particularly important; and this influence continued to have its weight
even after Mussolini had broken with the syndicalist wing of the revolutionary
movement, when
this had refused to take part in actions other than specifically

economic ones, against the bourgeoisie.
Mussolini rejected the syndicalist insistence on the exclusive use of the strike
as a revolutionary weapon. It was evident, however, that he did not reject
syndicalist conceptions regarding the task of commanding the minority and
the organizing function of social and political myths. 77 This was clear in
1912, when he expressed his opposition both to Sorel's rapprochement
with the French nationalists and to the specific tactics of the Italian
syndicalists.
At the time he stated: « We know the task and we appreciate the

importance of bold minorities and pioneering elites in the field of history » and
« ...Humanity needs a creed. It is faith that moves mountains because it gives
the illusion that mountains move.' 78
'tb Between 1902 and 1914 Mussolini fixed his ideas around basic
concepts that we now identify with those of Sorel, namely: a vision of life as
a continuous and arduous struggle against the indifference of the external
environment, and against other antagonistic groups, with the clash between
groups led by elites capable of inspiring the inert masses with a vision
of the future and possessing the will capable of disciplining the masses
themselves for the effort necessary to achieve this vision. However, Mussolini's
conception of the myth was different at least in one aspect of no small
importance. He believed that the functional myth was a necessary tactical
complement to the organizational program of the revolution. The myth, that
is, responded to the needs of the motivations of the masses, but did not
outline the strategic program of the party leaders. Management needs "a specific
culture that supports and is suited to the action."
Nothing else is needed for anyone who conceives of socialism through
the Sorelian myth which is an act of faith ». It was necessary, that is,
"realistic pragmatism". 79 Mussolini therefore contrasted the "realistic"
Guicciardini to the "utopian" Sorel.
The myth, in Sorel, responds to the natural needs of those who accept the
non-rationalist theory of the collective motive. But the myth, in itself, is not
true and it is not false, and the problems of its truthfulness or falsehood
are completely out of place. The activities of the organizational elite cannot be
governed by these myths. The vanguard of the revolutionary movement, if it
is to give effective guidance, must know systems suitable for
determining the canons of truth. Any action that derives from a simple
acceptance of the myth is in vain. Revolutionary action must be based on a
precise evaluation of the social forces acting at a given moment. 80 It is
necessary to possess the "theoretical awareness" necessary to direct practical
affairs. 81 To arrive at an exact evaluation of situations, it is necessary
"to silence feelings, since only reason can investigate, discover, compare". 82
The fact is that « Giorgio Sorel has not given a system, from which certain
norms can be drawn
tactics »; 83 his system provides a theory of the organization and motive of

the masses, but no strategic-tactical norms for revolutionary leaders.
Mussolini made it clear that his adherence to syndicalist ideas
it dated back to the time of his collaboration with Labriola and Panunzio, in
1904. 84
However, in 1908 he stated the following: « To love an idea one must

know it. To love socialism the superficial profession of faith is not
enough, to love socialism one must know it, study it, follow it in its practical
manifestations, in its doctrinal attitudes, to love socialism one must live its life.
« Believing through a sentimental act means having a religious faith; to believe

by volitional and reasoned act means to have the faith of free spirits, the
conscious faith that does not delude itself [...] It is necessary to tend
to make socialism a reasoned faith [...] Believing is not enough, one must
reason. To those who shout to us: 'Believe!', we answer: *Prove,!' ».
Mussolini, like Sorel and Pareto, was an anti-rationalist: men, particularly

those belonging to the masses, draw their motives from feeling rather
than from reason. However, a movement driven by sentiment alone meets
with disasters. Mussolini was so interested in theoretical questions
that he founded the periodical Utopia in 1914, in order to formulate his personal
doctrinal opinions. 86 He recognized that he had assumed, since 1912,
a theoretical position which, as he stated, was dictated not by sentiment, but
by doctrinal and philosophical reasons. 87 He affirmed that, while the
party must be able to "surround the proletarian ascension movement with
a religious heroic atmosphere", the leaders of the party must constitute
themselves in "an aristocracy of intelligence and will". 88 While the masses
can be effectively organized only by means of myths, their
leaders, in political formulations, must make use of every rational instrument.
The mature conception that Mussolini had of the political movement as a

disciplined and hierarchically organized force was based on the
theoretical convictions that were developing in him in the decade preceding

the First World War.
In 1932, in his talks with Emil Ludwig, Mussolini stated:
« The mass for me is nothing but a flock of sheep, until it is organized. I'm
not against it at all. I only deny that it can organize itself. But if you lead it, you
have to hold it with two reins: enthusiasm and interest. Anyone who uses only
one of the two is in danger. The mystical side and the political condition each
other. One without the other is arid, this without that is dispersed in the wind of
flags.' 89
And this is only a new way of expressing concepts that have already belonged
to him since 1902. Feeling and interest constitute the motivational force of
collective action; for a movement to be disciplined, a certain unfailing unanimity
determined by enthusiasm or feeling is required.
In 1934 Mussolini maintained: « It was I who ordered that it be said that I was
never wrong. My offices provided to find the element capable of translating this
concept into another: 'The Duce has always
pre reason'. Dictatorial regimes, more than armies of praetorians, need a quota
of fanatical believers. I leave the criticism to those who know how to do it and to
those who have the courage to do it. But the masses must obey: they
cannot allow themselves the luxury of wasting time in the search for the truth". 90
The distinction was clear. The mass reacts only to feeling and the call of
interest. A minority, on the other hand, bears the responsibility for the
search for truth. In This Same Year (1934)
Mussolini pointed out that it is necessary to distinguish certain conviction, born of
sentiment, which animates the masses, and the reasoned conviction of the
political elite. "If by mysticism", he affirmed, "we mean the possibility of
recognizing the truth without the aid of reason, I would be the first to declare
myself against all mysticism". 91 Mussolini, therefore, had a theory of motives and
a theory of truth. One had to be disjointed from the other; while there were some
critical points of contact, the distinction was relatively clear-cut.
THE YOUNG MUSSOLINI,
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM AND ANTI-RATIONALISM
Along with the antirationalist theory of motive. Mussolini had an anti-

intellectualistic theory of truth. The first signs of this second conception can
be found in his first publications. 92 His collaboration with the
revolutionary syndicalist movement strengthened his inclination to view
intellectualist formulations with considerable reservations. The
transition from a form of rigorous positivism, of the type of Ardigò, to
pragmatism, appears evident in his writings between 1902 and 1909. 93 In
1903, Mussolini still spoke of the "inevitable" rise of socialism as an automatic
consequence of the capitalist production. In 1904 he still approved of
Pareto's "healthy positivism". 94 In 1908 he again referred to Marx's "economic
determinism" to give a valid explanation of all the collective actions of man.
"Examine all the motives of human thought, and you will find that they were
'determined' by economic and profane motives." 95
In theory one could also predict the course of events; it would be enough to take
into consideration a limited number of variables that have the form of
economic interests, and to systematically relate them to each other, to
formulate sufficiently reliable forecasts. Knowing some things about the degree
of development of the production process, it would be possible to make
predictions about some things about the degree of development of social
theories and collective behavior. 93 In a sense, particular privileged variables
were believed to cause particular effects. The relationship between
economic variables and motives, as immediate determinants of behavior,
was initially considered consequential, necessary and irreversible.
It suffices to superficially examine what Mussolini wrote between 1902 and 1908,
to realize that at the time he accepted, at least in part, this position. But,
under the influence of the revolutionary syndicalists, in
particular of Sorel, and of the anti-rationalists, in particular of Pareto, his

convictions underwent substantial modifications. As early as 1908
Mussolini was beginning to admit that "some notions of [Marx's] economics
are wrong". 97 In 1909 it was agreed that "we do not exclude that some parts -
the secondary ones - of Marxist economic doctrine are lacking... » 98
However, if one follows a rigid economic determinism, any error in economic
theory, even the slightest one, leads to substantial changes in the general
conclusions. When this awareness, however vague, is combined with the belief
that feelings are the dynamic motive for behavior, the original theory begins to
take on quite a different face. Starting from an unspecified moment of this
period. Mussolini, according to what he himself says, gradually moved away from
positivism. 99 With this departure, the economic determinism of classical
Marxism had also weakened sufficiently to allow the gradual intrusion of
extraneous variables: in this case, moral sentiment is the consequence of a well-
defined belief.
In April 1909 Mussolini expressed his reservations about the positivism of

Comte, the social evolution of Spencer and the "verbal constructions" of
sterile and isolated intellectuals. He preferred them "a philosophy of action, a
pragmatic philosophy." 100
In May of that same year, the consequences that this conversion implied were
clear: 'Socialism, out of love for economic determinism, had subjected man
to inscrutable laws which one can badly know and must submit to; syndicalism
places in history the effective will of man who is determined and in turn decisive,
of the man who can leave the imprint of his modifying force on the things or
institutions that surround him, of the man who 'can will' in a given direction:
syndicalism does not reject 'economic necessity' but adds 'ethical awareness' to it".
101
From 1909 Mussolini fixed his concepts of social and historical dynamics in
terms of the interdependence of variables.
In 1913 he maintained: «The doctrine of historical materialism 'did not intend to

establish between the economic phenomenon and the others, a relationship of
necessary causality, that is, logical and chronological, but a relationship of
importance'. In other words: the economic factor is the most important, but it does
not determine - by itself - the other social factors ». 102
Marx, Mussolini went on, was wrong to "attribute hyperbolic importance to homo
oeconomicus". 103
To a substantial even if indefinite extent, men are moved to action by

moral considerations, by convictions that are the result of will. Such actions,
whether individual or collective, act as independent determining
factors in any historical and social situation.
These individual and collective actions are necessary for political activity,
actions that cannot reasonably be interpreted as an inevitable
consequence of their economic process or of reason alone.
For Mussolini, this was the interpretation of Marxism also proper to revolutionary
socialism. In 1906 Enrico Leone had observed
recognized that "socialism does not exclude, as Sorel demonstrated,

neither the human will nor the conjuncture of occasional causes in the
determination of social facts". 104
According to Mussolini, Marxism does not "lead to a kind of fatalism. Marxism,

on the other hand, is a doctrine of will and conquest... » 105 Marx was a «
voluntarist », a revolutionary who could hardly have satisfied himself with
the positivist formulas of his followers. 106 The intrinsic analysis presented
by Mussolini in support of this interpretation is interesting. He refers to the
passage from the Poverty of Philosophy in which Marx states: «Of all the
means of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary
class itself...» 107 If the economic foundation of society, i.e. the complex
of causes that determine the whole of human history, includes
among its main components the activity of the revolutionary class, the
materialistic interpretation of history can be considered essentially
voluntaristic.
There is no doubt that the passage cited above complicates any simplistic
interpretation of the relationship between economic variables and those of
collective reaction. Any interpretation that considers the collective reaction
as a simple consequence of the influence of the productive forces would be wrong,
(also combined with productive relations) on group predispositions, given that

the revolutionary class itself is the major productive force.
In 1914 Mussolini recognized that his voluntarist interpretation of Marxism was one
of many possible interpretations. Replying to his opponents, he stated: "You see
Marxism through an evolutionary, positivist interpretation of history,
we see it... through an idealistic, more modern interpretation... Marxism too has the
letter and the spirit. ... it is the spirit of Marxism, and not so much the Marxist
doctrine in its formal and surmountable expression, that informs our Weltanschauung
». 108
This theoretical reinterpretation of Marxism represented not only the abandonment

of positivism, but also the total acceptance of pragmatism. The re-
evaluation of the function of convictions deriving from the will in the field of political
activity led to a reinterpretation of the entire cognitive process. It is
certain that Mussolini's adherence to an anti-rationalist political activism was
contemporary with the adoption of an anti-intellectualistic epistemology.
Reason without will not only leads to political immobility, 109 but also proves incapable
of offering a valid explanation of reality. The consequences of this statement are much
more important than any anti-rationalistic commitment to interpreting the
motives of collective behavior. In fact, like Pareto, one can have an anti-rationalistic
conception of collective conduct, without being anti-intellectual.
Mussolini, on the other hand, was an anti-intellectualist. He came to attribute to reason
an instrumental and ductile value whose exclusive or main task was not
that of the search and definition of definitive, exhaustive and inviolable truths. Reason
is a tool
to change the world and, by changing it, to understand it. Intellectuals, men insincere
towards the world, more interested in formulating metaphysical theories than in
tackling the immediate problems that beset humanity, are concerned only with
elaborating arcane, abstruse and abstract systems. 110
Mussolini advocated a "philosophy of action, a pragmatic philosophy". m We know

that Leonardo Papini and Prezzolini were well known magazine published by
,
to him, who actively propagated pragmatism, in Italy,

during the first decade of our century. 112 Under Leonardo's impulse,
pragmatism became a widespread philosophical attitude. It is probable that
Mussolini read Papini's Twilight of the Philosophers about Leonardo; we
certainly know that by the same author he read The finished man, judging
it "extraordinaryand admirable". 113 Even William James, the founder of
pragmatism, judged Papini's arguments sufficiently accurate, so much so that he
quoted them in his Pragmatism. 114 In 1909, on the other hand, even before
Sorel himself had openly declared his specific debt to pragmatism, it had
already entered the theme of Italian syndicalism. Panunzio attributed to
syndicalism an "above all pragmatic" character; and Prezzolini, in the volume
that Mussolini reviews for II Popolo, interpreted Sorel in an unequivocally
pragmatic key. 115
In all likelihood Mussolini's knowledge of pragmatism was indirect. There is no

evidence that he read any of James's works, although, in French and Italian
translations, these had become increasingly widespread. In 1924, when he
was asked what influence pragmatism had on the evolution of his thought.
Mussolini specified that it had been important because it had taught him "to
judge actions by their results rather than by their doctrinal basis". 116 Mussolini
saw in pragmatism a method and an attitude rather than any particular
result. And in this his ideas coincided, at least in substance, with those
of James himself who
claimed:
« [Pragmatism] has no dogmas, no doctrines, except its own method...

The pragmatic method, that is, does not aim at achieving particular results,
but only at offering a guiding attitude.
The attitude whereby attention is diverted from prototypes, principles,
categories, presumed needs and directed towards the final results, fruits,
consequences, facts ». 117
Similar relief can be found in the essay by Papini of 1906:
« [Pragmatism] will deal very much with methods, tools of knowledge and action,
because it will be convinced that it is much more important to improve or create
methods to obtain exact predictions or to change
ourselves or others who toy with empty words around incomprehensible

problems... will excite men to do more than to say, to transform more than to
contemplate ». 118
This, in substance, was the way in which Mussolini interpreted the

pragmatism of syndicalism: "program... It is a method, and not a doctrine,
and not dogma, action and not formula". 119
Therefore "to our intelligence [are not presented] complete doctrinal systems, but
problems that force us to think and convert our position as spectators into
that of actors". 120
Pragmatism, especially as it was understood by Papini, and as later

interpreted by Mussolini, was particularly suited to political voluntarism.
Papini's 1906 essay dedicated to James' Will to Believe emphasized in particular
the fact that there exist human situations in which "a fact may not even occur at
all if there is no previous faith in its occurrence", in which "faith in a fact it helps
to create the fact.' 121 In the political field, this conception satisfied the need for
Mussolini's interpretation of historical materialism as a decisive will on the
part of the revolutionary minority and faith on the part of the masses.
As we have already said, Mussolini distinguished between the conscious

conviction of the revolutionary elite and the faith of the organized masses. In
making this distinction he was influenced by Papin's interpretation of
pragmatism. In an essay published in 1905 on Leonardo Papini he said that ,
pragmatism was essentially intended to "increase our ability to change things",

and he also specified that, in order to act effectively, a competent
understanding of the facts was necessary, since it it offers the possibility of
predicting the future course of things more accurately. 122 For Mussolini this
was the primary task of the revolutionary aristocracy; thus prepared, the elite can
activate the masses towards its specific goals, using functional myths.
In 1914 Mussolini had already elaborated a particular set of social and

political conceptions which, strictly speaking, could be considered his personal
one. None of the elements of these conceptions were original:
at least, no more than each of the elements of the set of ideas that make up
the Communist Manifesto can be considered original; but, due to the form in
which these elements were articulated due to the prominence given to
each of them, Mussolini's social and political thought was
absolutely original. He conceived of society in terms of an incessant and
relentless conflict between heterogeneous social elements which, grouped
around specific needs and interests, and stabilized by feelings of
identity fostered by functional or organizational myths, manifest a deep
unity within the group and hostility for elements outside the group itself.
In each of these hostile elements, command constitutes the privilege of a

political and intellectual strategic elite. A social element tempered by the
struggle, animated by a myth that imposes discipline and sacrifice, guided
by capable managerial cadres, is destined to obtain dominance, in the
continuous alternation of the elites that characterizes the whole of history.
A society is made up of these heterogeneous elements. Its limits are

established by wider needs and interests such as, for example, the
common geographical origins, the commonality of blood, language and
culture. 123 Society primarily requires economic prosperity:
all its further activity is based on its ability to ensure its members at least
the minimum of sustenance. When the economic basis of society evolves
through the development of its productive forces, the pre-existing social
relations, characterized by the domination of a selected minority, lose stability
and the way opens for succession. A power elite, suited to the hitherto
existing social order, may prove no longer suited to the new. At this point
society probably enters a period of transition during which a completely
new society is formed and developed within the old one. 124 Under the
direction of a new elite that opposes the previous one, new institutions
appear, more suited to the new situations. Their emergence entails a period of
violence, more or less long since the old elite do not voluntarily renounce
their privileges. 125 The new elite mobilizes the elementary human
energies that take shape in the new social forces and fights the institutionalized
force with revolutionary violence. The use of
violence not only brings out the true interests of the already established
minority, but also brings about closer group ties on both sides, spelling
out with the utmost clarity the responsibilities of their respective
members. This leads to the "creation of new characters, new values,
new homines". 128 The revolutionary class opposes new values and
new men to the values and men of the order that is about to set.
Within this rising class, an "ideally privileged" minority took the
revolutionary initiative. 127 A "small resolute nucleus, bold and animated
by conscious faith" assumes hierarchical control of the revolutionary
masses.
Due to its narrow social base, the old elite seeks to undermine
united action and to weaken the conviction of the revolutionary
elements through the systematic use of corruption and regular recourse
to conventional hypocrisies. In the twentieth century, the
parliamentary system corrupts, while democratic and humanitarian
nonsense results in deception. The only defenses available to
revolutionaries against their opponents' systems are violence or
the threat of violence. The responsible use of violence, and the real
threat of its use, become a moral duty.
In each critical moment in the evolution of society and in the turnover

of the elites, the human will and the creative capacity exert an important,
even if indeterminate, influence.
Mussolini's social and political conceptions had some fundamental

elements in common with the revolutionary syndicalism to which
Mussolini had adhered between 1904 and 1910. Pareto,
Mosca and ultimately Gumplowicz can be considered the main
sources of inspiration for these conceptions. The set of
descriptive propositions, definitions and rules of conduct, variously
mixed with elements of pragmatism, which Mussolini made
his own, presents a wholly coherent Weltanschauung. Nietzsche on the
whole provided nothing more than the emotional overtones
for this basic individualistic world view. 128 Nietzsche was considered
the herald of a new pragmatic transposition of values. 129 His was
the voice of rebellion and dissent
without compromises. 130 However, he did not contribute substantially

to the formation of Mussolini's socio-political conceptions.
Nietzsche expressed a state of mind and exemplified a mental attitude; he
was the poet laureate of revolutionaries of all stripes.
It is difficult to say with any certainty to what extent the young Mussolini was
influenced by Henri Bergson. The few times that Mussolini speaks of Bergson, it
is only to say that he was influenced by him, but nothing indicates what
effect that influence may have had on his thinking.
THE YOUNG MUSSOLINI AND THE CONCEPT OF CLASS
The whole complex of ideas accepted by Mussolini caused him to be

defined as essentially Marxist, inasmuch as the fundamental theoretical
and analytical concept around which his construction revolved was the "class".
The heterogeneous elements of society that provided the dynamic force
for social change were the classes. The struggle in which they were engaged
was class struggle. The imminent victory was the victory of the proletarian class.
The class destined to succumb was the bourgeoisie. 131
In 1910, when he became director in charge of the organ of the Socialist

Regional Federation of Forlì, Mussolini called his sheet The class struggle. For
Mussolini, class struggle was the essence of Marxism. 132
In 1911, he specified which elements of Marxism he believed were still viable;

they were: 1) the doctrine of economic determinism; 2) the class struggle; 3) the
concept of catastrophic social changes. 133
At that time, however, the precise influence of man's will and

intelligence was included among the variables which, all together, constituted
"causes" in Mussolini's scheme of "economic determinism". Indeed, he
gave a "more modern, more idealistic" interpretation of determinism. His was
not a true and proper determinism, unless one wants to understand by
determinism that which accepts as causes the motives, conscious and
unconscious, rational and irrational, which lead individuals and communities to
action.
His interpretation of determinism was essentially Sorelian, with

exquisitely pragmatic differentiations and tones. What remained was
the concept of class struggle and catastrophic or revolutionary change;
but the latter is, in itself, consequent to the class struggle. 134 In
other words, the class struggle was the only element of classical
Marxism that survived. This appears evident in all that Mussolini wrote
between 1910 and 1914. The attachment to this concept
characterized his positive and social thinking for as long as he
remained a Marxist. The class represented the fundamental concept
of his vision of the world. "Class," said Mussolini, "is the instrument of
human regeneration." 135
In 1911 Mussolini repudiated "Marxist theology," arguing that "Carlo Marx

is not necessary for socialism." 136 It was necessary
"interpret Marx" and it was not necessary to "interpret Marxist theories

literally". 137 Socialism remains socialist as long as the concept of
class remains the theoretical and analytical foundation of social
and political thought. As long as this is the case, the goals and
values of the socialist cause do not change. Class solidarity
gives rise to an associative form which assumes a primary value in the
sense that any other associative form has only a derivative or
instrumental-normative importance. Class obligations define the moral
responsibilities of the individual; its whole moral world is conditioned
by class struggle and therefore any other form of association involves
only secondary obligations: duties towards the family, religion
and nation can therefore only be observed when they do not conflict with duties toward
This being the case, Mussolini was a fierce enemy of any

affirmation based on the concept of the individual conceived as not
belonging to a specific class. Nationalism, on the other hand,
considered national solidarity fundamental and primary, class solidarity
contingent. Nationalism held that identification with class should be
sacrificed in favor of the identification of the individual with
his 'people'. When the concept of "class" broadens to become the
concept of "people", the association which assumes the fundamental
moral value for the individual becomes the nation. 138
The nation becomes the fundamental element for moral regeneration and
the myth that holds it together appeals to its historical, traditional and
political continuity. When the nation reaches this condition of moral
privilege, the individual has an obligation to defend it. This defense
involves an efficient unitary organization which, in turn, requires
unanimous consent and the predisposition to place the interests of the
nation above the interests of class and category. As this state of
necessity occurs, the continuation of the class struggle constitutes a
contingent commitment and not the fundamental one. Class
struggle loses its importance and socialist ideals must be abandoned.
Mussolini's initial opposition to Italy's entry into the First World War was
expressly based on this observation. "War", he affirmed,
"represents the most acute test of class collaboration..."; 139 and continued:
« war between nations is class collaboration in its most acute, most
grandiose, most bloody form [...]. Here is the deep reason that makes
us hate war. We are far from the softness of professional pacifists.' 140
The war between nations deprives the proletariat of its autonomy, making
it a unit framed within the disciplined ranks of the nation. The proletariat
must set aside its own special interests. The war into which he is drawn
is no longer his war, it is no longer the class war. An international war
would therefore displace the object of allegiance. The feeling of
class loyalty and solidarity would no longer respond to the group
feeling of individuals. The nation would require the elimination of
closed social groups that operate within it to foster social conflicts.
The nation would become the charismatic object
and national victory instead of class victory is the goal to be achieved.

The socialists of all European nations believed that such a thing could
not have happened. The international class consciousness of the
proletariat precluded such an eventuality. The common interests that
constituted the real basis of the collectivity were class interests, the
material interests of the exploited and the non-possessed of all nations. 141
Mussolini in this period maintained that: "There are only two homelands
in the world: that of the exploited and the other of the exploiters". 142 This
thesis was considered a natural consequence of the concrete reality of the interests that
united the proletariat. This concrete reality of interests manifests itself in

the moral sentiments which lead man to action, while the political
formulas which express the latter must reflect the former.
"It's not the formulas that create the moods, but the moods that
create the formulas." 143 "The formulas", continued Mussolini,
"adapt themselves to the events, but to pretend to adapt the events to
the formulas is sterile masturbation, it is vain, it is foolish, it is a
ridiculous undertaking". 144
The correctness of the theoretical formulations of international

socialism was to be tested in the reactions of the various national
proletariats to the international war. Convinced of that. Mussolini faced the
looming threat of the First World War as a fervent pragmatist.
For orthodox socialism the solution was clear: there could be no war.
A few years earlier Napoleone Colajanni had argued that international
conflicts with the ineluctability of natural laws would gradually
decrease in frequency and destructive power, until they ceased altogether.
145
The position of the Second International was clear-cut. In the last

two decades of the nineteenth century, internationalist sentiment had
noticeably increased. The founding of the Second International
was touted as the first step in the direction of active proletarian
internationalism. The representatives of the various national socialist parties
made every effort to coalesce into a class solidarity that transcended
political and cultural frontiers. The life of the International lasted for forty
years, during which there was relative peace between the European
nations. At every congress of the Socialist International, solemn
declarations of peace and international solidarity were heard with
increasing frequency. The 1907 Congress of Stuttgart voted to
oppose "in a revolutionary spirit" any imperialist venture promoted
by the capitalist class. In 1912, the socialist opposition to an international
conflict was reaffirmed during an extraordinary meeting called to face the
growing threat of an armed conflict, constituted by the treaties of alliance
between the great powers, and by the vertiginous arms race.
At the Stuttgart Congress, the French radical socialist Gustave Hervé

had proposed resorting to an insurrectionary general strike in the event of
war being declared. In 1910 he had declared that "the French national
flag is a rag to be hoisted over a dung heap". But in 1914, with the outbreak
of war, Hervé suddenly changed his title
to his newspaper which from La Guerre Sociale became La Victoire...

national victory. He asked to be among the first volunteers to reach the front.
In Germany the socialist deputies voted unanimously, minus one. in favor of

war credits to the Imperial Government and the socialists Paul Lensch
and Alexander Parvus-Helfand began a fiery propaganda
campaign in support of the war.
At the same time Vladimir Burlzcv, a Russian democratic socialist,

returned to his homeland and issued a proclamation inviting all
workers to support the military effort of the armed nation. Kropotkin,
Plekhano\ and Kautsky aligned themselves with their respective countries
in the tragic conflict that set Europe on fire. The whole structure of
international solidarity among the working classes collapsed. The
streets of Vienna, Berlin and Paris teemed with gatherings of workers
exultant at the prospect of international carnage. The internationalist
sentiment of the working classes had dissolved at the first flash of
gunpowder. International socialism had fallen into a crisis from which it
would never recover.
THE YOUNG MUSSOLINI AND NATIONALISM
Mussolini's first and immediate reaction, as head of Italian Socialism and

as director of its main press organ, was a call for "the most absolute
neutrality." His attitude was that of a responsible party leader.
Beginning in 1914 he became increasingly aware of the need to
distinguish his function as a party representative from that of an independent
socialist theorist.
In founding his journal Utopia he specified that « here I can speak in

the first person. Elsewhere, I represent the collective opinion of a party… »
On Utopia he stated that «here I represent my opinion, my

Weltanschauung and I don't care whether or not it agrees with the
average opinion of the Party. Elsewhere I am the soldier who obeys... but
here I am the soldier who can also argue over the surrender. The fact is that
certain deliveries are not discussed in front of the army, just as there is no
controversy about certain truths or heresies in the church.' 14S
What has been said above indicates quite clearly that Mussolini's
intransigence in the face of Italy's possible participation in the war was more
apparent than real, but he could not discuss the question in front of the
"troops".
In July, during the first days of the crisis, he worked to bring together the
party leadership and take a clear position. The delays and indecisions
were considerable. Mussolini proposed that, in the event that Italy was
involved in the war, a general strike was proclaimed (and with this he repeated
what Hervé proposed to the Congress
of Stuttgart of 1907). The party leadership was undecided and the official
agenda made no mention of Mussolini's proposal. In August, the war spread
to Germany, France and Russia, while Britain's entry into the war was
imminent. In Brussels, where the International had been convened,
an extraordinary meeting was convened at which Angelica Balabanoff (who
had been Mussolini's collaborator in the direction of Ae\Y Avanti!) raised
the question of a general strike.
This proposal was rejected by the representatives of the working classes
(with the sole exception of the British delegates). The working class was
ready to support the "bourgeois" governments of their respective nations.
The international movement of the working class was either unable to influence
the course of events or had decided to accelerate them. The working class
movement had largely espoused the thesis of national defense and
assumed "patriotic" positions. The internationalist characteristics of the
proletarian movement faded more and more and the traditional nationalistic
contours reappeared. In Italy, members of the working class began
to speak in terms of collective responsibility.
They talked about the German military organization, the oppression of
Germany and the German autocracy, and condemned them. It was hinted
barely to the responsibility of moral agent of the international

capitalist class. The blame was placed on nations and not on classes.
The language that the internationalists had used until a few months earlier
became inappropriate, almost incomprehensible. Papini and Prezzolini,
who were simultaneously nationalists, syndicalists, futurists and
pragmatists, and had been the men who had called the attention of the
Italians to the value of Mosca's works, Pareto and Sorel, soon passed into
the ranks of the interventionists. The defections began in the
same ranks of orthodox socialism: Massimo Rocca, collaborator of
Avanti! of Mussolini, passed to the side of the interventionists, followed
closely by Olivetti. Immediately afterwards, all the left of the syndicalist
movement actively supported Italy's intervention in the conflict. Even
Filippo Corridoni, the young leader of the revolutionary syndicalists,
joined the interventionist clamor; that same Corridoni who, in 1911,
had incited the proletariat "to raise its red flag, symbol of all the blood
shed or to be shed for the social war, shouting a cry of revolt that has not
yet shouted out loud: The tricolor to the manure! ». 147
Cesare Battisti, the socialist with whom Mussolini had collaborated in

Trentino, had settled in Milan and was fomenting the fire of irredentism
among the local socialists. The Italian socialist movement began
to shatter under the blows of the events that overwhelmed it. However,
the position of the party leaders did not change. Throughout August
Mussolini disciplinedly continued to champion the cause of absolute neutrality.
But his personal beliefs were going into crisis. He thoroughly re-examined
the possibilities that the new situation offered to the socialists. These, at
the time of the declaration of war could have proclaimed the
revolutionary general strike. The forces mobilized by the Government
for the war could have suffocated it in bloodshed
revolutionary action; or, the latter would have been victorious and the
socialists would have seized power. In this second hypothesis, they
would have had to face the problem of a possible enemy invasion.
In such a case, the socialists could have condemned the nation to
"martyrdom", opened the way for the enemy and tried to obtain, through
moral persuasion, an honorable peace (the same tactic used later by Lenin). A
such a solution was extremely dangerous. The victorious invaders

could have restored a reactionary regime without a fight, and the
working class, after so much bloodshed for the revolutionary
cause, would have found itself, at best, in no better condition than it
was before the revolution. To Mussolini, the revolutionary general
strike did not seem like a promising solution. 148 Finally, on September
9, some of these fears were expressed in the official Party organ,
Avanti! : the socialists could not seriously consider the prospect of a
general strike in the event of a declaration of war; and this fact left no
choice. Mussolini believed that "we can accept war, but to sponsor it
would mean crossing the barricade and blending in with the others
who intend war... hygiene of the world!" We are on the right track,
socially speaking: we do not mean by this to affirm that our ideas will
not be able to change since only the insane and the dead do not
change.' 149
The socialists, by accepting the war, would have made common

cause with the nationalists and with the futurists. Mussolini's reference
to the futurist motto "War is the only hygiene in the world"
indicated that he was fully aware of the consequences of this choice.
Trade unionists like Olivetti had already faced the dilemma at the time
of the Libyan war in 1911. At that time Olivetti had believed that
the war represented a favorable opportunity to mobilize a
disciplined force in the service of a larger and more lively existence.
Moral regeneration, seen by Sorel as the result of organized

gang violence, could also be achieved by war between states instead
of class struggle.
« As it implies an effort, a desire for domination, a will to power, it

abhors the pale conventional equality sterilely dreamed of by collectivism
and is a prelude to the formation of combative and conquering elites,
unbridled in the assault on wealth and life. There is some of this
program in the so-called futurism, but while this is limited to an
aesthetic-literary understanding of life, syndicalism recognizes the
ranks of the willing and the powerful in the refined worker aristocracies,
made rulers of a superior technicality destined to dominate and direct the
contemporary life. In this respect and to be sincere to the last, we must

say that in present-day syndicalism there are two currents, one of which is only a
revolutionary democratism and the other is an aristocratic revolutionism,
i.e. the true, sincere and original syndicalism, who interprets the boldest
philosophy of will and action, who denies democracy |...] who refers to
Nietzsche,
to Marx, to Schopenhauer (in part), who places himself beyond good and evil, who
resumes the journey of the audacious Renaissance... ». 150
Faced with the challenge of the events of 1914, the radical part of Socialism, i.e.
the revolutionary syndicalists, had refused to remain spectators of events of
such historical magnitude. Not only had the theorists of socialism failed to
understand the historical realities that the war, approved by all the socialist parties
of Europe, had made so evident, but the position taken by the Socialist Party had
condemned Italian socialism to a degrading inactivity. The socialists, by now,
would no longer have made history, but would have suffered it. The radicals
demanded a decision: if the socialists wanted to remain firmly anchored
to absolute neutrality, however, they had to proclaim their intention to operate in
such a way that any declaration of war would represent the signal for a popular
insurrection. But the Party flatly refused to take such a position.
Socialist internationalism had been founded on the supposed identity of working
class interests of all nations.
This identity had proven to be fictitious. In September. Mussolini had been forced
to admit that « the socialist international is dead » and to continue asking «
was it ever really alive? ». 151 The theory turned out to be at odds with the facts.
But a theory which is true, which makes exact predictions for the future,
cannot find itself in stark contrast to the facts.
In mid-October Mussolini affirmed that the concept of absolute neutrality could

not be supported any further. The socialists could not assume a position of
absolute and cynical indifference in the face of the catastrophe whose
consequences were expected to be very threatening. The war was not only
at odds with socialist theories, but it also evoked forces whose effects were difficult
to predict. Allow
passively that these forces acted without the decisive intervention of

the socialists was clear proof of irresponsibility. Inaction was
also a choice. Socialism was forced to make a serious, inevitable and
vital choice. Prolonged passivity would have aided and emboldened
the Central Powers and Socialism would have been, at least
in part, morally responsible for the victory of reaction in Europe.
But the most important theoretical and moral question that Mussolini
faced in this period was the question of nationality. As long as the
class constituted the main unit of collective identification, the
nation could hardly be taken seriously as an object of loyalty on the
part of the individual. Class duties established the limits of individual
responsibilities. The logic of duty, even if it may seem "heretical,
paradoxical, sacrilegious" demands "the denial of the country". 152 "The
proletariat", stated Mussolini, "must no longer shed its precious blood
in holocaust to the patriotic Moloch. The national flag is for us a rag to be
planted in manure. There are only two homelands in the world: that
of the exploited and the other of the exploiters.' 153
Nationalism could only be regarded as a political fantasy motivated

by the wish, conscious or unconscious, to delay the inevitable federation
of nations to which the working class aspires. 154
As long as class represented the primary object of loyalty, the logic of

duties appeared clear. But the outbreak of the first real European war,
in the space of almost half a century, had demonstrated that,
essentially, the proletariat recognized itself in the nation. Mussolini,
pragmatist that he was, could not overlook this obvious, albeit painful,
reality. He had often reiterated that it is the facts and not the dogma
that confirm or deny the theoretical affirmations of the responsible
political leaders: only "the facts confirm the Marxist theories".
155 It had become clear, he argued, to those who were "neither
blind nor dogmatic" that "national problems" also existed for socialism.
The theoretical belief that the concept of "nation" was now "outdated"
was a fiction which forced its followers to adopt absurd positions in the
face of reality. 156
Mussolini understood that Socialism had been overwhelmed by « a new

reality » which threatened all his convictions. 157 The obvious consequence
was that he could no longer speak as a party representative. The day
after the publication of his article in which he called for the
abandonment of the formula of "absolute neutrality" Mussolini
resigned as director of Avanti!, although the party had offered him the
possibility of a reconciliation. 158
On 25 October he stated that the events had to be considered from a

national point of view. On the evening of 10 November he spoke to an
assembly of the Milan section of the Socialist Party trying to explain the
dilemma of socialism. "The origin of our psychological discomfort," he said,
"is this: we socialists have never examined the problems of nations.
The international has never dealt with it; the international is dead, overwhelmed
by events ». 159 And he continued: «It is evident that the nation
represents a stage in human progress, which has not yet been
overcome... The feeling of nationality exists and it cannot be denied!
The old anti-patriotism has faded away... ». 160
On 11 November Mussolini admitted: 'I wonder if internationalism

is an element absolutely necessary to the notion of socialism. Tomorrow's
socialist critique could also practice finding a balance between the nation
and the class ». 181
Mussolini had finally discovered the most portentous reality of the nineteenth
century: the nation,
THE TRANSITION TO FASCISM
We know that the First World War generated strong critical and theoretical
tensions within orthodox socialism. From these tensions arose both
Bolshevism and Fascism. One of the essential foundations of
historical materialism was the claim that class constituted the main theoretical
and analytical tool for evaluating world history. This conviction provided the
foundation for the tactical orientation of the various socialist movements,
defined values and offered the conditions for moral duties. Class analysis
guided the tactical orientation
and strategy of revolutionary movements in the first decade of the

twentieth century. This orientation was defended on the basis of the
commonality of socio-economic interests of the working class
considered the opposite of the international bourgeoisie. Historical and
social reality was arranged in horizontal layers formed by classes,
which intersected the vertical divisions formed by nations and
peoples. The main difference between the supporters of the various forms
of contemporary nationalism and the followers of orthodox socialism
stemmed from the fact that the former attributed a moral and
theoretical priority to the concept of "nation" as opposed to that of
"class", while the latter subordinated the concept and reality of
the nation to the historically more valid and theoretically more
productive concept of class. The orthodox socialists reasoned as if the class
consciousness of the working class were the most important reality of our time.
The reality of the First World War brought down this faith with a tremendous
blow. 162
The war highlighted the close ties that united the working class to
the bourgeoisie of their own nation. The defeat of the national
bourgeoisie, in the historical circumstances of the time, would
have been the ruin of the working class. The loss of colonies, the
amputation of entire provinces, the reparation of war damages… all would
have fallen heavily on the working classes. Clear and immediate class
interests thus made the working classes nationalist. But, in addition to this,
the feeling of nationality prevailed even where there were no material
interests of any kind. The ardent nationalism of the Slavic peoples, which
Mussolini knew thoroughly, the vehement and irrepressible requests for
national autonomy and for joining the unredeemed provinces to the
Motherland, all led us to believe that Nationalism was not, first and foremost,
an economic phenomenon . No doubt any nationalism, in order
to survive, must have a viable economic basis and, consequently, it could
be said that nationalism is, in this sense, conditioned by economic
factors. But any serious evaluation of nationalism requires a much
broader study of its causes. The attempt to explain nationalism
by reducing it to a
superstructure of the economic base, is frustrated by examples of

classical nationalism that cannot be traced to such a scheme.
The history of the Jews represents a typical example in this respect. All Marxist
theorists, from Marx to Stalin, have denied that Jews can constitute a
nationality. They had neither territory, nor economy, nor culture, nor
language in common. And yet the Jews are the living example of a typical
nationalism.
The fact is that in 1914 the historical reality of national sentiment forced
Mussolini to abandon the concept of "class" as a fundamental unit of analytical
measurement. He conceived of man as a social animal
predisposed, by its nature, to associate in well-defined communities,
supported by the common feeling of a common destiny. To have had
common glories in the past, to have clear affinities and common goals in the
present, to have accomplished notable deeds in unity of purpose, and to have
common for the future, all of this is the foundation of fullness of life. Until
the crisis of the First World War, the international class represented for
Mussolini the main object of loyalty. During the crisis of 1914, it became
clear to him, as he specified a few years later, that 'the object of loyalty was
too vast'. 163 The international working class did not possess the necessary
affinities, common traditions and common aspirations which form
the foundation of a spiritual community. The spiritual community constitutes
the Sorelian means of regeneration, the charismatic object which
defines the sphere and character of duties, which directs men in a
disciplined way towards higher ends, which gives meaning to life.
Orthodox socialism had been overwhelmed by another reality: the reality of

national consciousness, the reality of national sentiment. This sentiment
was infinitely stronger and more demanding than that of international
workers' unity, the artificiality of which had been highlighted by the crisis. The
crisis had demonstrated that the heterogeneous social groupings fighting for
domination, in a world where struggle was an irrepressible reality, were
Nations and not classes. Nations and not classes express these groups,
led by warrior aristocracies, governed by functional myths, made morally
valid by higher myths.
In 1910, Mussolini, having to give a title to the newspaper he directed, had chosen
that of The Class Struggle. In 1914, after resigning from the directorship of
Avanti! he chose the title II Popolo d'Italia for the masthead of his new newspaper.
The "class" had become "the people". As he himself had said a few years earlier,
whoever says "people" says "nation".
».
Mussolini was no longer just a "proletarian"; he was also an Italian.
1 1 . Mussolini's social and political thought took on those particular doctrinal aspects
which were to characterize Fascism, during the years between Italy's entry into
the First World War, in 1915, and the March on Rome, in 1922.
Between 1915 and the foundation of the Combat Fasci in , occurred on the 23rd
March 1919, Mussolini drew up the first profile of the Fascist Doctrine; the
following period, during which the movement was transformed into the National
Fascist Party, saw the more precise and articulated formulation of the
doctrinal foundations characteristic of Fascism. In this period, the development
of ideas occurred continuously and according to a coherent logic. This evolution
continued even after the rise to power. However, it is good to focus attention on
this first period of doctrinal development because in this way it is possible to
judge with greater knowledge of the facts the value of the opinions, expressed with
considerable frequency in current writings, according to which, behind the
organization of the fascist squads.
Mussolini would have had no clear social doctrine and constructive politics. 1
Until 1914, Mussolini had experienced only one social and political doctrine: Marxist
doctrine, as it was then understood. As he himself said, there had not existed,
at least since Engels' death, a univocal interpretation of the doctrine,
universally accepted by socialist thinkers. 2 Within the socialist movement,
numerous contrasting schools had arisen, influenced by the most varied intellectual
currents. Mussolini's interpretation expressed the thought of a considerable
number of revolutionary socialists in pre-war Italy. Mussolini's socialism, however,
remained socialism only as long as class membership was held to be the
historical and social relationship
fundamental among individuals. The whole structure of his socialism

rested on this critical concept. As long as class was the object of allegiance
and as long as it was believed to represent the means for a moral
renewal of society, Mussolini could remain a socialist, however original his
interpretations and extensive his revisions. But once his conviction on
the supremacy of relationships
class was shaken by the events that had followed the outbreak of the
European conflict of 1914, its socialism was fatally compromised. As the nation
grew larger in its thinking, its socialism underwent an equal and
opposite crumbling. In 1914, this process was not at all clear even to
Mussolini himself. Seen in retrospect, however, it appears wholly
inevitable.
On 24 November 1914, when he was expelled from the Socialist Party,

Mussolini declared that expulsion could not deprive him of the "socialist faith".
3 To his new newspaper II Popolo d'Italia added the subtitle of Quotidiano
Socialista.
The intervention of the nation in the European conflagration constituted

an immediate topic of discussion and a problem that divided the
socialists; but, given that most of the socialist parties on the continent had
opted for war. Mussolini argued that interventionism was not a sufficient
reason to abandon Socialism.
He asserted that at the end of the conflict now raging in Europe, the
interventionist socialists would reorganize themselves and formulate their
own program comprising only one sure postulate: "Prepare to arm the
proletariat for the social revolution". 4 Still in December 1914, he thought
that the class struggle should be resumed after the war, 5 and until the
end of January 1915 he continued to speak of international Socialism as
an "inescapable reality of tomorrow". 6 He therefore felt entitled, in the
period immediately following his expulsion from the Socialist Party, to continue
to define himself as a socialist. 7
But the ideological contrasts produced by the struggle for Italy's intervention
in the war had a decisive influence and Mussolini's thought underwent
the last, critical, transformation, which changed his socialism into Fascism.
THE FIRST FASCISM f
Already in the period preceding the outbreak of the First World War,
Mussolini had given shape to a set of social and political convictions to
which he continued to remain faithful, with remarkable consistency,
throughout his political life. It was a Socialism informed, and
transformed, by elements drawn from the thought of Pareto, Sorel,
Michels, and reproduced in the writings of various revolutionary syndicalists,
the most important of which were A. 0. Olivetti and Sergio
Panunzio. It was a Socialism that was more pragmatist than rationalist,
more interested in moral renewal than in a fair distribution of economic
goods; a Socialism convinced that historical changes are the consequence
more of a strong-willed commitment on the part of a strategic elite
than of a maturation in the economic basis of society. All of this was
Socialism only insofar as the instrument of moral renewal was represented
by the class with which the individual identified, and insofar as
the strategic and dynamic elite constituted the vanguard of the proletariat.
This revised Socialism remained socialist only as long as the class was
considered the fundamental element of historical transformation. The
idea that class could assume this critical function seemed to arise
from the long and violent class clashes that had plagued Italy during the
last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the
twentieth. The thesis of international class solidarity had served only to give
a concrete value, in the context of the historical development of Europe
as a whole, to the dynamic and decisive importance of belonging
to a class. Only with the beginning of the First World War was there
irrefutable proof of the falsehood of this thesis. The events that followed
immediately after the outbreak of the war cast serious doubts on the
usefulness, for any theoretical or practical purpose, of considering the
class as a fundamental analytical unit.
Almost immediately after his expulsion from the Socialist Party, Mussolini
revealed that the war had grouped entire populations into national
units within which class differentiations had lost all value and importance. 8
Basically. Mussolini began to believe that nations represented a more
valid analytical unit than classes. The
men, he said, are induced to action not only by their immediate material,
that is to say class, interests, but also by psychological and moral
considerations which transcend them.
Mussolini recognized a relatively constant set of moral and psychological

feelings that lead to action as that historical and national product
which ensures the temporal and spiritual continuity of peoples.
Each historically defined people, he argued, is the result of a set of
characteristic material and spiritual elements that inform bourgeoisie
and proletariat about themselves. 9 Class interests are conditioned by
national interests and, in a certain sense, are subordinated to them.
"The class", stated Mussolini, "is a community of interests, but the

nation is a history of feelings, of traditions, of language, of culture, of
lineages". 10
The thesis of the priority of class interests over national interests was no
longer acceptable; all the events of recent European history invalidated
it. Only a dogmatist, Mussolini continued, could deny the evident reality of
the feeling of nationality so eloquently confirmed by the willingness
of the proletariat to sacrifice themselves for it. This revision of his judgment
on the European situation moved both from a national point of view
and from a socialist point of view; in this way, he anticipated the possibility
of arriving at a "national Socialism" which would better accord with the
irrefutable facts against which the theoreticians of Socialism clashed in
vain.
Furthermore, the importance that the concepts of nation and people had
assumed in his thinking forced Mussolini to revise the datum of the
international solidarity of the working class, on which his ideas had
been based before the war. In December 1914 he had admitted that,
in fact, such internationalism was empty of content. In January 1915 he
affirmed that « the international workers [...] has shown itself to be
proof of the facts - more than powerless to face the events and
prevent the war event - non-existent ». u
The reality of the ongoing conflict made it clear that the peoples of Europe
were seeking to realize their national aspirations and not those of their class.
Faced with the realization of these aspirations, the call for class struggle
was in vain. What circumstances demanded was national unity. 12 The
consequences of this new orientation were obvious. Mussolini advocated
a return to the nationalism of Mazzini and the rejection of Marx, should
the reality, the complexity and the stress of the events of the moment have
required it. 13
By May 1915 these ideas were well established in him. Only men willing
to lie to themselves and to deceive others could fail to recognize that
internationalism, understood as a valid political alternative, was now
dead. On the day Italy entered the war, Mussolini wrote: "Never
before have we felt as at this moment that the homeland exists, that it
is an irrepressible and perhaps insurmountable datum of human
consciousness; never, as at this beginning of the war, have we
felt that Italy is a historical, living, bodily, immortal personality ». 14
A month later he wrote: «The Fatherland is the hard and firm ground, the
millenary construction of the race; internationalism was the fragile ideology
that could not weather the storm. The blood that gives life to the Fatherland
has killed the International.' 15
The nation was a reality such as the International had never managed
to be. The nation was a permanent historical, physical and moral reality,
united in culture and tradition, based on complex and interacting
characteristics, favored by contemporary economic development; the nation
possessed all the requisites to enjoy lasting vitality, and the war had
revealed that it represented the primary object of loyalty on the part of
the vast majority of the national proletariat. 16
The nation, Mussolini argued, is the "great product of history", whose value,
which had long been "disowned and despised", was revealed on the
occasion of the deadly challenge launched by the First World War. 17
Against this evident reality was the International, an

organization existing only on paper, which it had never produced
much more than sporadic editions of some theoretical treatise in one of its
"official" languages (among which the Italian language was not included).
But the unreality of the International manifested itself in a more significant

aspect: it was founded on the hypothetical existence of a particular real entity:
the class.
It has now been demonstrated, Mussolini continued, that classes, as such, do

not exist. There are groups and subgroups, distinguishable one from the
other by variety of interests and mentalities and connected to each other
by complex and not always clear relationships.
The concept of "proletariat" represents an ideal, abstract type which may also
serve mnemonic or heuristic purposes, but which bears no
correspondence to reality. That being the case, any talk of the fight
becomes incomprehensible: "If there are no classes, there is no class struggle

either. There is a struggle that is not a class struggle, but a human one. Every
individual or group wants to secure the greatest amount of well-being in this
vale of tears. To obtain greater well-being it can frequently happen - and it has
already happened - that so-called bourgeois men struggle against equally
bourgeois men and that so-called proletarian men find themselves in conflict with
equally proletarian men ». 18
Mussolini had come to conceive of the nation as a particular type of social

system; a system that has its roots in tradition and sentiment; which is vast and
diverse enough for it to be self-sufficient in relation to the functional
needs of its members. The nation manages to satisfy material, psychological
and moral needs.
Less than a month after his expulsion from the Socialist Party, Mussolini wrote
that the war had highlighted "the seed of new unthinkable political
constructions" based on the objective fact "that 'peoples and states' everywhere
achieved their fusion in the bloc of national unanimity". 19 In Germany, Belgium,
France, England, Switzerland and Russia, the same fusion between people, state
and nation was observed. The war had revealed the unbreakable commonality
of material, psychological and moral interests which forms the backbone of
national unity. 20 This identity of
material and spiritual interests go beyond and transcend any

particular class, category or regional interest.
During the initial period of the development of the Fascist doctrine,

these ideas, which subsequently became more and more precise,
were referred to the nation at war. The nation, Mussolini
maintained, quoting Jean Jaures, is not the simple product of
economic variables. The nation has an essentially moral content. 21
The nation not only feeds us, but also provides for laying the
foundations of our spiritual personality, just as our parents do: just as
we cannot give up the latter, we cannot even give up the former. 22
Fidelity and obedience are owed to the nation, and not to class or
category. All forces must be placed in its service. All local and
particular interests must be subordinated to it. Thus, in July 1915,
Mussolini, who for so long had ardently defended the strike as a
weapon in the class struggle, now railed against any work stoppage
which might harm that nation by himself, by his own admission,
once vilified. 23 The nation demanded that not only workers but also
parliamentarians be voted into its service. If the working masses of
the nation had to devote themselves to the interests of the
community, the same had to be asked of the political class. The minority
ruling class of the Nation was to rule, mobilizing the efforts of the
Nation to the cause of victory. But precisely for this task, according
to Mussolini's judgement, the ruling class had proved to be
incapable. 24 He proclaimed himself an anti-parliamentarian because
parliament had failed in its duties towards the nation. 25 The Italian
parliament had become "a pestiferous bubo which poisons the
blood of the nation". It was therefore necessary to extract
I speak. 26 His opposition to parliament was no longer based on the

notion that it represented only particular class interests; but it
stemmed from the belief that parliament was now incapable of
representing and defending the vital interests of IN action.
Mussolini had always opposed parliamentarianism. He conceived
social changes, political organization and government in a substantially
elitist manner and his analysis of the Italian situation during the war
crisis was consistently elitist. Since January of;l 1915, with the organization
interventionist of the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionario, Mussolini spoke

of a minority of men determined to do anything, animated by a solid
awareness of the national interest, capable of instilling in the masses a
state of mind that would push them to achieve collective aspirations.
27 For the first time in history, Mussolini said, "the anonymous masses"
had assumed the role of instruments of history. 28 Their leaders could
only be apostles or soldiers. 29 All the teachings of Pareto, Sorel
and Michels necessarily forced him to express a similar opinion.
In December 1917 this conviction was joined by the intuition that the future
of the nation would be in the hands of a new aristocracy, "the aristocracy
of the trenches", an elite made up of men for whom the reality of the
nation was become an overbearing and vital belief.
Only the short-sighted or the foolish were unable to foresee this
political outcome of the situation. Only this aristocracy could have
represented, in a complete sense, the future political ideals
which, unique, would have inflamed the inert and clueless masses.
Depending on the circumstances and respective points of view, these
ideals would define "democracy" or "socialism". And, concluded
Mussolini, in all likelihood this Socialism would have been anti-Marxist and national. 30
Given the set of ideas that had been developing in his mind since
October 1914, Mussolini had gradually watered down his class socialism
which, admittedly, was no longer Marxist.
*On 11th August 1918, he changed the subtitle of his newspaper,

which from "Quatidiano Socialista" became "Daily of fighters and
producers". In announcing this change, he specified that the
term "socialist" no longer corresponded to the ideas expressed by
the newspaper. 31
Thus, many of the typical themes of orthodox Socialism such as "class",

"class struggle", "profit", and "economic determinism" were abandoned
or underwent such modifications that they lost their original meaning.
32 In the same era, Mussolini drew attention to the hierarchical
order in which it was necessary to frame the activities that characterized
production in national life. 33 The terms "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie" no
longer had a precise meaning on the political level. From the point of
In view of the national interest, only those categories existed which

carried out productive activities: these could also be defined as "productive
classes", but only for the purpose of indicating the particular function
of each of them in the system of interdependent functions out of which national
life is formed. On the basis of this conception of the unitary life of the nation,
Mussolini began to speak of « coincidence of
interests » between workers and employers, which made possible their

collaboration within the framework of a program of total acceleration of
economic productivity. 34 Subsequently, the program of
collaboration between productive categories became the fundamental theme
of the doctrine of the Fasci. About a week after the cessation of hostilities, in
November 1918, and about five months before the birth of the movement that
was to become Fascism, Mussolini outlined his economic programme.
Presented as "National Syndicalism", this program envisaged an
"economic reconstruction" of the country, in which industry and work would
implement a "close collaboration", combining their respective energies to
reach the maximum level of industrial productivity of the nation. The goal of
National Syndicalism was to make the nation "more beautiful, more alive,
bigger". 35
«There is therefore», stated Mussolini, «a common interest, which at a given

moment elides and cancels the class struggle: the interest of producing [...]
the old political and parasitic socialism is being replaced by national
syndicalism or productivist socialism...". 33
Production must not be limited or compromised by particularistic interests.

37 The differences between workers and employers must be resolved by
means of arbitrations, which give the respective interests of the two
categories equal weight in relation to the general interest of the nation.
Thus a month before the foundation of that organization which later became
the National Fascist Party, Mussolini spoke out in favor of the following
programmatic proposals by Léon Jouhaux:
a) official recognition of trade union organisations;
b ) intervention of these organizations in all employment relationships;

c) advent to management and control;
d) transformation of political administration into economic

administration;
e) expropriation of the bureaucracy and its replacement by the

administration. technical extraction: these are the measures to ensure
the upward march of the nation.
These were the programmatic proposals of the "pragmatic National

Syndicalism" and they were sufficient, in Mussolini's eyes, to differentiate his
economic program from that of "destructive socialism" and the "apocalyptic
and mystical syndicalism of the Sorelian school". 38
In March 1919, when he called for an organization of Fasci in "defense

of victory", Mussolini expounded a series of political, social and economic
concepts which together constituted an already fairly precise doctrine.
Three days before the meeting in Piazza San Sepolcro, which marked the
birth of Fascism, Mussolini spoke to the two thousand workers of
Dalmine, who, as members of the national-syndicalist Unione
Italiana del Lavoro, were protesting against low wage levels and against
the employers' refusal to recognition of their Union, but who also opposed
any work stoppages because strikes of this kind had harmful effects on
the national economy. 39
He told them: «You have placed yourself on the ground of the class, but
you have not forgotten the nation. You spoke of the Italian people, not just
your category of metal workers. For the immediate interests of your
category, you could have carried out the old-fashioned strike, the negative
and destructive strike, but thinking of the interests of the people, you have
inaugurated the creative strike, which does not interrupt production. You
could not deny the nation, after you too fought for it, after five hundred
thousand of our men died for it. The nation that made this sacrifice does not
deny itself, for it is a glorious, a victorious reality. Are you not the poor, the
humble and the outcasts, according to the old rhetoric of
literary socialism; you are the producers, and it is in this claimed capacity of
yours that you claim the right to treat as equals with the industrialists.' 40
Mussolini expounded these same ideas at the meeting in Piazza San

Sepolcro where about one hundred and forty-five participants of all political
faiths, from the futurist FT Marinetti to the revolutionary syndicalist Michele
Bianchi, had gathered to found the Fasci di Combattimento.
Among the participants were professionals, industrialists, merchants and

workers and, mainly, the petty bourgeois. Overall, therefore, the founders
of Fascism came from the same classes and categories as those who had
founded the Third Bolshevik International in Moscow at exactly the
same time.
In both groups there was a large representation of journalists, lawyers,

unemployed professionals or freelancers, that is, of those who are generally
called "intellectuals".
THE FASCISM OF PIAZZA SAN SEPOLCRO
At the meeting in Piazza San Sepolcro Mussolini spoke twice: the first, in
the morning of March 23, 1919 and the second in the afternoon of «the same
day. Both speeches had a doctrinaire character and schematically
established the set of ideas that would characterize Fascism throughout the
period of its initial development up to its definitive rise to power in October
1922, and which would later be inserted into a broader theoretical system
and better defined.
In the afternoon speech he expounded his ideas organically, as only he knew

how to do; he asked for a flexible program to be approved, since political
movements operate on a contingent level; the negative experience of rigid
socialist programs advised establishing only the few postulates
necessary to guide daily activities and providing variable programmatic
guidelines as circumstances varied.
Mussolini offered only two fixed points to the fascists: production and the
nation. The program for the reorganization of the economy was that of the
National Syndicalism, which also envisaged the reorganization of the
State according to the trade unionist line. Mussolini proposed the abolition
of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies and their replacement
with a direct representation of the nation's productive categories.
Political representation could no longer satisfy the precise needs of

modern industrial life. He proposed the creation of a Technical Council of
categories, also called the Council of Corporations, which would
represent the productive elements of the nation. He proposed that the
Fascists actively reach out to the working masses, supporting their demands
for an eight-hour working day and advanced social security
programs. He also proposed supporting workers' aspirations for control of
industries.
"We will support these requests", stated Mussolini, "also because we want
to accustom the working classes to the managerial capacity of companies,
also to convince the workers that it is not easy to keep industry
and commerce going". 41
The implementation of these programs would have led to an economic

and ultimately a political democracy. The fact that Mussolini, in his first
public exposition of a specifically Fascist doctrine, indicated democracy as
an ideal, has always been cited by commentators as evident proof of
Mussolini's inconstancy and of his lack of serious political commitment.
In reality, the most correct interpretation is another. In Italy at the time, the
term "democracy" had a great sentimental effect, but it was also extremely
vague and indistinct. Almost in the same period in which Mussolini used it in
his inaugural speech, Pareto wrote: «... the term democracy is
indeterminate like many other terms of vulgar language... nor is
there any hope of finding anything else to give rigorous and precise
form to what is indeterminate and fleeting". 42
Mussolini was certainly well aware of the vagueness and ambiguity

inherent in this word. He had previously indicated that only the aristocracy
of the trenches returning from the front would be able to give a concrete and
precise meaning to the term.
In any case, whatever value the term democracy had for him in 1919,
it certainly did not mean a majority government. He declared: «We
are decidedly against all forms of dictatorship, from that of the saber
to that of the tricorn, from that of money to that of numbers; we know
only the dictatorship of the will, of intelligence.' 43
This declaration, together with the interpretation of the political

dynamic set out a few paragraphs earlier, could leave no doubt that, at
that time, whatever Mussolini meant by democracy, he certainly did not
mean majority government or even majority initiative.
« It is inevitable that majorities are static, I said, while minorities are

dynamic. We want to be an active minority… ». 44
Whatever this democracy would be, it still had to be the result of the
initiative of a minority, which would assume the guise of a dictatorship
"of will and intelligence".
We have so far talked about the afternoon speech at the meeting in

Piazza San Sepolcro. But the morning talk was also important,
because in it Mussolini traced the general lines of the foreign

policy of Fascist Italy.
Italy was a nation of forty million souls concentrated on a territory

of only two hundred and eighty-seven thousand square kilometres,
one third mountainous and non-cultivable. All other territories,
outside the Peninsula, under Italian rule were largely arid and not
suitable for large-scale colonization. Conversely, he continued, England,
with a population of forty-seven million, possessed a colony empire
of fifty-five million square kilometers, and France, with a population of
less than forty million, an empire of fifteen million square kilometers. .
The Portuguese, Dutch and Belgian dominions in the world were
equally extensive and important. The world, said Mussolini, is
divided into "rich nations and proletarian nations". The former wish
to keep the status quo unchanged, while the latter "claim to
have the place in the world to which they are entitled". 45
In March 1919, therefore, the program and the general strategy of

Fascism were already clear. The theoretical and interpretative formulations
were inherited from Mussolini's socialist past. In the years following the
foundation of the Fasci, up until the March on Rome, this fact was evident in
everything Mussolini said and wrote.
Mussolini's world view, in this period, was always the world view of the
socialist Mussolini, the one found in the works of Gumplowlcz, Pareto, Mosca,
Sorel and Michels. Mussolini continued to consider life as a continuous
struggle, full of conflicts and contrasts.
"Struggle", he affirmed, "is the origin of everything, struggle remains forever

at the very basis of human nature as a supreme fatality". 46
To succeed in being victorious in this continuous and difficult struggle,

individuals must organize themselves into groups that have common interests
and feelings; and by organization we mean hierarchy and command: « a.
The new concept of party responds to the widespread and profound need that
men have for a discipline, for an order, for a hierarchy ». 47 The Nation was
the organization through which the struggle between the groups was to
continue.
These ideas of the fascist Mussolini are identical to those of the

revolutionary socialist Mussolini: the only thing that has changed is, as we
have seen, the fundamental type of organization: from the class. Mussolini
has passed to the nation. For Fascism, a single point of reference was
sufficient: the Nation. Everything else is a necessary consequence of
it. 48 The nation constitutes an irrepressible historical, physical and moral
reality to which everything else is subordinated. 49 The nation is the
union of territorial, material, intellectual and sentimental interests
perpetuating over time, which individuals find when they are born and which
lives on after their death. It is the social system best suited to the real
needs of life, a whole governed by laws whose branches, functionally
articulated, live and operate beyond the person or group of
people temporarily assigned to them. 50
The nation is the custodian of the fundamental values of the community.

51 As such it not only provides for the physical survival of its own
members, but constitutes the very foundation of the human personality. 52
In this way, for the fascist Mussolini the nation exercised exactly the same
functions exercised by the class for the socialist Mussolini. As a socialist.
Mussolini had argued that belonging to class constituted the moral
backbone of individual life, and specified the duties and responsibilities of the
individual in the long historical conflict between groups, opposed by spiritual and
material interests. The myth of the class struggle, understood in the
Sorelian sense, gave individual life its moral meaning. The concept of class
struggle constituted the organizational myth of revolutionary
syndicalism; after 1915 this function was assumed by the concept of nation.
A few days before the March on Rome, and the advent of Fascism in power.
Mussolini stated: « We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, it is a
passion [...] It is a reality in the fact that it is a goad, that it is a hope, that it is a
faith, that it is courage. Our myth is the nation, our myth is the greatness of the
nation! And to this myth, to this greatness [...] we subordinate everything
else*». 53
In January 1922 he had expressed this subordination in terms of hierarchy.

"Whoever says hierarchy", he said, "refers to a scale of human values;
whoever says scale of human values says scale of human responsibilities
and duties, whoever says hierarchy says discipline ». 54
Nationalism was the organizational or functional myth of Fascism.

After coming to power it became the statutory myth of the Regime.
The nation is a historical and complete social system, made up of numerous

subsystems linked together by rules that regulate their relationships: a system
of relatively stable interactions and in which the continuous, reciprocal
relationships between the various constituent subsystems are favored and
specified by durable norms, whose values are expressed through codified
laws and traditional social discipline in the form of custom and common sentiment.
The nation, as a system, finds in the state the concrete expression of its
juridical personality. The state is the primary source of authority;
it constitutes the highest ratification that gives life to a complex of norms, it is the
supreme repository of strength, the undisputed sovereign. 55 This does not
mean that every historically constituted State behaves in this way.
Indeed, the empirical state may not exercise its authority and this lack may be
the consequence of various material and moral influences. In this case there is the
threat of the social system breaking up into a series of minor systems each governed
by a de facto state, an "anti-state", which assumes those prerogatives that the
sovereign state has not been able to exercise. Each social element then acts as
arbiter according to its own interests and force becomes decisive.
In other words, each of these collectivities becomes in practice a state a
itself, and assumes in itself, in fact or potentially, the attributes of the absolute state.
56 The result is the disintegration of what was once the nation, into two or more
nations at war with each other.
For Mussolini, the State was the depository of the force which imposes the sanctions
necessary for the practical application of the laws. In principle the state was
absolutely sovereign; he could, in fact, prefer not to exercise his
prerogatives, but he was not subject to any intrinsic or extrinsic limitations. Social
life without the state would have been impossible, as the state created the
necessary conditions. Mussolini's criticisms of the Marxist thesis of the "destruction
of the state" were based on this conception. The Marxist distinction between the
state that governs men and the communist non-state of the future that will govern
things was, according to him, meaningless.
In reality, Mussolini claimed, the "government of things" in the Soviet Union

had produced the most complex state in history.
Thus, in June 1922, four months before coming to power.

Mussolini had highlighted the elements of the fascist doctrine concerning
the nation and the state. The nation was conceived as a people, understood in its
entirety, while the state was the juridical personification
of the nation. 57 With its positive or negative action, the State established
the moral order, the system of hierarchies, the scale of human values
within which individuals, as transient components of the historical
social system, were born and lived. In this sense, the state had the
greatest moral responsibility. Even religious bodies were to be
subordinated to it, in principle if not in fact. Religious
commandments could not conflict with secular law; none of the rules
governing the religious society was to be in conflict with the interests of the
state.
Thus, already in November 1921, Mussolini had defined the state

as an essentially ethical entity, which he in fact called "the ethical state". 58
THE FASCIST CONCEPT OF THE STATE
This conception of the State, fundamentally Hegelian or neo-

Hegelian, constituted a new element in the development of fascist
doctrine. For a long time. Mussolini had no particular conception of the
state. He had faced the problem as a socialist, but everything seems to
show that his ideas on the matter remained confused and sometimes
contradictory.
We know, for example, that for some time Mussolini was influenced
by philosophical individualism and its implicit anarchism. He himself said
that until 1908 he had remained under the influence of Nietzsche and Max
Stirner,59 which led him to argue that the individual (as such) enjoyed a sort
of moral privilege over any human group organized, and that the only law
binding the individual was that which the individual imposed on himself.
Particularly at that time. Mussolini strenuously objected
to the acceptance of laws of any other nature. However, in 1908, he was

willing to admit how difficult it was theoretically to defend such a position.
In his essay on Nietzsche, published that year, he took it for granted that for
Nietzsche the state was a system of "oppression
organized against the individual". 30 But he went on to say that the Nietzschean conception of man,
understood as an animal of prey, necessarily implied the belief that man, as an animal of prey,
was part of an organized community. In the absence of this prerequisite, effective struggle would be impossible
and no conquest would be certain.
He stated that: «above all, a principle of solidarity must govern the relations of these blond beasts of prey. Even
the conquerors obey the dispositions that the community takes to safeguard the supreme interests
of the caste and this can be defined as a first individual limitation... The unique can therefore never be
'unique' in the Sùrnerian sense of the word, since the fatal law of solidarity bends it and wins it »
. 61
As already mentioned. Mussolini conceived of man as an eminently social animal. While continuing to remain
faithful to a certain type of romantic individualism, from 1914 he expressed more and more explicitly and
decisively the conviction that "individualism is conceivable and realizable only through collectivism".
. 62
In any case, already among his very first writings there is an interesting and important apologia for
Ferdinand Lassalle, in which Mussolini expounds a conception of morality and the State surprisingly
similar to the one he instilled in Fascism in the following years. The moral ideal exalted by Mussolini at the age
of twenty-one was the activity of the individual governed by moral commitments in favor of the solidarity
of mutual interests and reciprocal duties within the community of which the individual himself belongs. This
thesis involves the conception of a State which constitutes the moral union of the community. \
« The State as a moral unity is the final integral phase of the entire evolutionary process in the life
of communities, from the community of blood, of place, of economic interests, to the community of intellectual
interests. Its function is to lead the fight against nature, misery, ignorance, impotence, slavery of all kinds in
which we find ourselves in the state of nature, at the beginning of this fight. The Union in the form of the
state must
put individuals in a position to reach meanings and degrees of life that individuals
could never reach » 63 .
The state was identified with the moral order that governs the community.
If Mussolini had said nothing else on this subject, the interpretation would be
easy, but it would not take into account the equally significant declarations
he made in 1920. At the end of 1919, in a period of profound doctrinal
reexamination, he reaffirmed once again the ontological priority and implicitly
moral of the individual, hoping for the loosening of the ties imposed on the
"elementary forces of individuals, because other
human reality, other than the individual, does not exist! Why would Stirner
not be topical again? ». 64
Two weeks later he also stated: "We have tore up all revealed truths, we have
spat on all dogmas, rejected all heavens, mocked all charlatans - white, red
and black - who market all drugs miraculous to give 'happiness * to mankind.
We don't believe in programs, schemes, saints, apostles; above all we do not
believe in happiness, in salvation, in the promised land. We do not believe in a
single solution - be it economic or political or moral - in a linear solution to life's
problems because... life is not linear... Let's go back to the individual... We will
endorse everything that exalts, amplifies the individual, gives him greater
freedom, greater well-being, greater breadth of life; we will fight everything
that depresses, mortifies the individual ». 65
These statements, together with the observations published in April 1920, give
us an image of the relationship between the individual and the State which, at
first glance, is in striking contrast with the programmatic doctrine of Fascism as
it was later expressed in the official publications of the National Party Fascist.
In the April 1920 article, Mussolini, in the course of his criticisms of state
regulations, affirmed that his critical position did not arise from political, nationalistic
or utilitarian opposition; he opposed the regulations of the state per se. He
considered himself one of
the few people in potential revolt against the state, "not against this or that
state, but against the state itself..." and he continued: "The state is the
terrible machine that swallows men alive and spews them out dead digits. ..
This, this is the great curse that struck the human race in the uncertain
beginnings of its history: to create, over the centuries, the State, to
remain under it, annihilated!... Down with the State in all its species and
incarnations. The state of yesterday, today and tomorrow". 66
This was the last, exaggerated expression of the romantic individualism that
Mussolini carried with him from his youth.
In November 1920 he admitted that Fascism had not yet had time to articulate
its doctrine, but he hoped for an "elaboration and coordination of its ideas". 67
Fascism, as a movement, as an "anti-party", had remained a free confederation

of groups composed of heterogeneous elements, united only by a minimal
programme, but already towards the middle of 1920 a movement had begun
tending to organize the Fasci in the form of political party. In order to lay the
foundations of the unity indispensable to the envisaged political reorganization,
Fascism found itself forced to clarify its position with respect to critical
political concepts such as those of "Nation" and "State". 68 Probably,
precisely during this phase of critical-doctrinal elaboration, Mussolini
read, perhaps for the first time, some works by Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944),
the thinker who would provide the rational philosophical presuppositions for
the ideology of mature Fascism.
During the Third National Fascist Congress, held in novem
Bre 1921, Mussolini outlined what was to be the Fascist doctrine of the
state, identifying it in Gentile's neo-Hegelian "state".
Some years later he told Yvon De Begnac that he had read Gentile for
the first time precisely at that time. 69
Mussolini actually openly admitted what was possible to guess: speaking

in Rome at the meeting organized to found the Party
National Fascist, recognized that in him coexisted "two Mussolinis fighting
each other, one an individualist, and the other, obedient to Fascism, which was
the guardian of the nation". Starting from the irrepressible reality of the
nation, he said he was inevitably and fatally led to the state so that he
was forced to consider nation and state the same thing. 70
However, while it can be argued with some justification that Mussolini's

doctrinaire attitude towards the state was significantly influenced, and the
recurring ambiguity of his thinking about individualism and collectivism
finally resolved, by Gentile's social and political philosophy, his beliefs about
the nature and function of the state, not so easily resolved, always
remained imprecise and vague.
In choosing the "ethical state," Mussolini accepted an essentially totalitarian

conception of the state, by Gentile's own admission. The same conclusions
that made the state absolute sovereign, the spiritual personification of
the national community, implicitly also legitimized wider state control in every
sector of human interests.
However, throughout this period, Mussolini still insisted on the advisability
of reducing the duties of the state to strictly "Manchesterian" functions.
In May 1920 he affirmed that the State should have limited itself to the
exercise of the four functions that nineteenth-century liberalism had
assigned it: military defence, public safety, taxes, administration of justice.
71 The same opinions were reaffirmed by him in January 1921. 72 Six months
later, on the occasion of his first speech to the Italian Chamber, he
issued the same directive: the State to its purely juridical and political
expression. May the State give us a police [...], a well organized justice, an
army ready for all eventualities, a foreign policy in tune with national
needs. Everything else, and I don't even exclude secondary school, must
be part of the private activity of the individual. If you want to save the
state you must abolish the collectivist state [...] and return to the
Manchester state »
, 73
According to the official program of 1922, the National Fascist Party

undertook to "reduce the state to its essential functions of order
legal and political". 74 At the same time and in the same document, however,
the nation was considered something more than the simple sum of the
individuals who made it up and was defined as the "supreme synthesis of all
the material and spiritual values of the race" of which the State represented
the physical expression. All values of the individual and of
collectivities (families, communes, corporations) had to be «... promoted,

developed and defended always within the context of the nation to which they
are subordinate [...]. The State must favor the development of the nation, not by
monopolizing, but by promoting every work aimed at the ethical, intellectual,
religious, artistic, juridical, social, economic, physiological progress of
the national community".
To clarify the type of program necessary for the implementation of such a

vast mandate, the Fascists asked the State to undertake an "organic plan of
public works that would meet the new economic, technical and military
needs of the country", a plan which the completion, reorganization and
electrification of the railway network, the development of hydroelectric
energy, the expansion of the road system and the increase of maritime
communications - in the Mediterranean. Working class and business
associations were to obtain the legal recognition of bargaining bodies
for their respective members, while collective bargaining agreements would
make strikes and lockouts unnecessary. The state would assume
responsibility for regulating bargaining procedures. The state was
also supposed to exercise "strict control" over the elementary school as regards
the curriculum, the choice of teaching staff and their activity. Secondary schools
and the university should have been left free except for "state control over
the programs and spirit of teaching"...
Almost simultaneously with the publication of the Party programme, Mussolini

proclaimed that Fascism set out to give the nation discipline, order and
hierarchy. 75 In effect, these were commitments that no Manchester
state could fulfill. The conception of the Manchester state, with its limited
administrative functions, is
a derivative of contractualism, of the atomistic theory of society. This is completely

anomalous in the context of Mussolini's concept of man and society.
Mussolini's judgment of man's value in society remained relatively

constant from his youth to maturity, from the socialist period right through to the
Fascist period. As a young man and as a mature political leader, as a socialist
and as a fascist, Mussolini believed that history was made by an aggressive, resolute
and self-sacrificing minority, capable of instilling in the inert masses the driving
energy which underlies all change. For Mussolini "the masses cannot be
prolagonists of history, but instruments of history". 76 Elsewhere, referring to
Gumplowicz. Mosca and Michels argued that "history shows that
minorities, small from the beginning, have always produced profound
upheavals in human societies a. 77 The masses need "the hero" capable of
interpreting their vague and indeterminate aspirations and the "hero" needs the
masses as material to be moulded. 78
This comparison with the artist and his material pleased Mussolini who frequently
used it to exemplify the relationship between the political leader and the masses. In
1917 he stated that "the Italian people are at this moment a mass of precious ore.
Must
melt it down, clean it of slag, process it. A work of art is still possible.
We need a government. A man. A man who has, when necessary, the hand
with the delicate touch of the artist, and the heavy fist of the warrior ». 79
A few weeks before the March on Rome he said that Fascism "needs the masses
as an artist needs the raw material to forge his masterpiece". 80
Elsewhere, reaffirming the judgments drawn from Le Bon and Sighele, he

maintained that «the mass is a herd and as a herd it is at the mercy of
instincts and primordial impulses. The mass is without continuity. It is prey to an
81 spirit »
apathetic, fragmentary, incoherent dynamism. In short, it is matter, it is not
.
The spirit manifests itself only through an organizational elite, a capable and
selected minority able to channel the elemental energies
of the masses. At the time when Mussolini was preparing the fascist
forces for the March on Rome, the implications of this conception were
evident. This was an explicit rejection of democracy, as it was generally
understood. Mussolini foresaw that "an 'aristocratic' century,
the current one, follows the last democratic one". 82
The past century had aspired to a government of many, ideally a

government of all. The current one, said Mussolini, would have
seen the government once again become the affair of a
few, possibly the affair of only one: a tribune capopopolo. 83
These ideas were fundamentally incompatible with the conception of

a state whose only interests vis-à-vis society concerned exclusively
military, public safety, fiscal and legal affairs.
Implicit in Mussolini's conception of the state were guardianship,
organisational, entrepreneurial, political, economic, educational and
moral concerns, which went beyond anything deemed legitimate for
a liberal state of the Manchester type.
The ambitious Fascist aristocracy assumed such responsibilities that it

became the final arbiter of such a vast sphere of activity that the
state could not help but assume a character quite different from that
of any other previous type of state. This was clear to the fascist
theorists, including Mussolini himself, and it is evident from all their
writings of the period before the seizure of power and the years
between 1922 and (at least) 1925.
That this was not equally evident to non-fascists is equally clear from
the behavior of many political commentators, including liberals such as
Benedetto Croce who initially gave Fascism their support.
Many of these men thought that Fascism wanted to achieve

"normalisation", that is, the restoration of the conditions to which Italy had
reached before the political crisis of the twentieth century. The mistake
they made was due to the fact that much of what Mussolini said during
this period lent itself to being interpreted as a defense of
economic and political liberalism. He, just to mention
for example, he attacked Lenin's dictatorship and stated that "we will not
accept dictatorships". 84
Alongside these apparently liberal affirmations of faith, there was a positive

program of accelerating industrial development at home and economic
expansion abroad, which could only be achieved through bourgeois
enterprise. Fascism, which rejected the distributionist concerns of
Socialism, was in favor of a program of national industrial development.
His goal was productionist.
From its beginnings Fascism, as a political movement, acted along the lines of
Pareto's precept according to which the fundamental economic
problem that Italy had to face, in its condition of proletarian nation, was the
expansion of its industry rather than the redistribution of assets or
ownership of the means of production. 8 ®
Mussolini, while on the one hand he affirmed that the tactical programs
of Fascism were subjected to constant revision, underwent continuous
modifications and were therefore necessarily malleable, however he also
maintained that fascist thought was based on two constants: production
and the nation. 87
The nation demanded a rapid industrial expansion and to this end all the
productive categories had to collaborate. 88 These strategic directives
were proposed when Fascism was founded as a movement and remained
unchanged throughout the period of the Party's development and its rise to
power.
In June 1922 Mussolini defined Fascist syndicalism as "national and productivist",

and six weeks before the March on Rome he reaffirmed Fascism's
programmatic commitment to productivism and the consequent "close"
collaboration between the industrial categories. 89
These principles were accompanied by the full acceptance of political, economic

and moral expansionism. "The Fascist program of foreign policy," explained
Mussolini, can be expressed in a single word:
expansionism". 90 The doctrinal motto that summarized this thesis was « The
Mediterranean to the Mediterranean peoples! ». 91
The theses according to which fascist syndicalism and productivism were

inseparable, while for the increase of production it was necessary that the class
struggle be reduced to sporadic clashes, together with the request that the
nation extend its sphere of influence over the entire Mediterranean at the
expense of the plutocratic powers, 92 could not fail to have a positive influence
on the Italian entrepreneurial and commercial classes. The license of vitality granted
to capitalism further reassured them, 93 while the violent repression of Socialism
by Fascism could not fail to satisfy them.
In this context, the declaration that Fascism set out to « strip the state of all
its economic attributes », 94 seemed to the good bourgeoisie of Italy, weakened
by the aftermath of the war, a request for the restoration of the economic
liberalism of the nineteenth century, with which it had traditionally identified
itself.
The fact that Mussolini did not fail to admonish the bourgeoisie that
Fascism would not be its lightning rod and that its interests, like any other, would
be sacrificed without delay to the benefit of what the Fascist government
believed to be national interests, and that Fascism was fundamentally anti-
liberal, contributed little measures to dispel the illusions of the bourgeoisie.
Mussolini essentially wanted a dictatorship of development and

the reorganization of the country into an "immense and powerful army..." 95
Fascism did not belong to either the right or the left, traditionally understood; it
represented neither bourgeois liberalism nor proletarian socialism. It was
something of its own, typical of the twentieth century: an elitist and solidarity
movement founded on the masses, the meaning of which can only become clear
through the study of fascist ideology in its most mature phase.
That Fascism was neither of the right nor of the left is demonstrated by the fact
that its doctrine is the result of the confluence of currents of thought
political and social right and left. Fascist doctrine is composed of elements
that matured in the thinking of revolutionary syndicalists such as Olivetti,
Panunzio, Michele Bianchi and Edmondo Rossoni, elements that
proved to be compatible with the theses of futurists such as Marinetti
and nationalists such as Dino Grandi, and, finally, such as Alfredo Rocco and Corradini.
Fascism enucleated, in substance, a doctrinal synthesis which referred to

both the extreme right and the extreme left relatively much.
The syncretistic nature of Fascism was reflected in the class and category
composition of the fascist organizations themselves, illustrated by a study
on the members of the National Fascist Party released in 1921 by the
secretary of the Party himself. A research was carried out on the class and
category origins of 152,000 of its 320,000 members: of these, 23,418 were
industrial workers, 36,847 agricultural workers, 14,989 employees, 19,783
students, 7,209 military, 1,506 belonging to the merchant navy. Only 4,269
were qualified industrialists or employers, 13,879 were self-employed traders
or craftsmen and 18,186 small landowners and/or indentured agricultural
employers. Consequently, the Party had a substantially proletarian character.
This predominantly proletarian aspect was confirmed by the members of

the Congress of the Fascist Union which, in June 1922, boasted
550,000 members. 96 The elements of the working class in the ranks
of Fascism came, in fact, from the lowest strata of the proletariat.
On the other hand, Fascism had attracted an enormous number of

university and secondary school students, typically belonging to the middle
class, who constituted the most heated nationalist and radical tip and provided
some of the most active elements. Available statistics indicate that they
accounted for about fifteen per cent of Party activists, but contemporary
commentators say they wielded influence far beyond their sheer strength. The
petty bourgeoisie gave a further significant contribution to the
cadres of the fascist squads, while war veterans of all classes made
up the backbone of the members.
Mussolini himself fully symbolized the character of Fascism. Its

proletarian and petty-bourgeois origin represented the main
components that constituted the movement. His intellectual development
had started from an imprecise and sentimental revolutionary socialism,
then the common heritage of the Italian working classes of agriculture
and industry, to then move on to that more elaborate, but equally
revolutionary, unionism which had enormous importance for the
thought Marxist in Italy, to finally flow into the social and national
synthesis that Sorel judged the fruit of Mussolini's peculiar political genius. 97
Indeed, rather than anticipating these developments, Mussolini's social

and political thinking mirrored them, as he himself admitted, on
several important occasions. Pietro Gorgolini's apologia del Fascismo,
written before Fascism came to power and recommended by Mussolini
as the best exposition of Fascist doctrine published up to that time,98
confirms this fact. Gorgolini alludes to Mussolini's specifically
Marxist origins, sees Fascism as a logical evolution of Sorelian
Socialism," and therefore rejects the identification of Fascism with the
particular interests of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. 100 He defined
Fascism as the product of a small minority of men who, returning from
the trenches, had set out to achieve the greatness of Italy, an enterprise
that enjoyed moral priority over any class or category interest.Gorgolini's
work constituted a serious exposition of Fascist doctrine and reflected
the position assumed by Mussolini in 1921.
Gorgolini decisively affirmed that Fascism represented a particular

application of Sorelian syndicalism, which had replaced the class struggle
with national development, proposing it as a functional myth of social
doctrine. The acceptance of the "nation" as a concept of practical and
political morality made Fascism a decisive opponent of Marxist
socialism which was based on the assumption of class priority.
Commitment to the nation had transformed the logic of duties, the entire
hierarchy of values that governed political behavior. 101
This commitment, together with certain factual propositions on the social and political
dynamics and on the function of the elites in historical changes, and together also
with the pragmatic orientation of its political program, clearly defined the evolutionary
dictatorship that Fascism aimed for. 102
Fascism was a unitary mass movement that advocated a vast reorganization of the
social and economic structures of the state, such as to implement collaboration
between classes and categories, under legal and political form, disciplinedly placed
at the service of those who consider themselves
neva were the real interests of the national community.
To this end, the state had to assume legislative, executive, educational and initiative
responsibilities. The promulgation of laws on the legal recognition of trade unions and
employers' associations
of work, which would have allowed arbitration and mediation in labor disputes
according to the principles of National Syndicalism, constituted the basis and the
first commitment of the fascist economic and social programme.
The problem of strengthening executive power was equally pressing. The

Party's programmatic declarations affirmed the need for the State to assume functions
of initiative, while its educational tasks were indicated in the responsibility for the
"awakening of the torpid national conscience", an innate conscience in man as a social
and political animal.
At the time of its coming to power Fascism, therefore, had already worked out the
foundations of its own characteristic social and political doctrine. 103 Its historical
genesis was faithfully illustrated by the evolution of Mussolini's thought. This doctrine
was, as Gorgolini pointed out, a relatively coherent synthesis of Sorelian elements.
futurists and nationalists; in general it was outlined and its tactical programs changed
according to the political and economic circumstances of the Italian crisis. The
arguments highlighted from time to time depended on the changes that took place in
the directive structure of the Party.
However, starting from these assumptions, Fascism proposed a social

and political doctrine as singular, coherent and clear as any other on the
Italian scene at the time. Mussolini, when he assumed power, was linked to a
whole series of reasoned beliefs, some of which formed in him during the
revolutionary syndicalist period, others as a consequence of Italy's
experience during the First World War and still others, moreover, as a
consequence semi-deductive of the fusion of the previous ones. Much of
what was legitimately implicit in this doctrine in its inception remained partially
a dead letter, to reappear in full only after Fascism came to power when it
could fully develop. This is especially true with regard to the fascist conception
of the nature and function of the state.
The evolution of the fascist doctrine in the decade following his coming to
power had as its main objective the elaboration of a solid conception of
the state.
FASCISM IN POWER AND THE CODIFICATION OF HIS

DOCTRINE
The characteristics of the years immediately following the March on

Rome were rather confused. Mussolini formed a coalition government which
included non-fascist ministers and the Italian Parliament was not dissolved,
although the fascist deputies numbered only thirty-five.
The only change that was immediately apparent to observers

was the acceleration of activities. Formally, the structure of the state and
the institutions of the nation remained unchanged. All executive powers straor
dinars that Mussolini used in this early period, derived from the personal
qualities and prestige of the man, and not from important constitutional
changes.
It was true that a minority of men, in command of paramilitary disciplined

squads, had violated the normal practice for the legitimate transfer of
power, and had taken over the government apparatus, but Italy was so
tired of the turmoil that had characterized the post-war years, that only
a few voices of protest had been raised. There
Monarchia was evidently in favor of fascist action; the Vatican raised no objections.
Giovanni Giolitti, who had dominated Italian politics until 1915, declared that
Mussolini's coming to power was the only logical solution to Italy's long parliamentary
crisis. Antonio Salandra, former prime minister, stated that Mussolini was fully entitled
to assume power having already established the Italian government de facto almost a
year ago. Pareto publicly stated that 'the March on Rome has come at the right time.
Woe to him if he was another minute late because the process of degeneration had to
be contrasted and arrested without further ado... » 104
The majority of Italians seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Mussolini's rise to power
seemed to be a further example of the personalist politics which had
been a feature of Italian governments for more than half a century. An energetic
leader of men had taken over the reins of Government. His exceptional personal gifts
seemed to promise a return to the stability and continuity Italy had enjoyed under
dynamic leaders in years past.
A large number of Italians, after the riots of the previous decade, expected, and
rightly so, a normalization, a restoration of political and social equilibrium.
Mussolini had wrested power from the old political class: and, however, of the fifteen
Ministries, only four went to the Fascists, who were, however, slightly favored in
the assignment of Undersecretariats; of these, fifteen were entrusted to fascists,
six to deputies of the Popular Party, three to liberals, three to nationalists and
three to democrats. Only the socialists had been excluded, a priori, from the
government.
Mussolini showed great respect for the Senate.
The only important indication that Fascism would not have been a political force in the
traditional sense of the word was Mussolini's request for full powers for a year to
implement the necessary government economies.
The predominantly non-fascist parliament trusted him by 215 votes to 80.
But even this strengthening of the executive power could not be considered
extra-constitutional. Mussolini had won the confidence of the nation and
Parliament had found itself having to choose between accepting the
predominant national sentiment or "disappearing", according to
Mussolini's threat. 105 He had in fact envisaged the possibility of
making important changes to the electoral system and of abolishing the Parliament
as it was constituted. But, with these exceptions, the

revolutionary government had been surprisingly moderate in its demands.
For those who were satisfied with superficial appearances, that is, those
who did not take account of Mussolini's precise social and political views, the
new government represented only one of the series of coalition
governments which had governed Italy. Only the manner in which he had
come to power and the political personality of the new "Duce"
made him absolutely singular. This benevolence towards him stemmed from
a lack of inclination to take Fascist doctrine seriously.
Seen from a distance of time, this disinterest is almost inexplicable, since

the logic of the aims of Fascism was evident. Only a carefully
chosen and unrepresentative part of Mussolini's statements could be
interpreted in defense of traditional social and political institutions.
Reading the context, it was evident that these sentences served only
to pull the wool over the opponent's eyes and induce him to negotiate and
agree.
Fascism was a radical social and political movement, and it had to be

judged on the basis of the tradition from which it arose, and the political
convictions of its leaders. In no sense could it be thought that Fascism
could defend traditional parliamentary democracy.
Fascism involved a radical redefinition of the philosophical and theoretical

foundations of society and the state, and its rise to power could not
not imply a profound change in the Italian socio-political systems.
It was evident that Fascism started from assumptions radically opposite to those of
philosophical and political individualism which had provided the basic concepts of
liberal and democratic ideology. His elitism was already an immediate and approximate
indication of this fact. Moreover, the fundamental elements of syndicalism and
nationalism were basically collectivist, both in the philosophical and in the
sociological sense. Fascism was the product of a collectivist tradition, which
had its origins in Marxism and the sociological tradition of Gumplowicz, Pareto
and Michels.
Fascism was the fruit of a philosophical tradition that understood the individual only in
terms of group life. Marx, one of the leading exponents of this tradition, conceived of
man as "a social animal ... by nature." 106 From this essentially theoretical
conviction Marx was able to draw behavioral norms of this kind: «In the literal sense,
man is a zoon politikón; not just a social animal, but an animal which can achieve
its individuality only in society.' 107
A model of man similar to this was also at the basis of the Gumplowictian tradition
which considered "man as a social product, both in body and in mind [...] The social
phenomenon is always the main one: the thought of the individual and ethical-social
products such as religion, rights, morals are derwati'. 108
Gumplowicz maintained that « the individual does not come before his own
group, but it is rather the group that comes before the individual. We were born in a
group and we die in it... the group precedes us and will survive us [...]
Aristotle rightly conceived this relationship when he stated: 'the whole necessarily
comes before its parts'". 109
This vision of man remained the foundation of the social and political opinions of
the syndicalist theorists who would become the first theorists of Fascism. Thus
Olivetti, having passed from proletarian syndicalism to fascist syndicalism, observed
that «society is the necessary presupposition
of the individual" 110 and affirmed that what the individual was worth and
what was valuable in him were social assets.
Thought is expressed with the word, which is a social product and

which presupposes norms that can only have meaning in a precise social
context.
Expression, and consequently effective thought, presuppose rules of

correct use which are essentially common and neutral criteria, i.e.
social products. The general rules that the individual uses to regulate his
cognitive, moral and aesthetic life are social products, by-
products of the cultural community that precedes and outlives the
individual.
Whatever contribution the individual makes to this collective heritage,

he makes it only within the limits of pre-established norms for the definition
of truth, for normative judgment and for aesthetic evaluation.
Human achievements are essentially social and historical products.
It is useful to note that in this regard Olivetti had recourse to the

German idealistic tradition, referring first to Kant's thesis according to
which man is "necessarily a member of a civil community", and finally
to the Hegelian conception of society as a vaster and substantially truer
ego.
In this sense, national syndicalism not only came closer and closer
to the philosophical position assumed by Corridoni's nationalism (deeply
rooted in the same collectivist tradition), but acquired a neo-Hegelian
physiognomy which was not in contrast with Gentile's idealism.
Thus Balbino Giuliano, a follower of Gentile, by publishing his defense

of Fascism almost simultaneously with that of Olivetti, around the time
Fascism came to power, was able to adduce substantially the same
arguments in support of man's preeminently social nature. 112
For Balbino Giuliano the development of the individual was a function of

social interactions which presupposed the existence of a historical community
governed by laws. Only in the beginning, and as a consequence of the most
arid of abstractions, could the individual be considered as the empirical
ego, the physical entity which lasts for a few decades and then perishes.
The self that enjoys real moral value is the larger self that originates in a dark
and distant past; its moral content is rooted in the spiritual community of
which it is a constitutive but transient part.
This truest self speaks the same language and formulates the same thoughts
as a community, whose history delves into the recesses of the past and
anticipates an unpredictable future. This truer ego is the heir of a
cultural heritage from which the personality in all its fullness develops.
The intrinsic value of the individual, whatever it may be, is always the
specific and determined product of a given historical and organic community.
For the fascist syndicalists, for the nationalists and for the gentile idealists
this community is the nation while the state is its support and
concrete expression: "We are nationalists and statists, we affirm the ethics
of devotion to the national society and to the juridical organization of the State,
because the Nation and the State are not entities prior to us and our
individuality, but live in our Ego... Loyalty to the Nation and to the State is also
fidelity to our deepest truth; and it is the supreme ethical duty, because it
is the supreme requirement of our spiritual development". 113
Fascist syndicalism and Corridoni's nationalism had a common

theoretical origin in the group sociological tradition of Gumplowicz,
Mosca, Pareto and Michels. They therefore had a model of man,
understood as a social, common animal; a theoretical and explanatory
model capable of satisfying the needs of a synthetic epistemology.
This naturalistic scientific tradition remained fundamental to Fascist
doctrine; in 1925 Panunzio, who was one of its main propagandists,
defined Fascism as "a political doctrine, that is to say an essentially
sociological conception of the State". 114
And the model of man proposed by the syndicalist and nationalist theorists
satisfied not only the gnoseological needs, but also those of normative judgement.
The concept of man as a preeminently social animal, capable of achieving fullness
of self, humanity, only in a social context governed by laws, exerts a remarkably
persuasive moral force.
The exhortation to complete one's personality needs no further clarification. Conceiving

life within society as a necessary condition for self-fulfillment means giving
society a very important moral value. In a certain sense, identifying the Ego
with society means attributing to society the same moral value traditionally
recognized to men as spiritual agents.
To identify society with the truest self is to accord it all moral privileges.
Therefore Panunzio in his book The State of Law the , written in 1922, he reiterated
moral primacy of the State as an ethical entity. The thrust of these conceptions
led to a substantial fusion with the ethical idealism that had developed hand in hand
in Italy. It was a natural and complementary fusion of sociological and theoretical
elements with philosophical or normative elements.
The political conceptions formulated by the exponents of this synthetic and

revolutionary doctrine were completely different from those of traditional liberalism.
The ideological system of European liberalism was fon
it looked upon a particular model of man. For the philosophers of liberalism,

man was an individual and empirical ego and society a contractual aggregate
of individuals. Society and the state were held to be wholly derivative
entities. Autonomous and unitary individuals, pre-existing society, were held to
be endowed, by nature or by the God of nature, with imprescriptible rights and
independent values distinct from society and the state.
Among these inalienable rights was freedom. Men were born free and freedom was
understood as the absence of restrictions. For reasons of convenience and mutual
protection, men could agree to associate in
community and give up part of their freedom in exchange for security.

The state was created to implement these ends: utility and safety; but
since it was an institution with limited purposes, its moral importance was
negative and contingent. The state, a necessary evil, was all the better the
less it governed because any law imposes restrictions and any restriction
is an evil. If men were able to follow only the dictates of reason, the laws
would be completely superfluous and they would live free and without
hindrances. Society and the state were seen as a continual threat to the
liberties inherent in the individual, liberties which could only be
secured by the division of state power into various subdivisions, each of
which was designed to check and balance the other.
These beliefs served to support the initial assumption in favor of the

unlimited activity of the individual, which is necessarily overwhelmed by any
shadow of restriction. The maxim of practice which is the natural corollary
of this postulate is that which affirms that "any limitation, any limitation, is bad".
The doctrinal conceptions of Fascism, vice versa, started from

the initial assumption of the supremacy of the historical communities
governed by the law. The individual, for Fascism, is the product, and not
the creator, of society and the state. Society and the state are the origin of
self-fulfillment, and liberty is law-compliant activity. As we will see
when we have the opportunity to examine the political philosophy of Fascism
in its most mature expression, what the philosophers of liberalism
considered free human activity, for the Fascists assumed the character of
an instinctive and arbitrary act.
For liberalism, society and the state were objects of mistrust and their
moral content was purely contingent. Pgrjl Fascism o— &QCÌfity —£, State
were the oral foundation of the individual as a human being. As we
have already noted, therefore, pre-fascist syndicalist thinking
1 and proto-fascist, the nationalist and Gentile ones were radically anti-
individualists. Since 1917 Panunzio had fully accepted the "organic
conception of society and the State, as opposed to the conception
'atomistics' and 'mechanistics*'; 115 a conception that accorded a moral

supremacy to the collectivity, to its traditions and in particular to its juridical
personification in the State, in antithesis with the empirical and transient
individuals who constituted it in each particular moment. In this sense, Fascism
initially assumed an orientation favorable to the maintenance of the
institutions and forms that they could
give consistency to the historicity of the nation and could therefore be said to
be a "revolutionary conservatism". U6
All of this should have been obvious to anyone who took the time to delve into
evolving Fascist doctrine. If men had known the fascist doctrine better,
Mussolini's statements regarding the reduction of state activities to the sole
functions that were his own, would not have succeeded in arousing the
consensus that accompanied the beginning of the fascist enterprise.
A little more than two months after the March on Rome, Mussolini
clearly expressed his intention to give life to the "Fascist State": "...the single
unitary State, the sole custodian of all history, of all the future, of all the of the
Italian nation [...] A moral idea that is embodied and expressed in a system
of hierarchies [...] I intend to bring the whole nation back to an identical
discipline by all means, which will be superior to all sects, to all factions and
all parties'. 117
From its inception, Fascism considered the nation as the "supreme synthesis
of all material and spiritual values" which therefore enjoyed moral
supremacy over "individuals of categories and classes [...] who are
,
instruments at the service of Nation... ". 118 The interests of individuals,

categories and classes were considered legitimate only if and when
compatible with the superior interests of the nation.
It was evident that the fascists, trade unionists, nationalists and

idealists entrusted the state, understood as the legal personification of the
nation, with the responsibility of determining the nature and specific
objectives of national interests, in each given period.
Mussolini had defined the Nation and the State: 119 the Nation was
the sum of the material and spiritual interests of a particular historical
community, a community supported by a dominant and indomitable
sentiment and the State was its juridical personification. The state, as
sovereign, had the immediate and mediated responsibility for maintaining
the normative order, outside of which the life of the individual is
meaningless. Society, the historical community, that is, represents the
matter, the State the form of political life (as materia appetit formam,
thus societas appetit Statum). As legitimate sovereign, the State was the
supreme repository of force and as such had the task of applying the
rules which, by disciplining individual and collective behavior,
make community life possible. 120 Thus for Fascism, the State was
"infinitely superior" both to the individuals and to the organizations that
make up the national community.
On the first anniversary of the March on Rome, Panunzio defined the

Fascist state as « a great army, a great discipline, a living hierarchy.
The military Army alone is no longer enough, but together with the first, a
larger civil Army is needed, from officials to citizens, from citizens to officials.
Not only are soldiers soldiers and fighters; all citizens, from the lowest to
the highest, are soldiers and fighters [...] we are all animated
instruments of that symphony [...] which is national life». 121
These were the characteristics that Fascism attributed to the state from
the time of its transformation into a political party, in November 1921.
Roberto Farinacci, in his history of this period, specifies that the
position of Fascism vis-à-vis the state was defined only in that span of
time and only with the adoption of Gentile's conception of the "ethical
state". 122 In such a context, any reference to the "Manchesterian state"
was simply absurd, and since it did not express any of the fundamental
presuppositions of the fascist conception, it could only mislead
judgment. The fascist doctrine of the state was radically opposed
to the liberal "idolatry" which attributed moral, historical and political
supremacy to the "empirical individual", and consequently was
contrary to all the "inalienable" rights of which the individual was held
to possess. 123
Fascism had, in effect, "identified society with the nation, the nation with
the state, and economic activity with political activity". 124 The State, in turn,
was identified with the Party. Fascism, its theorists asserted
before Fascism itself revealed its characteristics of plebiscitary
dictatorship and clear totalitarianism, had "a total conception of life" which it
would infuse into the state. The Party was the bearer of this conception and
the State it was to create should have been called « State-Party ». 125
His responsibilities were ethical and pedagogical. The Party had the
obligation to reawaken in the masses the awareness of their
fundamental and truest interests, of their substantial identity with the
community which constituted their moral essence.
These were the times eviscerated in that initial period by theorists of

Panunzio's stature, Guido Pighetti and Massimo Rocca, who
responsibly represented fascist thought; on the basis of their formulations it
was possible to make much more certain predictions about the
future development of Fascism than those based exclusively on the
political tactics followed, in the open, by Fascism between 1922 and 1924.
Once one re-examines the logic on which the rational foundation of Fascism
was based, and the ideological content that inspired it, it becomes
evident that Fascism was, from its inception, radically opposed to liberalism
as a social and political Weltanschauung, and to democracy which was its
most important political expression. Nor did the fascists ever try to hide this
reality. As we have seen. Mussolini had predicted the beginning of an anti-
liberal and anti-democratic era. Immediately after the March on Rome he
defined the fascist revolution, as well as the Bolshevik revolution,
essentially anti-liberal and anti-democratic. 126 At exactly the
same time, Fascist theorists were violently attacking liberal
institutions. Panunzio, Pighetti and Olivetti affirmed that a new
type of state was being formed.
Panunzio wisely pointed out that the existence of the Militia foreshadowed
how Fascism intended to forge a state completely different from the liberal
one which, in theory, had always been the prerogative
of numerical majorities. 11 Fascism intended to arm its state with a militia

that had sworn allegiance to a particular party. Thereby
Fascism proclaimed its intention to maintain power even, if necessary,

against possible popular opposition. Panunzio pointed out that the
phenomenon that was taking place in parallel in the revolutionary
Soviet Union, the Red Guard, represented the Leninist
organization corresponding to the Voluntary Militia for National
Security. 127 Each of these two organizations represented the
desire for dominance of a political entity that was unknown before the
twentieth century: the single party.
Almost immediately after coming to power. Mussolini officially

incorporated into the national armed forces the fascist squads, with the
help of which he had wrested control of the state from the
parliamentary regime. From January 1923 the Militia became an official
armed force of the state. Edoardo Susmel rightly points out that this
simple act "is equivalent to a death sentence for the pre-existing demo-
liberal State...". 128
No other act revealed more clearly what Fascism could mean. In

principle, Fascism never concerned itself with electoral majorities; his
concerns for majorities were purely tactical. In this regard Mussolini
and Fascism were brutally explicit: Fascism was elitist, and Fascist
spokesmen never tired of drawing, and pointing out, the logical
consequences of this fact. « The crowds and the elites are inextricably
linked in the historical process, as the former are unable to evolve and
improve if not guided or pushed by the latter, and the latter are unable to
win and dominate if they do not interpret or anticipate an obscure need,
a profound aspiration [...] of those.
Indeed, progress "is the work of elected minorities and not of majorities...".
129
These are simple paraphrases of themes taken up by Oriani, Pareto,

Mosca, Sorel and Michels and a host of other theorists whose thinking
Mussolini had made his own in the years before the First World War.
In the context of nationalism and statism that since 1921
characterized Fascism, these themes constituted the strategic

premises of the Fascist totalitarian policy.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FASCIST DOCTRINE AFTER 1925
After 1925, following a series of circumstances, the fascist doctrine

assumed an increasingly uniform character; his theses developed with
greater rigor and his implications were more evident. First, until 1925,
Fascism had lived in a state of permanent crisis. After the initial
bewilderment following the March on Rome, the anti-fascist opposition had
regrouped and waged a debilitating war of attrition against Mussolini's
government. But far more threatening was the disorder that reigned in the
ranks of Fascism itself. Fascism had had a spontaneous and disorderly
growth. The Fasci had come to organize themselves in all the major centers
of northern Italy around
to popular local leaders. These men, although nominally subordinated

to the control of the central bodies of the movement, were in fact leaders (*)
with a personal retinue. They launched paramilitary, organizational
and propaganda campaigns at their discretion and will. Any political
decision by Mussolini always ran the risk of being undermined by
the independent actions of some or all of the local ras (as the local leaders
were called). Mussolini had succeeded in taking over the state with this
undisciplined party. After the March on Rome, for nearly two years, Mussolini
kept promising an end to Fascist violence and yet, the violence
continued. The Party was in danger of splintering into factions, and expulsions
from its ranks were not uncommon.
In June 1924, with the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti by fascists,

the whole political situation became critical. For six months, the Fascist
government staggered. Finally, Mussolini forced the situation: Fascism
was right of the opposition and in a short time Mussolini became the
absolute master of the Party. On January 3, 1925, having secured his
control over the Party, Mussolini proclaimed that Fascism, and Fascism alone,
would rule the nation. 130 Since that time, the
Fascism was free to express itself without equivocation. His doctrine

could be articulated without any restriction and any tactical reserve;
but, as we have seen, this does not mean that the fascist doctrine had
not long ago acquired the specific physiognomy which was its own.
Fascism, starting from 1921, the year of the foundation of the National
Fascist Party, gravitated around a central nucleus of concepts that
had taken on a well-defined aspect in a remarkably specific political
doctrine. In the weeks preceding Matteotti's assassination,
Mussolini could rightly maintain that Fascism had a program "founded on
a unitary principle, based on a classical conception of the state",
radically different from the liberal one. 131 After the resolution of the
crisis following Matteotti's death, Fascism was free to undertake
a vast program of social revolution, a program accompanied by explicit
affirmations and anticipated, in its doctrinal aspects, as early as
1919. 132
Together with these political events, another circumstance led to the

rapid maturation of the fascist doctrine. Once strengthened in power,
Fascism attracted the loyalty of a large group of men of considerable
intellectual caliber. Immediately after its advent, Fascism made use
of the work of internationally renowned men such as Giovanni
Gentile, Corrado Gini and Roberto Michels. Once firmly established in
power, exponents of various academic and scientific disciplines joined
these, each of which contributed to some extent to the finalization of the
rational doctrinal foundation of Fascism.
The interesting and instructive thing is that, regardless of the
Note 1
diversity of contributions, a whole set of themes and concepts was

always present and remained substantially unchanged. Fascist
doctrine, after 1921, shows an extraordinary continuity in theme and
content. Some elements were expanded and some arguments
reformulated, but, despite the large number of individuals who
contributed to its articulation, the doctrine itself always presented
a very remarkable resistance against substantial alterations. In practice while social ide
Fascist policies translated into institutional and technical forms of various

kinds, their rationale remaining constant. The doctrine, like all social
and political doctrines, contained a statement of purposes and the
arguments in support of these purposes, while, obviously, it did not deal
with the technical procedures for their implementation. It was clear that
the implementation of the goals involved a whole series of problems,
however extraneous to the interest and competence of social and
political doctrine. Therefore, Mussolini's doctrinal affirmation
according to which the main categories of the production process,
capital and labour, had to have legal recognition in order to meet as
equals before the law in order to resolve differences in a way compatible
with national interests, does not contained no specification of the
content of the Royal Decree of 3 April 1926, which provided the
legal rules for its implementation.
This distinction between ends and means becomes more important

when doctrinal commitments are expressed in vague terms. In
this case, the application provides an important content to expressions
that have a very great persuasive force, but minimal rational force. But
even in this case, doctrinaire ideals provide an indication of the direction
in which legislation will move. A doctrine founded on a conception of
man which considers each individual as the seat of imprescriptible rights is,
of course, less likely to result in legislation restricting what liberalism
considers individual freedoms. A doctrine that conceives individual
rights as derivative is, predictably, more willing to introduce such
legislation. In no case, however, is it possible to envisage
specific legislation, one can only imagine the probable consequences
of the doctrinal presuppositions.
In this sense, the Fascist Corporative State underwent a gradual evolution,

distinguished by the theorists of Fascism themselves, into a "union phase"
and a "corporate phase", and assumed notably different forms in
the different moments of its existence. Nonetheless, the fascists
maintained that the various specific and transient forms of state
institutions were absolutely compatible with "the ends set by
the state as a fundamental reason for its action", and functional expressions of them. 133
The acceptability of these statements can only be assessed through the

responsible comparison between the doctrinal aims, the legislation enacted and
the foundational institutions presumably to achieve them. For the purposes of
this exposition it is only necessary to establish that the fascists thought that
the relations between ends and means were essentially the same
which we have just mentioned. The doctrine not only indicated the great
programmatic goals, but also contained a summary treatment of the fideistic
system and the foundations of faith; that is to say, a list of essential
commitments or at least a preliminary and stenographic presentation
of reasoned judgments intended as fundamental beliefs useful for dispelling
doubts, resolving disputes, indicating the course of action.
Thus the Fascists considered certain particular works of doctrinaire literature

to be of greater political and social importance. This applies, for example, to
the Labor Charter, which was approved by the Grand Council of Fascism
on 21 April 1927. 134 Equal importance was attributed to the Doctrine
of Fascism, which appeared, signed by Mussolini, in 1932. 135 In reality, the
importance of these documents can be attributed more to their origin than to
their content. In a hierarchical and authoritarian system, official doctrinal
statements necessarily possess greater political and social importance than any
personal formulation, however valid. The fact is that both the Labor Charter
and the Doctrine of Fascism are highly concentrated and elliptical formulations
of the fascist doctrine. From the point of view of the rational reconstruction
of the historical doctrine of Fascism, the Charter represents even less. It
is a set of statements, a compendium of statements of principle. 136 It also
provides the juridical norms for the formulation and administration of the
laws which were to govern the relations between the productive categories
organized in trade unions of workers and entrepreneurs and the
relations of both with the State. But it offers no rational foundation for its
support. The latter can only be found by referring to more substantial works
of doctrinal literature.
Any objective examination of the doctrinal literature between 1925 and 1943
shows that Fascism possessed a relatively specific set of reasoned aims
already implicit, if not explicit, in the declarations
public and in Mussolini's published writings since 1922. Between 1919 and 1924,
Mussolini was unable to dominate either the organization and spontaneous
development of the Fasci di Combattimento and the National Fascist Party, or
their equally spontaneous opinions. The Fasci arose spontaneously and
gathered heterogeneous elements around the appeal for the "defence of
national victory", while orthodox Italian Socialism questioned the very
necessity of Italy's entry into the war. Precisely the heterogeneity of the
constituent elements led to a heterogeneity of opinions which was reflected
in the programmatic attitudes of a movement which defined itself as
"problemistic" and "pragmatist". 137 The attempt to set up an organization where
such disparate groups could find a place forced the movement to be "anti-
prejudicial", and therefore to present itself as neither republican
nor monarchist, neither Catholic nor anti-Catholic, neither socialist nor anti-
socialist. 138 Six months after the establishment of the Fasci di Combattimento,
Mussolini made it clear that it was «a bit difficult to define the Fascists. They are
not Republican, Socialist, Democrat, Conservative, Nationalist. They
represent a synthesis of all negations and all affirmations
mation. [...] While fascism renounces all parties, it completes them ». 139
Whatever this meant, it clearly indicates that Fascism, as an organized force, was
a mixture of disparate and distinct groups, bound together by two
fundamental ideals: 1) the nation before and above all else; 2) a programmatic
corollary: the maximum development of production. These were the ideal
goals with which Mussolini kept the Fasci together after their foundation in
March 1919, and which remained constant throughout the following five
years. Anything which he believed to strengthen the vitality of the nation had
his approval; he stated that "the supreme commandment of the moment" was
production. 140
The various tactical attitudes assumed by the nascent Fascism were never
considered immutable by the fascists. Initially the Fasci supported the
separation of church and state and the confiscation of ecclesiastical property. 141
Added to this was the request for proportional representation in Parliament,
the abolition of the Senate, the extension of the vote to women and the "expropriation
partial » of the capital through surcharges and a progressive tax on

inheritance. 142 All of these tactical programmatic requests were
subsequently dropped. Mussolini clearly stated that these were
contingent tactical demands which 'could vary according to time and
place'. 143 Only the strategy was calculated and resulted in time- and
circumstance-dependent tactics.
It is important to understand how tactics were dominated by a

superior doctrinaire strategy. The call for partial expropriation of capital was
not a consequence of a doctrinaire commitment deriving from Marxist
beliefs that private capital is an instrument of oppression. It had only
been advanced to meet what Mussolini believed were the basic needs of
the nation at that particular time. He was primarily concerned with
maximizing production and ensuring the national welfare. If this could
be more effectively accomplished without the confiscation of Church
property and a profit surcharge, Mussolini was ready to give up his
demand.
At this point, the question that arises spontaneously is this: if the tactical
demands are contingent, how can an observer anticipate with any certainty
the road that a movement like Fascism will take? And this is the answer:
thanks to a profound knowledge and understanding of the doctrinal
commitments to which it espouses. By 1919, Mussolini had defined his
thinking with a whole series of reasonably well-articulated ideas.
We have already talked about these ideas. By 1921, these ideas had
become precise enough for an observer familiar with them, evaluating them
in the context of the political and social situation of the time, could, with
some degree of certainty, foresee the future characteristics of the
Fascist state that was going on. outlining. This is readily apparent
from a review of Fascist Doctrine after 1925; its content is a literal
return to all critical categories of Mussolini's previous political and social
convictions. After 1925, Mussolini was no longer hindered by
the need for compromise to keep the most disparate and recalcitrant
groups together. He had absolute domination of the Party. He no longer
had to tame menacing opposition from outside the Party. And his ideas
they re-emerged substantially unchanged after the long period of forced

incubation. After 1925, the doctrine of Fascism was a restatement of the
doctrinal elements that Mussolini had made his own during his
maturation and initial leadership of the elements that made up the
National Fascist Party.
Mussolini was remarkably sensitive to the articulation of Fascist

doctrine. He read a lot, and everything. In the self-critical situation created
by himself, he became and remained the direct or mediated arbiter of
all that was published as official doctrine. Many of the books published
during the Fascist period contain his introduction and personal
imprimatur. In any case, most of these works were published under the
official auspices of Fascism, by entities to which he had delegated his
powers. Ultimate doctrinal authority emanated from Mussolini or from
men who enjoyed his confidence. Finally, authors of doctrinal
exegeses were cautious enough to try to discover Mussolini's "definitive"
opinions before expounding their own ideas. Their academic and
social standings may well have depended on their orthodoxy. The result
was the coherence and continual repetition of Fascist doctrine. All the
controversies (and long were the controversies between the
"idealistic" and the "naturalistic" interpretation of the general doctrine
or between the "political" and the "juridical" interpretation of the State,
just to name just two of the most important) they were conducted within
the tracks of a more or less specific doctrine. However, it is essential
to reiterate the fact that the doctrine was always reasonably
coherent and specific and that it was the doctrine that Mussolini had
made his own since 1921.
In 1927, there were already numerous fully completed doctrinal

expositions of Fascism. The theoretical and normative commitments to
which these exhibitions gave expression remained essentially unchanged
throughout the Fascist period. A systematization ensued: the result
of general and rudimentary ideas regularly and consistently applied
as a conceptual framework of reference to the interpretation of a set of
facts to provide a satisfactory explanation of the facts themselves
and a valid prediction of future important facts and, consequently, a
practical orientation guide. 144 We cannot concern ourselves here with the truth conditio
the interpretation, explanation and validity of the resulting predictions.

We will deal only with the systematization itself, with the new political
and social philosophy that reached maturity with the completely explicit
synthesis between Gentile idealism and the doctrine of Fascism,
which took place in 1932. We will trace a summary outline of the
political and social doctrine of Fascism in its maturity and our
attention will be directed to this. The question of whether the doctrine
has achieved the rigor that could qualify it as political and social
philosophy is purely academic. The distinction between now mature
fascist political and social doctrine and Gentile idealism is introduced
only to facilitate the exposition. After 1921, Fascism was

substantially compatible with Gentile's actualism, mainly due to historical
and intellectual circumstances. Gentile idealists, nationalists and
national syndicalists had all accepted a common nucleus of doctrinal
elements, while already in 1921 Mussolini himself had introduced
Gentile's concept of the ethical state into the doctrine of Fascism. The
differences arose only from the sociological assumptions of
nationalism and national unionism. 145 Gentile's analysis was
irreducibly normative and philosophical. However, the
conclusions he reached were absolutely compatible with those
assumptions. The differences will be specified in the discussion
that we will make of Gentile's contribution to fascist ideology.
THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM IN ITS MATURITY
The theorists of Fascism, taking up one of Mussolini's convictions,

argued that any social and political doctrine revolves around a
particular conception of man and society. 146 If this is true, the
doctrine of Fascism revolved around a conception of man and of society
which the Fascist theorists themselves variously defined: «organic»,
«solidarist», «community» in order to distinguish it from the liberal
one, which Fascism was clearly opposed.
Before the advent of Fascism, both trade unionists and nationalists

defined their general conception of man and society as "organic";
that is, they conceived of society as a system, an integrated set of
recurring patterns of governed interpersonal behavior
by standards, broad and differentiated enough to be self-sufficient with

respect to the functional needs of its components and capable of long
life. 147 The individual was conceived as a functional component of a self-
regulating social system. He was conceived as a particular person only
for the function he fulfilled within the structure of relationships pre-empting
his occupation of an office and which would continue after him. 148
For the fascists, speaking of a social system, of integration, of the

domination of rules and of the persistence of models implied the existence
of a central and sovereign body of control and regulation, the State;
Therefore, in one of the first systematizations of Fascist doctrine,
Giovanni Gorso was able to argue that "society, law and state are
inseparable concepts [...] One is intrinsic to the other". 149 In 1935,
Stefano Raguso added that even « the simplest human community
is inconceivable if it is not supported by an active principle of organization
and [...]) this principle of organization [...] consists [...] in the subordination
to a sovereign, political power". 150
This report had already been made systematic in 1927 by Corrado Gini
(1884-1965), who was part of a commission charged with studying the
constitutional reforms after the rise of Fascism to power. He defined society
as "a system usually founded on equilibrium
evolutionist and devolutionist, which possesses the ability to self-preserve

and rebalance itself", and which finds its maximum expression in the
modern State, given that "the normal conditions of this organism
are characterized by a consensus among its parts so that the
interests of each are tempered by, and are based on, the
common advantage of the organism [...] It is impossible to have this
consensus without a central normative power [...] [which] reconciles the
interests of the majority or of the generality of the present generation
with the superior interests of the future life of the nation [...] The concept of
the national interest as superior to the interests of the majority and
even of the totality of citizens accords perfectly with the organic conception of society.
The organism has vital and evident needs that transcend the present and
to which present interests must frequently be sacrificed. 151
Gini basically speaks as a sociologist. He articulates a series of

theoretical propositions that want to have an explanatory and predictive
function. But their normative and more specifically political
implications are obvious. When society is defined as an organism, the
community, the organized whole, becomes the index of reference, while
the individual, as a component part of the whole, is so only for the
contribution he makes to the conservation of the whole. In a more
specifically political context, therefore, Gini argued: "Liberal theory
asserts that society is an aggregate of individuals who must look after
their own interests and considers the state to be the emanation of individual
wills aimed at eliminating conflicts between the interests of
individuals . The nationalist theory, on the contrary, considers society as a
real organism in its own right, of a higher degree than that of the individuals
who compose it, an organism endowed with its own life and its own
interests. These interests are the result of the coordination of the present
aspirations of the present generation with the interests of all future generations which will g
Quite often these interests are in harmony with each other, but sometimes
the interests of future generations are at odds with those of the present
generation and, in any case, may differ markedly, if not in direction, at least
in intensity. The entity destined to implement these superior interests of
society is the State, which sacrifices, when necessary, the interests of the
individual and acts in opposition to the will of the present generation.' 152
Gini's statements are a reworking of what Alfredo Rocco, the Fascist

Minister of Justice, had written in 1925. Rocco had defined the political
and social ideas of Fascism as an "integral doctrine of sociality" and had
affirmed that "man lives and must live in society.
A human being outside of society is something inconceivable, a non-man...
» Society, in turn, « is a fraction of the human species endowed with unity
of organization for the attainment of the peculiar ends of the species...
The fascism therefore replaces the old atomist and mechanical
theory which was at the basis of liberal and democratic doctrines with an
organic and historical conception of society.
When I say organic I don't want to give the impression that I conceive of
society as an organism in the manner of the so-called 'organic theories of
the state'; but rather to understand that social groups, as fractions of the
species, receive from it a life and a purpose which transcends the purpose
and life of individuals, identifying themselves with the history and purposes
of an uninterrupted series of generations... The thing It is important to note
that this organic conception of the state gives society a continuous life above
and beyond the existence of the different individuals. Therefore, the relations
between the state and individuals are completely overturned by the fascist doctrine.
Instead of the liberal democratic formula of 'society, for individuals', we have
'individuals for society', with this difference, however: that while liberal
doctrines eliminate society, Fascism does not drown the individual in the
social group. It subordinates it, but does not eliminate it [...] For Fascism,
society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in
using individuals as instruments for social ends... The fundamental
problem of society in the old doctrines is the question of the rights of the
individual. Fascism, on the other hand, openly addresses the problem
of the rights of the state and the duty of individuals. Individual rights
are recognized only in so far as they are implicit in the rights of the State".
153
Rocco's statements obtained the explicit endorsement of Mussolini and the

series of propositions which constituted their substance reappeared on
several occasions in the fascist doctrinal definitions throughout the
twenty years. 154 Rocco's statements clearly constitute a political
justification of the ideology of Fascism. What Gini wrote instead
presumably has a cognitive value. Gini argues that an adequate
treatment of human behavior must refer to the role and condition of single
individuals. The concepts of role and condition are incomprehensible
unless they are understood in the context of institutions, of subsystems that
demand pre-established interpersonal responses. These answers offer the
diagnosis of some specific aspects of the existing organizational and
corporate forms. Any valid discussion of human behavior must refer
to such irreducible social facts. 155 References to purpose-organized
and goal-directed behavior summarize perennial patterns of behavior; the
analytic meaning of these statements is to be able to put together
statements that
affect a certain number of individuals. But the regular relationships

that are evidently obtained between individuals can only be explained
by referring to the norms that establish their suitability or non-suitability.
It is evident that even Rocco conceived analysis in this way. He
speaks of the social group a pervaded by spiritual influences": the
unity of language, of culture, of religion, of tradition, of customs, of laws
which are all governed by norms and which offer the essential minimum
for the conservation of the model which defines "society". 156
So far, the references to the nation encountered in this reconstruction

of the doctrine of Fascism have been marginal. A similar analysis can
be conducted for any social group, for any community
organised. In fact, we have seen that definitions of this kind were

inherited by Fascism from the sociological tradition that practically
began with Gumplowicz. Gini mentions Gumplowicz as one of the
most important precursors of organicism. 157 Organicism as an
explanatory and analytic system did not address a specific object,
i.e. objections to methodological individualism did not necessarily
involve reference to any specific organized group, group, race, class,
sect, caste or Nation, as a privileged element of the analysis. If the
analysis of orthodox Marxism was correct, class would have been
the real object of analysis. But, since the theoretical claims of the
fascists had obvious normative implications, the object of allegiance
became the nation.
As we have seen, the radical syndicalists were among the first to make
the analytical and theoretical transition from the class to the nation
as a fundamental element of analysis. Olivetti defined syndicalism
as "the philosophy of association", founded on the empirical
generalization which considers human existence impossible
outside of some "orderly association" of likes. 158 The central theme
became: What resemblances are sufficient to have a vital association?
Once these similarities are identified, the fundamental
element of analysis is also identified.
Arturo Labriola (1873-1959), one of the founders of syndicalism in Italy,

argued that experience had shown that class sentiment is
largely artificial; class interest alone had proved incapable of

generating and sustaining a group that had normative power. "There is no
doubt," he maintained, "that national sentiment and ethnic sentiment are
much more spontaneous and powerful." 159 Already in 1911 he had
affirmed that the feeling of nationality is the product of a group life spent
within the confines of an association, governed by rules and laws, much
larger and of greater sentimental value than the class. This analysis was
continued by the theorists of Fascism and the objective foundations
of "similarity", i.e. the factors which lead to the conservation and duration of
the group, were finally identified in the common territorial origins, in the
common descent, in the common uses and customs, in the common
culture, in the language common, in the common history, in a common system of laws.
161 These were the objective foundations on which the feeling of
nationality rested. In his preparatory lectures on political sociology
at the University of Rome in 1927, Michels specified them thus. 162
As we have already said. Mussolini had made this analysis his own since
before 1919.
Fascist theorists conceived of man as a social animal possessing the

natural predispositions that lead to the preservation of an organized
community life. As we have already said, they argued that man has in
common with all social animals a sense of territoriality and a predisposition
to identify with a small community of his own kind. The similarities that
sustain group cohesion vary over time and space; but, in general, some
socially conspicuous characteristic provides the initial basis for 1 iden
typification. Possessing these characteristic predispositions, men always

find themselves in groups of limited size. Not by chance did Michels
become a spokesman for these conceptions. He descended in direct line
from the tradition of Gumplowicz, Pareto and Mosca, characterized
man substantially in the same way and had accepted as valid the same
group formation factors discovered by his predecessors. Likewise, Ezio
Maria Olivetti, son of A. 0. Olivetti, in a book that obtained the endorsement
of Mussolini, 163 traced these doctrinal elements back to the "anti-
individualist sociological tradition", popular in pre-war Italy, 164 with
clear allusion to men who followed the Gumplowicz tradition.
Carlo Costamagna, in one of the most mature expressions of the

fascist doctrine, gives evident proof not only of his dependence on
Pareto and Mosca, but also of his familiarity with the works of Gumplowicz. 165
Fascist doctrine inherited these conceptions from the sociological

tradition of pre-war Italy, but it was the conception of the state,
which became fundamental to Fascist thought only in 1921, that
gave Fascism a specific and determined character of its own. The
fascists argued that while the people, supported by the sentiments of the
groups to which we have alluded, constitute the content of the
state, the state is formally defined by its political and juridical functions.
The fascists also argued that, technically speaking, any form of
orderly and autonomous associated life is animated by a state. 166 The
State is "any society or human community held together by a political nexus".
167 The formal element of the State is its political and juridical
sovereign power. The state is "the creator of an order, by means of
laws or regulations, which reduces all component entities to unity and
coordinates all activities towards a common end". 168 The State is the
ultimate repository of the force to which, in the final analysis, any order
must resort for legal sanctions. Fascist theorists such as
Panunzio admitted that associations organized within the state had
the ability to issue norms and rules that govern their members, but they
also argued that these norms and rules had real value only if they
were directly or indirectly sanctioned by the state. 169 It was admitted,
that is, that the association could follow interests, real or imaginary,
which provided the basis of identification among men. The impressive
growth of economic organizations, especially trade unions, was clear proof
of this historical reality. Sects, circles, cooperatives, cultural associations,
all constituted associations in favor of particular interests, governed by
norms, within the State. They were all autonomous as long as they were
capable of governing their internal organization by means of the
promulgation of procedural and substantive norms. The state could
not, under any circumstances, exercise its sovereign right over them. The
organizations had to continue to function according to the strength of
their ability to impose sanctions on their members^ However, the fascists
reiterated, the state is the only and ultimate source of mandatory sanctions, since
since the state has the exclusive right to regulate the use of force. Basically,
Fascism
he rejected the thesis according to which there could exist some limit, in
principle, to the political and juridical sovereignty of the State* The State was
"integral", "totalitarian". Fascism did not conceive of any economic,
educational, religious or cultural interest that fell outside the sphere of action of
the state. Consequently, there were no private interests distinct from public
interests. 170 This idea found its doctrinaire expression in Mussolini's
aphorism: «Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against
the State b. 1 ^
If the term community refers to a certain number of individuals whose

behavior is governed by a normative order, and if the State provides the
ultimate sanction that sustains this order, then it means that the State
constitutes a basic and essential social reality which has the same
extent and the same limits as the community and logically precedes it. If
this community is a nation, that is, a community which has a common history
and culture, which manifests itself in common, stable and habitual preferences
and priorities which allow its members to have in common, in a more
intimate way, a wider range of relationships mutual than with strangers, then
the nation and the state, in a critical sense, merge. In speaking of the state
per se we are referring to a normative order and in speaking of the
nation we are speaking of a set of living individuals whose behavior
exemplifies that order.
These concepts find shorthand expression in the Labor Charter: «... Nation is
an organism that has goals, life and potential superior, in terms of strength
and duration, to the individuals, taken individually or collectively, who compose
it. It is a moral, political and economic entity which finds its integral realization
in the Fascist State ». 172
The state, consequently, assumes responsibility for maintaining the moral

order that provides the historical continuity of the community that is the nation.
173
In the document that became the basis of the mature ideology of Fascism,
Mussolini summarizes these doctrinal concepts in the following way: «
The cornerstone of the fascist doctrine is the conception of the state, its
essence, its tasks, its purposes. For fascism, the state is an absolute,
before which individuals and groups are relative. Individuals and groups
are "thinkable" insofar as they are in the State. The liberal state does not direct
the game and the material and spiritual development of the communities, but
limits itself to registering the results; the fascist state has its own awareness,
its own will, which is why it is called an 'etióo' state. In 1929... I said: 'For
fascism, the state is not the night watchman who only deals with the personal
safety of citizens; nor is it an organization for purely material purposes, such
as that of guaranteeing a certain well-being and a relative peaceful social
coexistence, in which case a board of directors would suffice to achieve it;
nor is it a creation of pure politics, without adherence to the material and
complex reality of the life of individuals and that of peoples. The State as
fascism conceives and implements it is a spiritual and moral fact, since it is
concrete the political, juridical, economic organization of the nation, and
such an organization is, in its origin and in its development.
a manifestation of the spirit. The State is the guarantor of internal and external
security, but it is also the guardian and transmitter of the spirit of the people
as it has been elaborated over the centuries in language, customs and faith.
The State is not only present, but also past and above all future. It is the
State which, transcending the brief limit of individual lives, represents the
immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which states express
themselves, changing, but the need remains. It is the State that educates
citizens in civil virtue, makes them aware of their mission, urges them
to unity; harmonize their interests in justice; hands down the conquests of
thought in the sciences, the arts, law, human solidarity; it takes men from the
elementary life of the tribe to the highest human expression of power which
is the empire; entrusts to the ages the names of those who died for its
integrity or to obey its laws...' ». 17^
This conception of the State as the moral substance of the nation and
of the individual, as guardian of civil virtues, as the immanent conscience of
the community and a pre-established moral order in which the individual finds
his true self is the clear transliteration of Georges Sorel's moral conceptions.
For Sorel, the institution of moral regeneration, in an era that has become
flaccid, it was the union, the working class organized in the service of the
social revolution. The union was governed by a moral order which
established the form and content of individual obligations, obligations which
provided the basis for moral attributions, obligations designed to direct the
lives of heroes. These lives were supposed to be lives of dedication and
sacrifice in the service of an ideal. The pursuit of the ideal had to be
undertaken with a single purpose that required the challenge of
violence as a demonstration of commitment.
All these elements had survived in Mussolini's mature political and social
conceptions. What had changed was the object of loyalty: the class had given
way to the nation. 175 The struggle that provided the opportunities for
engagement was the struggle between nations instead of the struggle
between classes. The proof of violence was given by the revolutionary rise
to power and by war, the ultimate proof of heroism and sacrifice. The nation
was the instrument of moral regeneration. The Nation, as an ideal to be
achieved, was the organizing myth of the Fascist revolution and the
constitutional myth of the Regime. 176 &
However, the fascist theorists never managed to develop a fully

convincing treatment of the myth as it was used by the fascist doctrine.
Although the literature dedicated to this concept was abundant,
yet very few works met the elementary requisites of intellectual rigor. This
fact was admitted by the best of Fascism's own theorists. 177 However, it
is possible to specify some of its characteristics. It is clear that the
concept originated with Sorel and Pareto. In this regard, it is a pity that
commentators have not taken seriously the identification that fascist
thinkers made between this concept and that proposed by Pareto and Sorel.
Pareto clearly states that "social doctrine ... if it is to have any
influence, it must take the form of myth." 178
The fascists, in general, believed that the myth had imperative and
exhortative functions. Its language is the language of incitement. As such, its
prescriptions of prohibitions are never the consequence of a
demonstration, its conclusions are never the necessary consequence of
deductions strictly descending from any limited set of
descriptive propositions. Myths are, in Pareto's sense, non-logical

products; they are essentially moral arguments and as such they fall
outside the domain of what Pareto, and the fascists after him, called
logical-experimental reasoning. In this sense, myths constitute a
distinct class of interests. They are inextricably based on
feelings, on attitudes which, although influenced by reasoning, are
never a deductive consequence of it. Any myth is grounded in
an attitudinal tendency, and any argument that concludes with an
exhortation or makes a normative judgment is inextricably grounded in
an irreducible sentiment. In any argument that has moral value, there
are words that have value in themselves. The value of these words
gives these arguments the ability to balance descriptive propositions
with normative ones. In any such discussion, the assistance
of a positive bias against some general value must always be
presupposed, which may be collective or personal survival, liberty,
democracy, order, glory or profit (and so on), before accepting an
argument. Therefore Mussolini argued that before an argument can
be presented in support of a policy, it must necessarily be assumed
that the listeners have in common a sentiment in favor of some
undoubtedly vague but compelling values.
179 . The implications of a value can be specified by ever more
precise definitions and arguments can be offered to support it, but the
value must have some initial persuasive force before any
meaningful discussion can be undertaken. 180 Thus, for example,
in order to establish the moral primacy of the nation it is necessary to
suppose that the interlocutor shares a positive feeling in favor of the
fulfillment of the ego. The discussion, then, has the necessary
footing. Then it can be argued, using descriptive and analytical
propositions, that the fulfillment of the ego, in a valid sense, is
impossible outside a well-ordered human community, that language
and thought, fundamental for the fulfillment of the ego, they
are psychologically, if not logically, inconceivable outside the
grammatical and syntactic rules of speech, possible only when all
the interlocutors speak the same language. These arguments,
together with the descriptive propositions concerning the
conditions necessary for the maintenance of the continuity of the
social model and organization, can lead to judgments that value the state as
entity that has the obligation to promote and defend the normative order of
the community. By virtue of these considerations, of the absolute necessity,
that is, of placing a common sentiment as a presupposition of any discourse
that makes sense, political and social discussions assume a character that
distinguishes them from discussions that fall within the field of science.
The discussions
political and social are inevitably not logical. Through these discussions, a
hierarchy of values is established for the assignment of obligations and the
attribution of praise or blame. Thus a moral system is generated. If the
State acts as guardian of this system, it is defined as "ethical". If the system is
predicated on the basis of a central core of commitments to which all other
commitments are subordinated, this core is called the myth of the system/
The central myth of Fascism was the nation»
< Mussolini and the fascist theorists argued that any political system is
animated, implicitly or explicitly, by an organizing and, in suitable
circumstances, even a constitutional myth. 181 Oscar di Giamberardino
stated, therefore, that "every political and social theory... has at its foundation a
particular way of conceiving man in his individuality and in his relations with
the species...". 182 It is this conception of man, a conception formulated
in falsely descriptive terms, which translates into prescriptive and proscriptive
normative judgements. Such a conception is a myth, not because it is not
true, but because a theoretical treatment in itself is incapable of assuming the
normative character indispensable to political and social appeal. Politics
uses the language of appeals launched on the basis of common sentiments,
and consequently uses arguments that are intrinsically distinct from those
of science, which, ideally, is free from values. v
This is the general way of conceiving the myth that is found in the best
theoretical fascist literature. With small modifications, it is a Pareto and
Sorelian analysis. And he encounters the same difficulties. Both Canepa
and Costamagna, for example, speak of the sentiment on the basis of
which the political thesis is predicated in terms of "intuitions" and "faith".
In this sense, these feelings have a very irreducible quality
similar to that of Pareto's "residues" and Sorel's "intuitions". All these

terms are vague, and it immediately follows that 'intuitions', 'faith' and
'residues' are indisputable. They are simply given. Although the
Fascists have regularly advanced arguments in support of their
particular political myth, the use of terms such as "intuition" or "faith"
suggests a commitment detached from any reasoned discourse.
Another consequence that derives from this is the fact that
any difference of feeling, understood as "faith" or indisputable
"intuition", can only be resolved by resorting to violence. This
deficiency finds expression in the writings of the fascist
"mystics" who reaffirm the transrational derivation of their
gnoseological theses. 183 Accepting this position of theirs as true,
there can be no rational system by virtue of which differences can
be resolved. Adversaries can only be treated as if they belonged
to two categories which include them all: 1) that of the incorrigibly
ignorant; and 2) that of the wicked. The former must remain forever
under the tutelage of the enlightened, while the latter legitimately become the object
There is, as we have seen, some evidence that Mussolini

personally did not accept transrational assumptions. Mussolini was
an anti-intellectual, in the sense we have specified, but there is

no evidence, indeed, there is any evidence to the contrary, that he
was a transrationalist. However, these questions were not
definitively resolved during the Fascist period and, as we shall see,
they infected Fascist ideology in its most fundamental form.
Once the fundamental conceptions of Fascist doctrine are

understood, the rest is revealed as a restatement of those elements
that Mussolini had adopted in his youth. Most of these elements have
taken the form of descriptive and semi-theoretical propositions
concerning the nature of man as an individual being and as a
component of a community. Most of them became commonly used
in the literature devoted to the exposition of Fascist doctrine.
Man is essentially a social animal. As such, he is led to identify

with a community of limited size. This identification involves a
developmental process that begins in early childhood,
period in which the norms are inculcated and the child is accustomed to
responsible social life. Hence the importance attributed by Fascism to the
political organization of youth. The ongoing process of socialization
is largely accomplished by means of mimicry and suggestion. Hence the
importance attributed by Fascism to the need for rites and ceremonies. In
essence, the fascists argue, the moral life of the majority of individuals never
matures beyond these stages; their values and preferences are never more
than a reflection of the prevailing values and preferences within the
community with which they identify.
Hence, the importance attached by Fascism to the responsibility of the
state to control the means of information, so that the average citizen
lives in a carefully controlled environment.
Fascism's esteem for man is anything but flattering. Mussolini's

negative assessment was very vivid. 184 Left to themselves, men give in
to their own stupidity and base impulses.
Only in an atmosphere of high moral tension, under the insistent lash of a
demanding ideal and the discipline necessary for its implementation, can
men hope to transcend themselves. Such a condition can only arise
under the disciplined control of a rigorously self-selected
aristocracy capable of imposing its will on the elementary energies of
the masses. Hence the importance attributed by Fascism to the single,
hierarchical and disciplined party. The party was to assume those tutoring,
educational and moral functions which would create the homines novi, who
would live a new life in a new style and with a new character. 185 .**
Finally, if the masses are basically inert, capable only of supplying the
elemental energy in the service of definite change, any concept of popular
sovereignty would have been, in principle, difficult. The abandonment of
the concept of popular sovereignty was followed by the abandonment
of popular and uncontrolled elections. Fascism preferred a plebiscitary
Bonapartism, a system compatible with its doctrinal convictions and with
the proto-fascist tradition. The aristocracy begins the change and in
then, after all systems have been used to create popular consensus, a
plebiscite is called, not to legitimize the change, but
to effectively mobilize the masses in its service. Fascism was a mass

solidarity movement and was by no means indifferent to the masses.
He conceded that the introduction of the masses into the realm of
political life was one of the most unusual features of the twentieth century.
It was his intention to control the masses; to create, on the basis of a
consensus on values, a unified mass movement in support of the
policy of the ruling aristocracy. He conceived of the nation in terms of
a large army, capable of dedication, heroism and outright victory only if
competently commanded and directed by a political aristocracy.
It is hard not to hear in this an echo of the young Mussolini's political and
social convictions. The same themes recur, the same analyzes are
carried out, the same arguments are proposed, which are supported by the
same sentimental appeals. The difference lies in the increasing
systematicity. Towards the end of the Fascist period, they were given
what is perhaps the clearest and most linear expression in Carlo
Costamagna's Doctrine of Fascism. The rational foundation of
Fascism, Costamagna argued, is based on three fundamental
conceptual considerations: the political formula, the minority political class
that attempts its implementation and the political mass through
which it is carried out. 186 All considerations that Mussolini dealt with in his
youth. In fact, while the term political formula was taken from Moscow,
Costamagna identified it with the Paretian and Sorelian myth. His
analysis of the function of myth was essentially that of the young
Mussolini. The political formula, Costamagna argued, is a shorthand and
sometimes elliptical formula which expresses the ultimate moral basis on
which the legitimacy of the power of a political class is founded. The
recognition, by the political masses, of the legitimacy of the Government
brings with it the moral obligation of obedience to the Government itself.
Furthermore, the political formula provides the hierarchy of values that
order the individual's moral universe. The political formula gives the
content of the imperatives and their normative force. In terms of the
doctrinaire language of Fascism, the nation was conceived as the real
and ultimate source of all that has value in the individual. The nation was
essentially understood as a community governed by rules. The State was
the ultimate source of sanction which, in making the norms
operative, made the nation a reality. In this way, the State and the Nation identified themse
normative is the constitutive moral substance of the people, which in

turn constitutes the content of the nation-state, the state and the
people are identified in the expression "people-state". Since the ruling
normative system is the product of a series of creative acts by the historical
political aristocracies, and the current political aristocracy has the
responsibility to uphold and perpetuate the system, and to educate
the masses to their responsibilities, the organized aristocracy in a single
party and the system can be identified in the expression « State-party
». The result is an appropriate set of substitutions
tutions that allows the nation to be identified with the state, the people and
the party. This, in essence, is what Fascism meant by "integral political
system" or totalitarianism. This implied an identification of the real ultimate
interests of the nation, the state, the party and the individual, however
divergent their apparent interests.
; For the State and the party were in practice identified with the will of a man.
Mussolini, he came to identify himself, thanks to the above substitutions,
with the nation. It was precisely this identification that gave Mussolini's
leadership its "charismatic" character; the Duce was conceived as "the
living and active incarnation" of the nation. 157 The concept of charisma
officially entered the fascist doctrine; Michels, in fact, defined the Regime as
a "charismatic government", while the official Party manual of 1936 maintained
that "the 'charismatic' theory of national society actually found its first full
implementation in Fascism". 188 The Duce was Head of Government and
Prime Minister, author of decree-laws, effective head of all military,
political and economic institutions, Commander of the Militia,
Head of the Grand Council of Fascism, Marshal of the Empire, and
physical personification of the Nation .
to the desired integration of the economic, intellectual and political life of the
nation into an indissoluble unity, they would use whatever system proved
effective. 191
The rational basis that supported the whole system was expressed in various
ways, more or less refined. The most mature expression is found in the
works of Giovanni Gentile who, as has been said, brought the critical concept of
the "ethical state" to the fascist ideology. We must therefore turn to Gentile
to have the most convincing and qualified treatment of the social and
political philosophy of Fascism, and it is to his work that we will now turn our
attention.
FASCIST SYNTHESIS
Fascist doctrine was largely Mussolini's personal creation.

Some of its elements were an essential part of Mussolini's social and political
thought as early as 1904 (when he was 21 years old). As he himself said,
however, they were themselves part of different political and intellectual
traditions. 186
The three main doctrinal sources of the fascist synthesis were, as we have
seen: the anti-parliamentarian tradition of Gumplowicz, Mosqa and Pareto,
the radical syndicalist tradition of Sorel, the nationalist tradition of Corradini. The
common origin and a whole set of historical circumstances made these
traditions flow into Fascism. What was missing was a unitary principle, a
concept that gave these elements a valid and sustainable logical unity.
The unifying concept was Gentile's conception of the state: by accepting it and
making it its own, Fascism became the first true totalitarian movement
of the twentieth century.
The cornerstone of fascist totalitarianism was the conception of the state.

The doctrine of fascism is based on the moral priority of the nation and the
state as its moral foundation to which every other value is subordinated.
This being the case, we have not dealt with the diverse and varied
institutions through which the integration of the economy was achieved.
190 The institutional structure of the Corporate State is far less important
than the hierarchy of values which provided its rationale.
The fascists explained immediately, and without equivocation, that to arrive
Any attempt to reconstruct the social and political philosophy of

Fascism must be viewed in the light of numerous considerations, at least
two of which must be carefully examined before starting this exposition.
What is of interest, in the first place, is to establish whether Fascism
had specifically philosophical pretensions. It has been said and
repeated so insistently that Fascism was anti-intellectual and therefore
anti-philosophical, that such assertions are commonly accepted as
truisms. 1 The supine acceptance of such a judgment, moreover not
completely unfounded, however distorts the historical truth. In reality, as
we have already pointed out, one must distinguish between anti-intellectualism and irrati
Anti-intellectualism is itself a system of thought.
When Mussolini and Fascism, just at their origins, accepted the theses
of pragmatism as it was understood in Italy, they immediately identified
with this system of thought. Papini, who, as has been said, had
greatly influenced the development of Mussolini's thought, had been one
of the first to accuse philosophy of "intellectualism." For him, this
accusation meant that philosophy, in wanting to force reality onto the
Procrustean bed of categories and abstract concepts, had become sterile.
Papini renounced the search for transempirical universal values and
hoped for a return to particular values, to action in the world of
men and things. 2 Prezzolini, who had had as much influence as Papini on
the evolution of Mussolini's thought, in a book that the latter reviewed in
1909, observed that Sorel's syndicalism achieved precisely all
of this. Revolutionary syndicalism, like pragmatic activism, rejected
any form of intellectualism that attempted to reduce the world to a priori
categories and abstract universal concepts. Syndicalism took a
responsible interest in the men of its time and in their most urgent real
problems. This did not mean, as Prezzolini observed, that men should
not reason on similar problems or that they should not make use of
the inductive and deductive processes characteristic of intelligence. 3 It meant, instead,
the adoption of a method that started from the still unsolved problems,
problems that make man a real being in a
real environment. As has already been said, Mussolini understood the

relationship between reason and reality in this way and consequently
preferred a form of pragmatism which made the need for action the source
of energy for systematic thought and effective action the test bed of the I
reason and truth. This thesis, difficult as it is to sustain itself, nevertheless
cannot be accused of irrationalism and is "anti-philosophical" only in the limited
sense that it assumes a particular philosophical position with respect to
philosophy in general.
Among pragmatists, reason was considered a tool for solving real problems
facing humanity. The motives of actions were variously defined, either as
feelings or as necessities. The fact that a man would rather live than die
was regarded as a feeling; once the existence of this feeling was ascertained,
reason was used to defend and improve life. In this sense, Italian
pragmatism conceived action and will prior to reason (in a way, that is, not
very different from that of Hume). 4 The test of truth was its instrumental
effectiveness, the ability to translate expectations into action. 5
Italian pragmatism suffered a rapid decline in the years

immediately preceding and immediately following the Great War.
Prezzolini soon moved on to idealism as it had developed in Italy since
the beginning of the century. 8 Ugo Spirito, in a book written after the
Second World War, traced the course that Italian philosophy had followed
since the beginning of the twentieth century. Starting from an uncritical
positivism, it had rapidly transformed into pragmatism, 7
voluntarism and relativism to then flow, in the period
immediately preceding the First World War, into the neo-idealism of Croce
and Gentile. 8 As we have seen, this was substantially the same path taken
by Mussolini as well. Starting from the positivism of his early essay Man and
the Godhead (1904), Mussolini's thought went through a period of intense
pragmatism, which lasted from 1909 to 1921,^
then he came to the relativism of the short essay Relativism and fascism 9 c*~finally
concluded, a few weeks later, in neo-idealism. 10
The continuity of this thought process is indicated by the fact that it was not an individual but
a general manifestation. Indeed, some of the most lively Italian thinkers, including many
radical avant-garde intellectuals, went through the same phases. We are referring in
particular to the radical trade unionists and especially to Arturo Labriola and AO Olivetti.
In reality, Mussolini reflected it rather than anticipating the line of thought as a

whole. In general, it can be argued that neo-idealism did just what it thought was valid of
pragmatism and relativism and that the move from pragmatism to relativism and finally to
neo-idealism does not necessarily constitute evidence of weakness, but could very well
indicate an evolution of thought. 11
Furthermore, there were very valid political and tactical reasons for making such a switch.
In Italy, neo-idealism had a hold on nationalist currents from the outset. Syndicalism, in
turn, had gradually absorbed neo-idealistic elements. When Fascism Yes
found to be a fusion of nationalist and syndicalist elements, neo-idealism formed

the common matrix in which all could find a place.
Finally, the neo-idealistic conception of the "ethical state" united various particular
political elements of Fascism into a coherent and valid whole.
The considerations set out above lead us to believe that: a) the fascist theorists, while
remaining decidedly anti-intellectualists 12 reasoning per , they were not against the
se and, consequently, seriously faced the problems of the evolution of their political
and social thought; ò) neo-idealism became, in a certain way, basic to the
system. In the following section we will take a closer look at these claims.
FASCISM AND PHILOSOPHY
For purposes of study, in the preface we have given a conventional definition

of ideology according to which the latter must have: a) a system, implicit or explicit, of
values, united b) a system relatively
consistent with generalizations about nature, society and man to whom a

group refers in order to be able to justify the issuing of political and social
directives, prescriptions and prohibitions and to justify c) the directives,
prescriptions and prohibitions themselves, formal and informal. 13 Historically,
this definition fits perfectly with the distinctions that the theorists of
Fascism made in practice. Although the constituent elements of the
fascist ideology are very intertwined, it is possible to distinguish between
the rational system of values which underlies the doctrine and the
doctrine itself. The first represents, more properly, the domain of social and
political philosophy, which provides the rational arguments in support of the
values on which the doctrine ultimately rests. A mature ideology involves an
explicit and reasoned commitment to a system of values which
concerns "the true ends of human existence" (speculative political and
social philosophy) and which gives rise to the more or less
systematic ordering of facts and ideas concerning society and its
organization (doctrine) at the service of a practical program of social action
(prescriptive and proscriptive norms of behaviour).
In 1908 Mussolini, a young socialist theorist, defined what we have

called "ideology" a "complete, harmonious and synthetic doctrine"
composed of three elements: the ideal element, the doctrinal
element, and the practical element. 14 Twenty-five years later, the Doctrine
of Fascism maintained that fascist practice could not be understood without
an exact evaluation of its conception of life and that the latter, which
possessed an ideal or philosophical content, had found expression in a
contingent doctrine and corresponding to the needs of time and place. 15
Mussolini consistently stuck to this distinction. In 1926 he had identified

a «... area reserved... for meditation on the supreme aims of life... (which
lead) necessarily to philosophy
(Za which ) ... alone can illuminate science and lead it to the terrain of the
universal idea ». 18
He regularly referred to the doctrine for the premises that were at the
foundation of the legislation and to link the doctrine itself to those
fundamental values on which it was based. 17 Thus, while making it clear that i
the first Fasci of revolutionary action of 1915 had not had a "specifically
doctrinaire program" since they were born out of an urgent need for action,
he claimed, on the other hand, to the Fasci Italiani di
Combattimento, of 1919, the privilege of having provided, through indications
and anticipations, the foundations for an independent and self-sufficient
system of political thought. 18
In February 1922 Mussolini, having moved on to neo-idealism, briefly

reviewed political developments in Italy since the turn of the century. He
wrote: "This political process is accompanied by a philosophical process: if
it is true that matter remained on the altars for a century, today it is the
spirit that takes its place [...] When it is said that God returns, yes 'he intends
to affirm that the values of the spirit return'. 19 And from then on he referred
to political systems as systems of values. 20
In 1932, the Doctrine of Fascism affirmed that a political conception of the

State must be, fundamentally, "a concept of life: philosophy or intuition, a
system of ideas which develops in a logical construction or is gathered
together in a vision or in a faith but it is always, at least virtually, an organic
conception of the world... ». 21
Fascist theorists reiterated these themes incessantly. Canepa, in his

systematic explanatory exposition of the fascist doctrine, affirmed that, "not
only the fascist doctrine, but in any doctrine, a certain number of
fundamental values can be found at the base". 22 He therefore
distinguished political and social philosophy from other questions more
or less connected to it by virtue of its normative character, and he
considered it qualitatively different from science because science is
essentially amoral. Science deals with the classification of phenomena
through analyzes of their regularity which, on a theoretical level,
provide the general laws that serve to increase the certainty of predictions
and their control.
The "mature" or "exact" sciences have achieved notable successes in

this work of rearranging the data. The "immature" sciences such as
sociology, psychology and all the subsidiary disciplines that accompany
them have had less success, but nevertheless they address the same aims
and do not have, like the former, any normative character. They do
they are concerned with nature, whether physical or human, as it is... and not
as it ought to be. 23
Science is therefore an effective control and forecasting tool. Once the initial
conditions and the systematic recurrence within which the phenomena in
question can be classified have been determined, it is possible to make
probabilistic judgments on particular trends in things. Knowledge of this kind is
essential to the attainment of certain ends, but it does not in the least
purport to say which ends one should choose. The choice of ends is the
consequence of an important act of choice
that it is a function of a system of values valid for an individual or for a

group; and a system of values rests, tacitly or expressly, on a valid and effective
theory of the "true ends of human existence." Where the commitment is
explicit, we rightly speak of 'moral philosophy', while if the commitment is
implicit we could use terms such as 'feeling' or 'aptitude disposition'. When these
commitments operate in a social and political context and provide the
conceptual framework for the organization of facts, we speak of social
and political philosophy in its current meaning. This complex of systematically
interconnected theses based on a particular hierarchy of values
was defined by Canepa as a system of doctrine.' Panunzio, similarly,
distinguished the "theoretical substance of Fascism" from its "practical, active,
more immediate, more physical or mechanical aspect, one could say".
24 Luigi Volpicelli spoke of Fascism's "political values" which remained
constant during the course of its variable and contingent practical activity. 25
Elsewhere, in clarifying this distinction, Volpicelli maintained that Fascism
had clarified "its thought, its philosophy, its conception of values, which were
implicit in its own revolutionary action". 28
It is typical of a doctrine to have only implicit values. Values

determine the breadth and importance of the facts that doctrine will take into
account in its thesis, but the detailed definition and rational defense of
values is a distinctive trait of social and political philosophy.
The fact that Fascism has its origins in anti-intellectualistic

traditions ranging from pragmatism to neo-idealism, led
the fascist theorists to distinguish the rational foundation of fascism from the
"commonly understood" philosophy.
Therefore Mussolini rejected philosophical systems that were "arbitrary

logical constructions" defining them as "arid, sterile and unproductive". 28 But
one must not think that the repudiation of "preconceived doctrines", 29 of
"dogmas", 30 of "ideological or mystical sublimations" 31 implied the
renunciation of the critical and systematic elaboration of a specifically
fascist social and political philosophy. 32
In 1929, addressing the Seventh National Congress of Philosophy held in

Rome, Mussolini said that it was necessary "to do philosophy" and that the
philosophers present should not be surprised by his participation in the
congress work since he judged their topics not only intrinsically
interesting, but fundamental "from the point of view of the doctrine
which serves to animate the practical orientations of daily action". 33 In
1921 Mussolini had assigned philosophy the task of "equipping the brain
with doctrines and solid convictions (which would not have led) to disarm, but to
strengthen, to make action ever more conscious". 34
Thus, there is plenty of evidence that educated fascists took philosophical work
seriously. M. Marchello defined the "technical" doctrinal elaboration of
the "fascist philosophical ideas" as the "central problem" of fascist culture,
while Gentile spoke of the need to
make the political philosophy of Fascism clear and consistent, coherent in

content and defensible in polemics with opponents. 35 In 1935 the library of
the Italian Chamber of Deputies included about ten thousand volumes
dedicated to Fascism in general and more than two thousand dealing
specifically with its doctrine. 36 This enormous amount of material can only
give proof of the interest in the matter but does not, however, certify the
quality of the product. The fact is that Canepa dryly observed that "a very
considerable percentage" of this doctrinal material was "less than mediocre"
made up as it was of "empty, cobbled together, confused texts... without
seriousness or conviction". 37 However, it is evident that around 1930

the commitment to a systematic ideological elaboration was serious.
GIOVANNI GENTILE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF FASCISM
6 By 1921 Fascism had already developed those key concepts and theoretical
commitments which distinguished it from the then existing doctrinal systems.
By 1927 his doctrine had been refined into a relatively coherent system. In
1930, Mussolini became convinced that Fascism needed a clear, reasoned
defense of its value system; in other words, a definition of his social and
political philosophy. This definition was born in the Doctrine of Fascism which
appeared in the Italian Encyclopaedia under the heading Fascism. «
The Doctrine published in 1932 was divided into two parts, one entitled
"Fundamental Ideas" and the other "Social and Political Doctrines". Both
were signed by Mussolini while the latter, in fact, had written only the
second. The author of the "Fundamental Ideas" was Giovanni Gentile, 38
who had been chosen by Mussolini as the spokesman of the philosophy of
Fascism. In fact, the entire essay, including the philosophical part written by
Gentile, became the basis of the official philosophy of Fascism. 3 ? Its
publication took place despite the protests of the Vatican which saw in it the
principles of Actualism, Gentile's philosophy, which the Catholic Church had
harshly attacked for years. During the Fascist period the paternity of the «
Fundamental Ideas » was never officially recognized to their true author and
many Fascist thinkers opposed the union between the philosophy of
Fascism and Gentile's Actualism. 40 With the acknowledgment of Gentile's
authorship, these reservations are difficult to defend. The « Fundamental Ideas
» are openly actualist. Their author was the founder of Actualism and
considered himself a Fascist, 41 since he considered the Fascist State the
embodiment of his principles. 42 To this State he lent his work as a theorist (and
he was the greatest), as a public administrator, as a member of the Grand
Council of Fascism and of the very important Committee for Constitutional
Reform; and precisely because he was a leading figure in Fascism, he
was assassinated on April 15, 1944. Mussolini personally
examined Gentile's philosophical exposition before its official publication and
approved it despite the
oppositions of very powerful forces in Italy. On the other hand, Actualism

was perfectly compatible with all the specifically philosophical
attitudes that Mussolini had assumed after 1921.
It is very probable that Mussolini had read something by Gentile since

1908. In a conversation with Yvon de Begnac, he said that he was
unable to say to what extent Gentile's works had influenced him in that
early period, thus implying that he had read or heard of Gentile's ideas
before then. 43 That Gentile was known to him is almost certain.
Gentile's first essay on Marx had much credit among revolutionary
syndicalists, so much so that Arturo Labriola's interpretation of Marx's
thought rests substantially on Gentile's theses. 4 % As we will
demonstrate, Gentile's ideas were quite well known in socialist circles in
general. His influence had gone beyond syndicalist circles and in
1914, as has been said. Prezzolini had come to accept certain aspects
of neo-idealism. At the outbreak of World War I, Gentile was one of those
university professors who actively supported interventionism. 45 When
in December 1918 the nationalists Francesco Coppola and Alfredo
Rocco (who would later become Minister of Justice) founded the
periodical Politics, Gentile collaborated on the first issue. He therefore
exerted a considerable influence on those nationalists and trade unionists
who first gravitated into the orbit of Fascism. 46 In 1921 Gentile enjoyed a
moderate notoriety in revolutionary, interventionist and nationalist
circles in which Mussolini also acted.
In conversations with De Begnac, Mussolini provided a concise but exact

explanation of his intellectual evolution: he had gradually become
disillusioned by the positivism of Roberto Ardigò, and had accepted a form
of pragmatism and activism drawn from the works of Papini. 47 The harsh
experiences of the war, however, seemed to render these ideas
obsolete. Papini and Sorel now seemed to belong to a very ancient era.
«It was Gentile», Mussolini affirmed, «who prepared the way for those
who, like me, wanted to follow it», 48 and he added that the solid
commitment to a certain form of neo-idealism had been assumed since
1921, that is, in the period immediately previous to the organization of the
National Fascist Party. At the time he had written to Michele Bianchi that Fascism was wo
its extinction, it needed a body of doctrine which it did not hesitate to

define as "the philosophy of Fascism". 49
As we have already said, Mussolini had embraced some elements of

neo-idealism even before his break with official socialism.
Benedetto Croce, in the intellectual history of Italy of this period,
validates this opinion. 50 ^ But it was only in 1921 that Mussolini
identified the theoretically very important Fascist conception of the
state with that of Gentile's "ethical state".^ In December of that year, in
the Chamber, he made an explicit neo-idealistic profession of
faith. Thus, while maintaining precise reservations regarding the
"metaphysics and lyricism" of neo-idealism,51 it is evident that he
had consciously accepted a certain form of idealist epistemology
and, more explicitly, a certain ethical idealism. 52
Relations between Mussolini and Gentile, before the latter was appointed
Minister of National Education in 1922, therefore appear more than
casual. 52 Harris is probably wrong when he insinuates that
Mussolini's choice of Gentile as minister was determined by a "coincidence
of terminology." as Gentile he had founded the Fascio di Educazione
Nazionale. 54
The use of the word "Fasso" was then very common in Italy and this
term had no weight for a serious evaluation of men and things.
Mussolini had certainly become aware of Gentile's work before 1922 and
it is intrinsically evident that previously he had read at least some parts of
his General Theory of Spirit as Pure Act. 55 The fact that Mussolini
identified the Fascist concept of state with Gentile's "ethical state" leads
us to consider the intimate knowledge he had of Gentile's thought as
more than casual. In any case, the most important consideration is
the judgment of De Begnac, who claims that Gentile's Actualism served
to explain some, if not all, parts of Fascism's fundamental belief system.
56 * After 1922 the declarations of Mussolini (and therefore of
Fascism) concerning the relations between the State, the bodies that
constitute it, and individuals almost always conform to Gentile's
opinions, opinions which faithfully reflected the fascist doctrine as
was developed'* In 1922 i
nationalists of the Gentile faith, such as Balbino Giuliano (who was later
Minister of National Education) and Giuseppe Bottai (who became
Minister of Corporations) were by now the main theorists of Fascism and
even Alfredo Rocco, a Corradino nationalist, put forward doctrinal theses
which, according to Harris, "coincided almost completely" with those
of Gentile. 57
It can therefore be affirmed with sufficient certainty that Gentile's

Actualism represented the definitive theoretical complement of the
Fascist system of political and social thought. The currents of anti-
parliamentarism. of revolutionary syndicalism and nationalism
had merged in the Actualismp to give life to the ideology of Fascism. All the
philosophical and doctrinal controversies that subsequently agitated
Fascism (and there were many) were conducted within a system of
thought that provided the rational foundation for the statutory myth of the
Regime. Gentile was, in fact, the philosopher of Fascism by his own
choice and by choice of Mussolini.
FASCISM AND ACTUALISM
Considering Actualism the rational philosophical foundation of Fascism

does not mean thinking that Actualism and Fascism were the same thing.
Fascist ideology included a doctrine whose essential elements had
already been structured in a relatively homogeneous system before 1921.
Obviously, the set of descriptive and theoretical propositions that
characterized Fascism was governed by some substantial values, and
it is quite evident that Mussolini and Fascism kept faith
at certain values. The set of facts of interest, and their articulation

within a doctrine, are determined by the values explicit or implicit in
the system. Only the definition of the goals to be achieved allows for
selection criteria and the adoption of a scale of priorities. 58 Since 1904. at
the age of twenty. Mussolini maintained: "Our morality says to man: behave
according to conscience and be a man!" ».
59 Forty years later. Gentile in his concluding apology of Fascism wrote:
"For those seeking a definition of the moral law (it can) be expressed in
the most exact way through the exhortation: be a man". 60
Obviously, exhortations of this type have considerable imperative force, but

little gnoseological value. To paraphrase Aristotle, they are generally
accepted, but remain obscure. It would be difficult to think of anyone
who seriously urges man to be something other than man, but
establishing what it means for a man to be man is remarkably
complex. The commitment to realizing man's own values initially serves
only to demonstrate the good faith of those who undertake it and their
willingness to face a rational dialogue. Once this sentiment, which cannot
be fought and which manages to spread, has been expressed, any
elaboration that is useful for defining or describing it, even theoretically,
undertaken in order to give it gnoseological value, becomes an occasion
for rational debate. As these elaborations enter ever greater details,
the criteria of choice and priority become more and more evident. The
system of thought is articulated in an elaborate and complex dialectical
process.
Actualism had the possibility of carrying out this work, and put it at the
service of Fascism. 1 * Gentile was entrusted, in all respects, with the
task of identifying and developing the fundamental values of Fascism, and
of undertaking their reasoned defense.\ His theses appeared repeatedly
in the most in-depth treatments of fascist ideology, but this does not
mean that Fascism and Actualism were the same thing. Actualism, in a
critical sense, was in harmony with the essential values that constituted
the substratum of Fascism understood as a social and political system
and provided the rational foundation for its support, but it would be
anachronistic to identify them among them. Fascism, at the time of its
alliance with Actualism, had already developed its own rather in-depth
doctrinal system, a set of explanatory and theoretical theses which
had already given it a distinct and sufficiently stable character. In
this sense, Fascism included Actualism, while remaining different from it.
There is no evidence, for example, that Fascism has ever identified itself
with the metaphysics and epistemology of Actualism, just as there is
nothing to indicate that the more esoteric and systematic doctrines of
Actualism have exercised any influence on Fascist thought.
Fascism absorbed those elements of Actualism that it deemed most
suitable for explaining its own implicit values and for integrating its ideological components
elements concerned almost exclusively Gentile's conception of man and

the considerations deriving from it
as a corollary, concerning political life in general and the nature of the state
in particular. 61 Those same elements, that is, which are found in the
"fundamental ideas" of the Doctrine and which became the essential nucleus
of the fascist system of faith. 62
GENTILE AND THE FASCIST CONCEPTION OF MAN AND OF

FREEDOM
At the foundation of the concise formulations of the "Fundamental Ideas"

there is a normative conception of man which gives ethical value to the
declarations of Fascism concerning the State and the Nation. 63 As a
normative conception it is qualitatively different from the explanatory and
theoretical theses provided by the sociological tradition that goes from
Gumplowicz to Michels, to the fascist doctrine. These theses had clear
normative implications which, however, remained unexpressed in the context
of the disciplines of which they were the product.
Gumplowicz also conceived man essentially as a social animal, but the

concept was formulated with essentially explanatory or predictive purposes.
Gentile's conception of man as a social animal 64 was developed, instead, for
its Ethian meaning. Both
They rejected the "individualistic" or "atomistic" conception of man,

fundamental to the worldview of classical liberalism, and in rejecting it they
made essentially the same arguments.
Both believed that methodological individualism failed to provide a valid
explanation of some of the most significant characteristics of human
life within society. For scholars of the psychology of behavior these
characteristics represented the external behavior of man, while for Gentile
they represented his ethical behavior.
«According to Gentile, insurmountable difficulties paralyzed liberal

political philosophy because the State and Society were conceived as
something contrary to the "I" and the "true individuality" of man. 65
Philosophers of classical liberalism argued that all law is an evil and
that all government is a potential evil because they conceived of law
and government as a limitation of freedom and any limitation
of freedom as a moral infringement. For them "freedom" meant almost
exclusively the absence of limitations. Understood in this way, freedom
was clearly incompatible with the law. Within this conception, therefore,
they believed that the absence of laws allowed freedom the maximum
formal possibilities of explication. According to Locke, the absolute absence
of laws would place men "in a state of absolute freedom to regulate their
actions and to dispose of their property and people according to
what they deem most appropriate...". But, paradoxically, the same liberal
theorists went so far as to affirm that the existence of a minimum of
limitations is the sine qua non condition for a full development of that
freedom, without which human life is, at best, "unpleasant, bestial and short-lived.
According to the contractual thesis, "the free individual", when he

becomes part of society, is forced to give up part of his freedom in order
to see his fundamental rights guaranteed.
The first question, argued Gentile, is whether there is any effective

freedom without the guarantee of fundamental rights. Without freedom
from violence, from robbery, from death, without freedom from the
conditions that make everyone an enemy of everyone and everyone
an enemy of the other, does it really make sense to talk about freedom?
Outside society, the presumed "natural freedom" of individuals to regulate
their actions and to dispose of their property and people as they please
diminishes considerably in real significance.
* We are faced with a singular circumstance, Gentile observed: freedom

(made significant by the acquisition of essential fundamental rights) is
normally strengthened by its diminution and this suggests that "freedom"
is not like a piece of cloth, but rather like a plant, which flowers only if
judiciously pruned.
If one accepts the comparison, it is difficult to think that pruning can

destroy freedom.®The limitations that favor an effective increase in
individual freedom, placing the individual at shelter from violence and arbitrary
and unforeseen obstacles, assuring him certain guarantees, cannot be seriously
condemned as contrary to freedom.
The paradox, Gentile observed, derived from an erroneous concept, according

to which the rights of "others" over the "individual" would destroy individual
freedom, which does not take into account the opposite thesis, according to which,
instead, the recognition of reciprocal rights it would increase freedom rather
than diminish it.
According to Gentile, the concept of man living in perfect freedom before, or

outside of, society is pure fantasy. 66 v Man, as long as he remains outside
organized society and its system of norms and duties valid for all, does not enjoy
true freedom*; Outside of society man would be subjected to nature, would
he not be its master.0 Enemy of all and friend of none would he be exposed
to the threat of people and things and would he fall into a state of degrading
subjection? There would no longer exist either freedom or security, since each
man would be exposed to the open bullying of any enemy!! There would no
longer be security of life nor of freedom. That freedom which it is supposed
that man must give up, entering the ambit of society to thus guarantee himself the
remaining part, does not exist in reality. According to Gentile, it is an imaginary
asset which is then sold to the company through an equally imaginary
transfer.
Gentile argued that only those who conceive the individual in a totally
abstract way can a similar concept come to mind. 67 According to this
conception, in fact, individuality, i.e. the peculiar genius and fullness of life,
is not nourished and protected by relationships governed by the law and by the
commitments that arise in society, but is hidden in the recesses of a
particular intimate self 68 to remain enclosed in those recesses, sheltered from the
adverse blows of an external, physical and
social, menacing. The only possible consequence of this conception was that
kind of speculative and harmless anarchism which characterized the
nineteenth-century liberal thought. The egocentric loner Thoreau

was held up as the model of the fully evolved ego. Society was attributed
the paternity of monotony and uniformity and was considered the moral
enemy of "human nature."
Gentile affirmed that freedom from violence and robbery is one of the
necessary conditions for true freedom, and added that the association of
men governed by norms was not only a necessary condition for freedom,
but that freedom itself could be validly understood only as behavior
governed by rulesSs Ethical idealists have long argued that the concept
of man as a rational animal implicitly implies the recognition of man as a
social animal. The reasoning necessarily refers to the infra-subjective
norms that regulate the attributions of truth and moral evaluations.
"Reason" is the term used to define the intellectual initiative of all those
who are in search of the truth and who intend to support moral
judgements; which can only be achieved by referring to criteria
that prescind from personal interest, or rather to those general and
impartial criteria which are substantially social products. The affirmation of
a status of truth and the defense of moral judgments imply criteria
founded on the social level and which, ideally, correspond to the
critical examination of the "universal power of reason which belongs to
men and gods, to the dead, the living and to the unborn". 70 What men
have in common is human nature which manifests itself in reason
regulated by norms, in thought.
Outside of this spiritual communion, men are animals devoid of any

concept of truth and morality and without any semblance of freedom.
Therefore Gentile argued that « the individual is not an atom. Immanent in
the concept of the individual is the concept of society [...] Man is, in an
absolute sense, a political animal ». 71 As a spiritual agent,'' man is
an essentially social animal who finds freedom only by integrating
himself with other men in a system governed by law
Consequently, according to Gentile, only thought characterizes man; and

since thought involves the use of a language, which is also regulated by
norms, and in this sense must be "social", the human model of
Gentile is normative in that it does not limit itself to giving a set of

descriptive definitions to characterize man as he really is, but also offers
an indication of what he should be.
«Scrutinizing the content of the moral law» Gentile maintained, «... I

gathered the most rigorous concept of it in the admonition: be a man.
But for clarity it is preferable to say...: Think ». 72 Man cannot judge
"according to his personal inclination, but as an individual possessing
a faculty of judgment which is common and connatural to all men
[...] the universal power of reason [...] The origin of the I is the We. At
the basis of the spiritual existence of the individual there is the community
to which he belongs... ». 73
If what matters is truth or morality, the criteria for right thought and
behavior flow solely from an association of people integrated into an
orderly system that provides the individual with "an inner law by which
every word, every act of the individual is measured at that point in which
he comes into being". 74
There is no rule without a model and by virtue of which the

correctness or incorrectness of an expression can be established, and
for those who follow the rules there is no model without those whose
judgments provide the necessary conditions for establishing what is
"correct" and what is "incorrect".
Language represents the fundamental and indissoluble bond between

men. As such, it is a typical example of social relationships. If thought
constitutes the essence of man, and language its expression, man can
attain an authentic human dimension only in spiritual union with
his fellow men. Gentile not only considered the ìfòncetto of man
outside of society a historical and empirical fantasy, but he even
considered it devoid of any value and meaning. An individual alien to
society can only be a deity or an animal. 75 To be truly human, man
must obey the imperious voice of reason, the voice of the spiritual
community in which reason manifests itself.
To reason means to be willing to submit to the procedural rules
required by the concept of obedience to the norm. In theory, the
reasoning is considered universal, but Gentile argued that the
human reasoning is always conditioned by historical circumstances, that is, by the historical
language of the spiritual community of which empirical man belongs, by the morality of that
community and by the technical means with which it is expressed. On a theoretical level,
reasoning is independent of limitations of a personal or environmental nature, but it is,
then, an aspiration, a moral ideal, since, in reality, our thinking is always conditioned
by the material facts of the world in which we live. Man's current thought manifests itself
in certain communities, in certain family, associative and national situations.
Gentile affirmed that even science, for example, despite being universal in theory is, in
fact, always historically particular and national. The patent of truth to scientific
formulations of a specific nature always implies that necessary conditions are taken into
account such as alteration (i.e. a given empirical operation can confirm or invalidate the
proposition under examination), relevance (i.e. the theoretical proposition answers the
question ò refers to it), the predictive strength (i.e. such a proposition would be able
to reveal that specific factual data could demonstrate its validity, which was not
certain at the moment in which the original proposition was formulated). But all these
considerations are not enough to guarantee the truth. At least one other
consideration is necessary in order to be able to express a definitive judgment: the
compatibility between the propositions under examination and a body of propositions that
have a moral and cultural character. The "scientific criteria" alone are not sufficient
for the acceptance of a proposal
scientific site. To determine the scientific truth of a statement, or a set of statements, ordered
in such a way as to form a theory, account has always been taken of the fact that
these may be suitable for supporting a specific, and desired, way of behaving of citizens ,
or rather, their moral behavior. For Gentile this implication is fundamental to evaluate
science as a national activity science is independent of any moral or political
consideration can only derive from the fact that it is considered simply a , 76 The idea that
cataloging of facts or a representation of a pre-existing objective reality. Gentile, on the
other hand, argued that science is a tool that serves to provide men with the ability
to predict useful for their purposes
ideals; and furthermore that, precisely because it is an instrument, it is formed by

a system of affirmations and practical definitions of terms, and is governed by
criteria which allow us to judge their truth. Among these criteria are simplicity,
conformity to common sense, and the ability to support the willful conduct of man.
Science, therefore, is not just an instrumental activity undertaken to
implement some ideal goal. A scientist must, at a certain point in his activity,
validate, ie accept or reject, a hypothesis stated. But given that no scientific
hypothesis can be fully verified, it is necessary for the scientist to express a
judgment of sufficiency; he must, at some point, make a merit judgment as
to whether the evidence supporting a scientific claim is good enough to
guarantee its truth. The moment in which this judgment will be given depends on the
inoral importance, in an ethical sense, of giving it, and therefore will inevitably be
chosen on the basis of considerations and influences of a moral, political,
religious and, possibly, aesthetic order.
In essence, Gentile asserted, science can never be totally independent of the

national culture in which it develops. 77 In this sense, Gentile's conceptions were
decisively historicist and nationalistic. The pursuit of truth and morality represented
for him a dialectical and historical process taking place within the confines
of a national community.
The individual sees the light within a national community; to a complex system,
that is, of interdependent norms which includes the civil and penal codes, the laws
for giving the value of truth to science, the criteria of guilt and innocence in moral
conduct, aesthetic judgment and the political order.
These normative systems confer continuity and identity to the actions of the
individual. The latter are rational, and therefore not impulsive or instinctive,
when the community to which the individual belongs can fully understand them, that
is, when they conform to the laws. And, since only actions that are rational and
have meaning can be chosen, only rational acts are free. If freedom means acting
,
according to the law, the meaning of freedom obviously depends on the social
context. This context, for Gentile, is the historic Nation-State, which represents
« the (moral) substance of our human personality [...] The State and the
Nation are intrinsic and connatural to our very being insofar as the
the universal will of the state has the same dimensions as our
concrete and current ethical personality". 78
Chapter Notes
(*) In Italian in the text ( NdT .).
FREEDOM AS
BEHAVIOR
GOVERNED BY LAWS
Freedom is expressed with an action chosen because it
conforms to implicitly or explicitly formulated laws. Reflex or instinctive
action is not free because it cannot be chosen. A random or capricious
action is not free because it does not respect any law. Reflex or
instinctive action, not being free, cannot be judged guilty or innocent.
A casual or capricious action can be judged immoral when it is
thought that the person who performed it has acted in voluntary and
conscious violation of his or her own way of understanding the laws in
force. Only the explicit explanation of the reasons which led the
person who carried out an action judged by us to be casual or
capricious to do so can justify his behavior or invalidate our judgment
on his guilt. Gentile maintains that the action clearly conforming to the
social laws in force is never questioned because it satisfies the
traditional norms. You never ask someone why they speak correct
language, why they respect speed limits when driving a car or
why they accept a scientific statement that meets criteria deemed valid
for its acceptability. Nor are actions considered "imposed" to be
those which are in conformity with the laws. Whoever acts like this sets
the example of acting as a free man; he has chosen to behave in
a certain way and we understand why. But when someone
behaves otherwise we question his way of acting and ask him to
justify his actions by explaining how they can be taken as an example
of behavior regulated by laws. When you coin a neologism, you
explain why. Anyone who drives fast provides the reasons for violating
the law, reasons which refer to objective criteria, i.e. to a set of socially
acceptable values, which the perpetrator of the act believes can explain
why (for example, a man who drives exceeding the speed limits to
take an injured child to the hospital believes that the reason that led him to transgres
justification in the eyes of the policeman who ordered him to stop). A

conduct that deviates from that in accordance with the law is justified only
when it clearly demonstrates that it is of a socially responsible type,
such as that of the examples cited. If someone fails to convince
himself of the legitimacy of the reasons that led him to act illegally,
we accuse him of moral or intellectual wickedness.
The codified law is therefore sanctioned by its own rationality and by its
own clarity. Gentile maintained that laws are justified only if one indicates
what function they have for the development of man's free moral
and rational activity. Submission to the laws that regulate language
allows the development of the human personality. So does submission
to the laws that govern morality and science. Each system of laws
receives its sanction from the imperative: be a man. 80 Society can
enforce compliance with the law because it is implicit that the law itself
aims at this end. In Gentile's system there is, therefore, a presupposition
favorable to tradition e
to the law, which, initially, is not asked to justify itself. 81 However, those
who violate them are asked to justify their violation. Justifications
can appeal to a changed state of affairs that requires changes in tradition
and law as well, and can demonstrate that a certain tradition or law
impedes development. But, in any case, the change must be justified in
front of a court which follows pre-established norms that authorize a
certain way of reasoning. Such a procedure is always social. The
individual who chooses to act in a free and justifiable way never
transcends the community, the We of which he belongs. The community
has "a historical existence determined in a form which is language and
custom, institutions and laws, traditions and moral principles, memories
and hopes. Hence man is a nation, and the nation, having a concrete
personality, is a state". 32
Gentile, therefore, conceives the "person" as a complex whole, a set

of relationships that are expressed with the communications of intelligence
and of the law, without which a person cannot be defined as anything
other than a material thing. A human person cannot exist nor be
conceived apart from the community life required by his very being. There
society represents the union of the universal with the particular and
constitutes a whole that is superior to its component parts.
Society is an association governed by laws which confer meaning on its
component parts at any particular moment. The state represents the true
will of the community, the sovereign source, that is, of sanction that
provides the fundamental support to the rule of law. In principle, there
is no law, rule or custom that goes beyond its competence. Society and the
State therefore enjoyed, for Gentile and for fascist ethics in general, logical,
factual and moral priority over the individuals who compose them.
83 This conception accords an ethical priority to the community governed
by laws, outside of which there is no humanity and outside of which
freedom is inconceivable. It rests" on a model of man understood as an
animal that follows the laws and manifests an initial presupposition
favorable to obedience to the laws and to the community governed by the laws. 84
The violation of the laws in force, the disobedience to the rules,

the negligence, unconscious or voluntary, of responsibility must always
be called to account. Consequently, the fascist ethical theorists retain the
liberal and individualistic principle according to which "any limitation,
as a limitation, is an evil", with its fundamental assumption favorable
to an individual who enjoys "motives", "rights", and "freedom" proper to and
independent of society, not only wrong but also profoundly immoral, a
consequence of the decidedly selfish model of man of liberalism.
Gentile maintains that the individual who tries to escape from the
norms and obligations imposed on him by the positive law and by
the social sanction of the historical national community is morally forced to
justify his way of acting? Such a thesis derives from Gentile's conception
of man. Man is conceived free only in the sense that his
choices are rational, and rationality necessarily carries with it conditions

which make obedience to the laws possible. Thus, the existence
of law-governed associations in which these conditions are enforced
logically precedes the individual who can achieve rationality and
morality only within their boundaries. The community therefore enjoys
a moral supremacy, since its laws make choices possible
gnoseological and moral and only these choices make man what he is, or should
be. The tendency to violate social norms and codified laws and to shirk one's
duties must necessarily be accountable for itself. This formal or procedural
rule has no value as a premise for a deductive reasoning that can allow us to
decide on the validity of a given justification, but simply indicates who is
responsible for the justification itself. Outside the narrow confines of social and
political philosophy, it favors a collectivist doctrinal orientation.
The aforementioned definition of man, supported with theoretical and practical

arguments, constitutes the core of Gentile's social and political
philosophy. The definition assigns to the community, by hypothesis, a function
of center of interest and privilege which surpasses that of the individual and is opposed to it.
Consequently, totalitarian systems, defended in the name of an alleged priority
of the community over the individual, tend to develop structuralist, functionalist
and organicist conceptions of society.
The nation is conceived as an organic or functional whole in which

individuals locate themselves and in which they "define" themselves. The state
is considered the real expression of the will of this organic whole and represents
the will of the whole people, distinct from the immediate and empirical will of the
individuals who compose it. 85 This will transcends the will of individuals, classes
and categories in scope and interest, includes the explicit will of the previous
classes, categories and individuals (logical prerequisite of the laws
in force) and must attempt to establish what the future interests of the
community are ( issuing the laws that will have to form the basis of the future
choice).
Gentile, therefore, does not necessarily consider freedom and obedience

to the norms and laws of a given national community to be antithetical.
88 Rational laws and norms place limitations only on the momentary and
immediate will. The obstacle to impetuousness is not a limitation of freedom: it
is the necessary condition to make effective the action of the true and rational
will of the single individual. It is a discipline desired by the very concept of freedom.
Norjne and laws are a given: they are the pre-existing moral environment
in which the individual sees the light. How do you wait
of the moral environment, systems of law must be continually studied,

reevaluated and modified, but the system in its entirety, at no time, rejected.
The very logic of judgment requires the critic to accept some, and essentially
many, of the pre-existing rules (the grammatical and syntactic rules, those for
the definition of truth, of value and so on).
In this sense. Gentile and the other fascist ethical theorists were betrayed
nationalists and conservatives. Man begins his moral and rational life as
a citizen of a particular historical community. 37 He rejects some aspects of
the prescriptions and prohibitions of this community only when he has a solid
and sufficient reason for it.^The mythical man in the state of nature, deprived of
the system of laws which govern human association, is a man also deprived of
contacts human beings, of language, of thought and of morality, but also of
humanity itself^As the complexity of relationships regulated by laws
increase, men also increase their own humanity and their own freedom.ìSociety
represents the discipline that allows true freedom, because it constitutes the moral
and logical presupposition of reason, without which there can be no humanity,
and still less freedom. As such, the company speaks in an authoritative tone
and requires discipline. 89 It is the authority and discipline that man would
impose on himself. 90 It is the rational will of man translated into action. In its
concrete actuality this personified will is represented by the historical state. 91
The State not only protects the life and freedom of the individual, but also
constitutes the means for the transmission of knowledge, traditions, norms and
laws;», of that spiritual patrimony, that is, which makes man what he And. It is
therefore impossible to refer to rights and freedoms extraneous to the State,
since requests of this kind must be expressed in terms of reasons which in turn
refer to socially valid norms and values which allow us to reason in this
way. The protester does not claim to possess rights or freedoms foreign to
the community and its personification: the State. He argues that that specific
historical state is not the ideal state. 92 The protester opposes a virtual or ideal
state to the existing one. He does not appeal to something foreign to the state,
but to a state which he believes best embodies the state
collective will. Therefore, argued Gentile and the fascist theorists, it is not
possible to conceive of rights and freedoms outside the state. 93
Any other solution, for example thinking that individuals are endowed with
"inalienable" or "natural" rights, leads to paradox and confusion.
If one thinks that men have a "natural right" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness", it is very strange that the State obliges individuals to lose their
lives in defense of the community, puts them in prison for infractions of social
rules, and define the limits of happiness to which men can legitimately aspire.
None of these "inalienable" rights are inalienable, but they are all
concessions of the state. 94
GENTILE AND FASCIST TOTALITARIANISM
The Gentile logic wants that (regardless of any distinction), the terms individual,
people, party, nation and state are in a certain sense interchangeable. Gentile
argued, in fact, that "the State is the true personality of the individual",
while at the same time representing "the will of the nation w. 96 In turn, the
Party,
Gentile always maintained, "it is not a faction [...] and as an organization of the
great majority of the nation or of the significant Italian masses it becomes
the nation...". 97
The individual, the party, the people, the nation, the state constitute the
ultimate individual and collective interests. In a sense, the individual is
the community as a people. nation or state. 98 By virtue of this logic, the fascist
theorists could affirm that «in the fascist ethic the end of society is
identical to that of man; the same reason that gives norms to individual life
must also give norms to social life... »,” or, in Gentile's words, « The individual
is not an atom. The concept of society is immanent in the concept of
individual ... Only this identity can explain the necessary and intrinsic
relationship between the two terms of the synthesis, which implies that the
conception of one term also implies that of the other [...] I hope that no one will
miss the importance of this concept since, in my opinion, it is the keystone of
the great edifice of human society". 100
For a long time political philosophers have admitted the legitimacy of

public limitations imposed on the zeal of individuals which could lead to
harm for the individuals themselves. The right to limit individual action is
sanctioned by special institutions which act to implement what is believed to
be the true will of individuals. These institutions compel the individual to act
as he would if his will were not momentarily clouded by enthusiasm
or passion. 101
It is understood that the true will, fundamental to the real and ultimate interests
of the individual, may from time to time find itself at odds with the immediate
impulses of the individual himself. The state has the duty to intervene in
the name of that will to curb the individual. Combined with the belief that a
minority can speak in the name of such a real will, these are the theses
which form the rationale of Fascism. In this case, the will of the State,
expressed by a minority, is understood to be equal to the true will of the
individual. This minority represents the authentic will of the individual, who
would recognize its identity with his own if his reason were not upset. 102 In
some critical moments in the life of a nation, the universal will is "incarnated
and revealed in a few individuals or in just one...". 103
Such a will can express the true will of an entire people, free from the
accidental forms due to classes and categories; a will that attempts to
express the true and ultimate will of an entire spiritual community.
The minority of men who, as leaders of a particular historical community,
express this will, speak in the name of their nation and their age. 104 They
possess the "political genius" which wins the assent of the rational will of
the community. They not only solve the concrete problems of a given
time and place, but are inspired by a vision of life that receives the consent
of the masses. This vision of life is expressed in a suitable "political formula"
which in turn expresses "the will of a political elite". 105
This was the political and social philosophy given by Gentile to Fascism.
In it, nationalism and fascist statism found a valid and reasoned defense. In it,
elitism and anti-individualism found their rational foundation. It permitted the portentous
logic of transpositions, whereby individual, people, party, nation and state became a
single moral entity having a single set of ultimate interests. This philosophy represents
the first, and perhaps the only, reasoned defense of the charismatic totalitarianism
typical of the twentieth century. In the "Fundamental Ideas" of the Doctrine of
Fascism, Gentile expressed exactly this political and social philosophy: "The
man of Fascism is an individual who is nation and fatherland,
, a moral law which binds
individuals and generations together [...] with an objective Will which it transcends the
particular individual and elevates him to a conscious member of a spiritual society. [...]
Fascism is a historical conception, in which man is only what he is in function of the
spiritual process to which he contributes, in the family and social group, in the nation and
in history, to which all nations they collaborate.
Hence the great value of tradition in memories, in language, in customs, in the

norms of social life. Outside of history, man is nothing.
[...] Liberalism denied the state in the interest of the particular individual; fascism
reaffirms the state as the true reality of the individual. And if the freedom of being
the attribute of the real man, and not of that abstract puppet of which
individualistic liberalism thought, fascism is for freedom. It is for the only freedom that
can be a serious matter, the freedom of the State and of the individual in the State.
Since, for the fascist, everything is in the state, and nothing human or spiritual
exists, much less has value, outside the state. In this sense, fascism is totalitarian,
and the fascist state, synthesis and unity of every value, interprets, develops and
strengthens the entire life of the people [...] Individuals are classes according to the
categories of interests; they are unions according to the different economic
activities involved; but they are first and foremost the State. Which is not number, as
the sum of individuals forming the majority [...] but it is the most sincere form of democracy
if the people is conceived, as it should be, qualitatively and not quantitatively, as
the most powerful idea because more moral, more coherent, more true, which is
implemented in the people as the conscience and will of a few, indeed of One, and
which ideal tends to be implemented in the conscience and will of all [...] The nation
as a State is an ethical reality ». 103
In 1932 Fascism had therefore perfectly clarified its own political and
social position, to which all Italian legislation and politics ultimately
referred. The doctrinal principles of the organic conception of the nation,
class collaboration, the unitary party and totalitarianism find their support
in the justification arguments ordered in the political and social philosophy of
Giovanni Gentile.
GENTILE AND THE FASCIST OPPOSITION:
THE CONCEPT OF CONSENT
Gentile, in addition to providing Fascism with its rational foundation,

also represented its conscience, something that was evident throughout the
Fascist period and made the philosopher the target of violent criticism from
other Fascists. So much so that, when Gentile was assassinated, there was
a rumor that he had been killed by some "intransigent" Fascists. These
rumors were absolutely false, but they indicate the intensity of the
anti-Gentilian opposition in some Italian circles. Gentile, in reality, was
criticized by the fascists throughout the Ventennio, and among his most
vocal opponents were leading theorists such as Panunzio and Costamagna.
There are a number of substantial criticisms of Actualism as a system of

thought, but it is beyond our scope to discuss them here. 107 For now, we
are dealing only with Fascism, and therefore we are dealing with Actualism
only because it represents its rational foundation. That being the case, we
will discuss here exclusively the fascist criticisms of Actualism, since they
manage to explain many things about Fascism.
Most of the criticisms of the Fascists were aimed at what was considered
Gentile's excessive rationalism. Costamagna, one of the most serious
fascist critics, directed his criticisms against the "formalism" and
"intellectualism" that characterized neo-idealism,108 because he thought that
"rational thought" could not constitute the ultimate foundation of action.
This criticism is both strange and vague. Gentile certainly admitted that
reason, as such, could not provide sufficient reasons for action. He
argued that the ultimate driving force of spiritual life was "myth", "faith in a
moral reality" and he never hesitated to define Fascism and actualism
essentially "religious" fideistic systems
» railing against those « intellectualistic » systems which separated « thought from

action, science from life, the brain from the heart and theory from practice... ». 109
He constantly referred to the "sentiment" which represents the first concrete proof of a
spiritual communion, to love for the family, for religion, for the country. 110
Sentiment, for Gentile as for Mussolini, precedes reason and constitutes its
foundation. 111
But feeling alone is not enough. Feeling represents the initial moment of spiritual life,
while reason, which manifests itself in positive action, is its confirmation. And this
applies as much to actualism as to Gentile's political and social ideas. Gentile argued
that if the state is to have moral value, it cannot remain merely an empirical fact,
but must constitute, together with the order it maintains, a pre-existing moral world
in which the moral agent automatically finds himself. The state assumes moral
importance only when the individual is persuaded, or persuades himself, that
the state itself is his state. Only in this case does the state become a moral reality for
the individual. The individual accepts the government and lets himself be dominated
by the laws. 112 Gentile maintained: « The Government (absolute or representative)
does
the law and the protection and the governed presuppose, in order to be
governed, the action of the Government. And in the abstract it is like this. But just
as positive law is denied in the actuality of ethical action, so any opposition of the
Government and the governed falls into the consent of these, without which the
government cannot stand. This consent will be spontaneous, or it will be forced.
And the morality of the state, in which the government exercises its authority,
requires a maximum of spontaneity and a minimum of coercion". 113
"Persuasion" and "consent" are terms that can be used appropriately only when
intellectual freedom exists. Men can be persuaded to give their consent without
imposition only by good reasons. Gentile says again: "Whereas man is man for
us when we believe we can influence him with the word that addresses reason,
the privilege of human beings, and those sentiments which, as
prerogative of man, they are in fact called human and seem to us almost the basis on
which reason can be founded". 114
Thus for Gentile persuasion involved a call to human reason and feeling. Feeling, as we
have already said, is the initial impulse of the spiritual life. Spiritual life is not
"natural, purely instinctive life, but a life governed by thought [...] because man is
a thinking being". 116 Therefore Gentile thought that the citizen could be convinced of
the fact that the State constituted the substance of his moral personality. Gentile
argued that even the offender can be led to understand that the historically
constituted state exists "for good reasons". 116 The State is not the result of an individual
whim, nor the effect of a set of arbitrary acts; the state is reason, in which we
participate by reflex. 117 The process by virtue of which the individual is induced
to understand the essential rationality of the State and to accept the laws
is long and tortuous. Gentile continued: "And the human world is full of children.
And whoever doesn't have patience and adapts to the nonsense he hears around him
and doesn't want to stop his ears, will beat the club around; but with what fruit? The
truth is not taught like this, it is not spread; that kingdom of the spirit that one would
like to build, always remains a failed desire ». 118
It is evident how such a conception could prove annoying for a revolutionary movement
which aspired to national consensus. Gentile conceived this consensus as the
product of a reasoned dialogue and not as the artificial result of the monopoly on the
information and propaganda organs. In 1925, when he was actively working for school
reform, he argued that the fascist universities should be organized so as to constitute
the centers from which the new political conception would gradually radiate. He
envisaged the expansion of Fascist thought as a gradual process that spontaneously
conquered the minds and hearts of Italians, while respecting those who, in good
faith, did not feel like joining the new regime. 119 It was the same doctrine of
tolerance that he still maintained in 1943. Gentile condemned dogmas and attempts to
impose a mechanistic conformism on men, 120 and opposed intolerance, the
consequence of an alleged knowledge not "rationally acquired", but deriving from
,
an "immediate gift of grace", by a "sudden illumination".
These were the convictions that inspired Gentile's concept of "cultural

imperialism": that is, the triumph of the fascist idea without the
conquest of a single square kilometer of foreign territory. Expansion,
Gentile argued, is a natural need of any vital spirit, but the latter's
conquests are spiritual. No real conquest can come from violence or
from the imposition of an unreasoned dogma. Violence is, at best, a defense
against those whose action we can no longer consider rational. Dogma
is the refuge of those who do not think and do not understand.
These ideas could not fail to meet resistance from many fascists. The
most immediate action was the denial of the supremacy of reason. Contrary
to Gentile, Costamagna argued that truth is the result of "inspiration", which
refers to a "metarational and metaphilosophical" source of knowledge. 121 It
was necessary to make a distinction, as Gentile had said, between the
"elected" and the "damned".
The state should no longer have a pedagogical function, but a disciplinary

function. Individuals no longer had to be convinced that the state should be
the supreme object of loyalty because it was the true moral substance of
the ego. The state should have been conceived as an end in itself, with
the obligation to force citizens to sacrifice themselves for purposes alien to
them.
"It is necessary," Costamagna argued, "to propose a purpose alien to the

individual and therefore to impose a 'national order'. The purpose is
established by the authority of a 'spiritual intuition'". 122
Since they possess a higher truth, those who act in the name of the state
can demand obedience. Their knowledge of things, which legitimizes their
command, is in turn legitimized by "intuitions" and "inspirations", which are
always contrary to any investigation or refutation. Such a system tends
to create a population obedient and disciplined towards duties that it can
never really understand.
The maximum expression of this form of mysticism can be found in the

works of Julius Evola, who advocates a government of "wise men",
i.e. those who possess a "sacred wisdom" deriving from an "inner
transformation", a wisdom that challenges thought and the word,
"which cannot be taught in books or in universities or handed
down orally...". 123
Throughout the Fascist period, Evola remained an irreducible opponent

of Gentile and continued his bitter polemic against him after his death and
even after the war. 124 Evola is the greatest exponent of that
opposition to Gentile's interpretation of Fascism, which almost certainly
finds its origin in the intuitionism with which, through the work of
Sorel and Bergson, syndicalism was permeated. This transrationalist
current was very lively in Fascism and also influenced the thinking of men
of valor like Costamagna. The advantages of transrationalism are evident
and many fascists were inclined to choose this epistemology in order
to more easily legitimize minority rule.
But there is no evidence that Mussolini ever favoured
the transrationalist interpretation. His position on the matter was not

very different from Gentile's. The difference between them stemmed
from the fact that Mussolini had already developed a well-founded
set of descriptive and theoretical propositions concerning man, which
necessarily influenced his conception of the relationship between rulers
and ruled. In 1924 he had openly described his way of conceiving man:
man is a creature moved by his most vulgar instincts, more desirous
of material goods than of love for his fellow men. Moved by selfishness,
man has a natural predisposition to shirk the duties, laws and service
of the community in which he lives. Society, left to the influence of these
instincts, tends to fall apart. It is the government's task "to educate the
passions, selfishness and interests of man in order to achieve a
general order which almost always transcends that of the individual...".
125 This being the case, there can be no government that is exclusively consensual.
« Few are those, heroes or saints, who sacrifice their own ego on the
altar of the state. All the others remain in a state of potential revolt against
the state.' 123 Twenty years later, in the diary he kept after the coup
of 1943, Mussolini wrote that of the three souls which Plato attributes to men,
the masses lack "the highest, the intellectual": 127 possess the vegetative
and sensitive faculties, but lack the requisites necessary for self-
government.
Fascism, when it approached Actualism, already had a solid set of

concepts concerning man and society, which were, in substance, those that
Mussolini had formulated drawing them from his own experience and from
the descriptive and theoretical literature of his time. This experience and this
literature had given him the tendency to consider man with a
considerable dose of pessimism, taken both individually and
collectively. His pessimism was similar to that of Gumplowicz, Pareto,
Mosca, Sorel and Michels. His previous judgments only influenced his
public conduct and his assessment of the realism of the moral aspirations
of Actualism.
Any practical judgment that serves as a guide to action is a semi-

deductive consequence of the previous normative and synthetic
judgments that form its basis. In Mussolini's case, Gentile's ideals could very
well have served as the ideal limit towards which man tends, but combined
with the fundamental perversity and selfishness of men, these same ideals
could not generate anything other than a conception of government
understood as a disciplinarian rather than an educator.
It is clear that for Gentile the State was essentially an educator, 128 while
for Mussolini the State was mainly a disciplinarian. For Mussolini, the
restoration of "principles and values" could only be a consequence of
the restoration of the lost virtues of "devotion and discipline". 129 For Gentile,
the fundamental task of the state was pedagogical: to arouse consensus
with persuasion. For Mussolini, his task was to re-instill civil virtue, that
"temperance" advocated by Plato which provokes in the common man
the recognition of the fact that he must be governed. 130 To inculcate this
moral virtue (in the Aristotelian sense) it was necessary to make

use of substantially non-rational references, which assumed the characteristic
forms of ritual and ceremony, of imitation and custom and of the constant
reiteration of the fundamental myths and truths formulated with simplicity
and elegance needed to capture the popular imagination. Strictly

speaking, these myths should be true, that is, concise and succinct
expressions of complex truths whose extended formulation is too difficult
for the popular mind. There were, therefore, at least two conceptions of
"myth" in Fascist thought: for the first, the myth is a systematic set of
propositions, based on one or more normative commitments, which
supplies us with the initial criteria of importance and the spur to their
articulation (that is, the individual must acquire some primitive and
initial value before any political or social discussion can be undertaken):
for the second, the myth summarizes a more complex political and
social conception, and is designed on purpose to reduce the masses to
obedience (organizational and statutory myth): Fascist theorists switched
indifferently from one to the other of the two interpretations.
A third conception of "myth" was that proposed by the transrationalists.

For them, the myth was in a sense truer than reality, the result of a
privileged intuition that defies any rational explanation. This third
interpretation was that of theorists such as Evola, but it seems to have
been decidedly rejected, even if it could have been convenient, by
Mussolini. 131 He particularly rejected any form of mysticism that
supported truth without recourse to reason; 132 this
interpretation, however, often reappeared in Fascist writings.
Mario Palmieri, for example, expressed it thus: « We dig in vain with

observation, experimentation, analysis, logic, to reach the core of
being. The deepest truths remain hidden from us. Only the magical flash
of an instant of supreme insight, that flash which for a moment makes
man equal to God, can reveal the Truth to us. But we will never know
the ecstasy of that instant. The supreme gifts of synthesis, of intuition,
of revelation are denied to us: they belong by right to the hero and to
no one else.' 133
It is clear that these statements conflict with Gentile's political philosophy,

if they are proposed as a rationale for political obedience. For Gentile, no
man can be morally forced to obey the other's mystical intuition of
the "Truth". The truth, and the political form in which it is expressed, are
the result of ever deeper investigation
spiritual examination of each man: a process, that is, which, although framed by social
rules, is eminently individual and predominantly rational.
Therefore, Palmieri's idea according to which "the first principle of the fascist way of life
rests on the mystical faith of the uniqueness of all living beings..."134 is a bad
paraphrase of Gentile's thesis according to which the completion of the
ego requires the acknowledgment of the fact that relationships with things, but above
all with other people, are part of the truest self
and vast.
GENTLE AND THE FASCIST OPPOSITION:
THE RATIONALITY OF THE DICTATORSHIP
Gentile provided Fascism with the most solid and valid normative rational foundation.
His moral imperative: be a man! enjoys the advantage of being understood and accepted
by all, without the need for explanations. It is a normative premise which,
combined with analytical and descriptive propositions, allows for the issuing of
obligations and prohibitions. Even Gentile's opponents, when they faced the defense of the
normative principles of Fascism, resorted to Gentile's arguments. Costamagna argued: « ...
(for) Fascism, the State, to the extent that it responds to the positive and practical needs
of the organization, is the indispensable condition for the development [...] of the
individual's personality and the maintenance of spiritual institutions within the human
community". And he believed that the State had an ethical character because it
"provides the necessary, even if not sufficient, conditions for the existence and development
of the individual's moral personality [...] and conforms to man's natural end, which is
that of realizing one's own essential personality... ». 135 Fascist writers used
and abused Gentile themes. For example, the following passage is typical: « The State
represents the universal ethical will, the creative foundation of the law, the educator
of the spirit, the soul of the soul of the individual [...] The individual discovers his own
personality in the Nation [ ...] In this lofty vision, the individual embodies and merges
with the nation, accepting as freedom the harmony of the ideal which is that
of the individual and the [...] nation". 136
The hierarchy of values that characterized fascist thought was based on the
imperative: be a man! A set of propositions defined, described and
specified the way to be. Among these, the proposition according to which man is, by
nature, a social animal, led us to consider the nation as the most valid of existing
human associations and the state as the organizing will of the latter, the pre-
existing moral order which gives the It is one's primordial spiritual substance. Ideally,
reasoned awareness of the moral identity of collective and individual interests must
awaken in all men. But given that Fascism reached ethical idealism already
convinced of man's intellectual fragility, 137 the function of appeals and non-
rational impositions ended up prevailing. Man, removed from the firm and precise
protection of an inspired and enlightened aristocracy, no longer has a foundation
and sinks into the quicksand of material and sensual interests. Only an aristocracy
of will and intelligence can discipline the shapeless masses and direct them to
moral ends that transcend the sphere of their immediate interests.
Such an aristocracy educates the masses in that virtue which they could never
attain otherwise.
These concepts are a repetition of what Oriani already wrote in the Ideal Revolt,
considered by Mussolini "magnificent" and considered the foundation of
Fascism. 138 Oriani wrote: «Man is made in such a way that the truth, when he
cannot ascend from the depths of his spirit, penetrates it from the outside
and descends therein; man sees, and repeats without understanding, imitates, yes
he gets used to and ends up doing what he would have wanted to persuade him
in vain. Mimicry is the law of education for inferiors ». 139
This conception, echoing the entire tradition, from Gumplowicz to Sorel, in

which Mussolini had matured, remained constant in Fascist political and social
thought. The state must educate the masses in virtue. Normally man, without the
discipline of the state, is incapable of attaining the sublimity of true
spirituality. Left to their own devices, the masses gravitate towards the
flattest mediocrity, driven by passion, suggestibility and selfishness. 140
Uneducated in political life, deprived of the "order and guidance of the state
and the government", humanity assumes the "chaotic, anarchic and amoral form"
typical of the masses. 141 At best, Mussolini maintained, « the plebs are
that part of the
Nation that does not know what it wants [...] incapable of governing itself ».
142
Like all theses of social and political philosophy, the explanations offered
by the fascists were also composed of normative and descriptive statements.
The invitation to be a man represents the reaffirmation of a value. The strength
of this statement lies in its ease of being clearly understood by all. Its
undertones, together with the factual statements about the man's
character, became clearer and clearer. To meet the normative
demands of the obligations they had imposed on themselves and on the
nation, the Fascists insisted on a form of epistemarchy; a government,
that is, formed by a small aristocracy of intelligence and will; the "sublime
warriors" dreamed of by Sorel. 143 Therefore, in 1938, Pietro Ubaldi
identified the essential task of Fascism in the "creation of a new humanity",
Sorel's homines novi. But the achievement of this goal required a true and
profound knowledge of the "laws of collective psychology", which
indicated that: "... the resultant of the mental reactions of the majority is
established at a level which is not on the average level, but at that of the
lowest elements. The problem», continued Ubaldi, «is psychological, not
mathematical. Majority means lowering of truth, not criterion of
truth. And in social life, on the other hand, a more evolved guide is needed
to show the way. The majority cannot understand, choose and decide
who is the best; it can only undergo it [...] In order to govern, very special
qualities and gifts are necessary: vast vision, profound intuition, supreme
will, rectitude and sacrifice, qualities that only the exception can possess,
not the mass. And this exceptional individual must be chosen and
lifted up by the forces of life, only to withdraw towards the people, to lift them
up to himself. The peoples ... need education ... these are the laws of
nature. The peoples are, as a collective psyche, children, unaware of the lofty
goals that only a leader can see. And he who sees them has the duty to
impose these goals on the unaware. It is obvious that if a child does not
understand his welfare, it must be imposed, if necessary, even by force ». 144
The fascists proposed this set of descriptive generalizations as

justification for the set of laws that transformed the regime
Italian parliamentarian in dictatorship. Starting with the extension of the powers

and prerogatives of the executive, made accountable only to the
re, through the laws of 1926 which attributed to the executive itself the power
to issue decree laws, and by the total integration of the productive
categories of the nation in what the fascists themselves defined as "the
dictatorial power that occupies the summit of the nation", Fascism he
clearly demonstrated in practice what his social and political beliefs were.
145 The power to issue laws was transferred from the pre-revolution
legislative bodies to the Head of Government. After 1928, the choice of
members of the new Chamber of Deputies took place through a mixed
system of popular nomination and confirmation of the Party and, finally,
plebiscitary approval of the "national list". Fascism cannot in any sense be
considered a regime of popular representation, if one wants to
understand the term in the sense current in parliamentary political regimes.
Through the corporative structure and the modification of the Chamber, a
system was gradually reached which was defined by Francesco Paoloni and
Panunzio as a "representation without elections". The representatives of the
various associations, of the productive categories and of the non-economic
groups were normally designated hierarchically. Furthermore, their functions
were notably different from how they were understood in parliamentary systems.
W. Cesarini Sforza defined the parliamentary system as a system in which
local and particular interests try to use the state as a political weapon executive
of the interests of their own category or class. If it is impossible for them to
dominate the state alone, they agree with representatives of other
interests to share control with them. The parliamentary system does not
express the will of the nation, but the will of a particular group, or group of
groups, of pre-established interests.
Fascism, on the other hand, argued Cesarini Sforza, organized the new
Chamber to make it the place where « Fascisms and Corporations will
directly express their will as organs of State, not as representatives of the
people, but as organs of the State which realizes integrally,
unitarily the will of the nation". 146
If men were really creatures who only care about their own immediate
material interests rather than the ultimate interests of the community,
and if they reacted to the example in a mimetic way and in
positive way to suggestions in moments of great moral tension, then it

should be the responsibility of those few aware of the higher and ultimate
realities to provide the means for the expression of their material interests
(corporate system), but only within the framework of an that
ensures effective control. The control should be implemented through the
constant recourse to feeling, to the commonality of feelings, to the fundamental
ethnocentric predisposition of man as a social animal, in a climate of strong
moral tension. Otherwise, the alternative solution would be to leave
the masses at the mercy of divergent local parties and influences that each
exploit their own non-rational systems to create divisions and dissensions
within the body politic.
Serious distinctions of class, category and sect would thus threaten the
vitality of the nation in a world that sees increasingly bitter disputes between
the various nations.
For the fascists, local, economic or confessional interests must never be

allowed to become the fundamental lucrative of individual life. The
ceremonies and rituals, the mass demonstrations, the use of the black
shirt (which annulled the distinctions of class and category) were purposely
studied to generate a community of group sentiments which would unite
individuals in what Mussolini defined a new "sense of life", the "beauty of life
lived in communion". 147
Thus Mussolini and the Fascists attempted to substantiate the neo-idealistic

ideas according to which the individual, the people, the nation, the party and
the state are different expressions of the same reality, which can be
indifferently substituted for each other. For Gentile, this substitution could
take place by convincing the individual that he was, in the deepest sense of
himself, his own people, the nation, the party, the state. For Fascism, this
identification was made through emotional appeals, not rational ones, given
that man, in general, is the result of influences that are fundamentally irrational.
These convictions had already fully manifested themselves in Mussolini's
political and social thought when he was still a socialist, and they remained
constant throughout his life. 148 And it was precisely these convictions
that irreparably opposed Fascism to political democracy. A situation of
plurality of parties serves no other purpose than a
allow a certain number of demagogues to exploit the non-rational feelings

of the masses to create dissent within the state and weaken the latter
in the face of the current, or potential, international conflict.
In a one-party situation, however, the leaders are in a position to organize

the group capabilities of man in the service of collective interests. Individuals
capable of taking on managerial functions could be chosen by their
superiors through the various organizations that brought together old and
young, men and women, individuals of all classes, categories and
confessions. They would join the ranks of the ruling aristocracy to become
the leaders, entrepreneurs and educators of the future. Thus, while the
popular consensus on which the regime rested was understood to be a
product of the almost complete monopoly of the means of education and
propaganda enjoyed by the state and the party apparatus, the state and
the party were considered to represent the superior qualities of intelligence
and morale of the nation. Typically, the fascists argued that the
possession of these qualities was initially demonstrated by the
success of the revolution. This is the only practical meaning that can be
given to the affirmation that the Duce was "sent by Providence". Once in
power, care for the continued vitality of the system would guarantee a
constant and objective choice of individuals suitable for filling positions
in the managerial and strategic aristocracy.
The fact that the fascist system has failed is now a historical fact. After all,
Mussolini himself admitted its partial failure. 149 The reasons for its failure
are obviously too complex and obscure for valid judgments to be made here.
150 That
what interests me here is to demonstrate that the practical fascist policy

followed the fascist philosophical and doctrinal approaches with remarkable
coherence. The fact that Fascism was not Actualism depends on the
former's doctrinaire precedents. These precedents were acceptance of a
well-defined series of practical propositions whose truth or falsehood
could be established with normal scientific verification procedures. All this,
together with the primitive values of Actualism, produced the rational justification of the dictat
The institutional character of the dictatorship itself interests us here only

in passing. We need here to deal with only one characteristic of the
fascist government: that is, with the tendency of the fascist hierarchical
system to lead to a personal dictatorship. Since responsibility and power
followed a hierarchical scale, there was a tendency to regard
initiative as coming only from the top of the system and to allow
subordinates to indulge in apathy and imitation. Therefore, the fascists
were right to define the fascist government not as a "government of popular
initiative", but as a government of "popular adherence", a system in which
the "principle of authority" was gradually instilled in the masses
through the means of education and of propaganda owned by the State,
but only "according to the political directives issued by the Head of
Government". 151 Panunzio, who lived the life of Fascist thought intensely
for half a century as a thinker, therefore had no difficulty in affirming that
the "head of the government" was "the center and engine" of the entire system. 152
The "worship of the leader" became a typical feature of the system. The
"cult of personality", of the executive with charismatic or semi-
charismatic characteristics, considered symptomatic today of totalitarian
systems, had its first rational and doctrinal justification during the Fascist period.
Given that, according to the fascist theorists, the masses represent
only the elementary energies, capable of being used for any purpose,
the function of the directive guide becomes of critical importance. The
tradition from which Fascism sprang maintained that the masses must
be led and the fascist theorists maintained that «the slow upward motion
of humanity has always been characterized by the appearance of a man
who leads and dominates; any step forward has always been taken first
by an individual, behind whom followed, adoring or trembling, the
uncultured masses [...] The necessity of the masses to bow down before a
singular personality who has a face and a name and that it possesses a
dominating spirit [...] derives from the innate needs of man since ancient times ». 153
These statements represent little more than a restatement of Michels'

political sociology, a new formulation of the ideas of Le Bon and Sorel.
Michels wanted to call this type of leader "charismatic" to indicate a category
that is not found in the typology of Max Weber, who made a distinction
only between the "traditional" or
dynastic and the "rational-legal" leader who predominates in

parliamentary regimes. 154 But given that Weber had used the term
"charismatic" to mean leaders endowed with an alleged divine
mandate, the term "semi
charismatic". 155 Totalitarian dictators, of which Mussolini was the most

typical example, base their government on non-rational emotional factors,
which are however legitimized in rational terms. This dictatorship must
be understood as a rational and legitimate necessity, given the truth of a
whole series of assumptions relating to man and social life. Submission to
the dictator's leadership is initially spontaneous, but is subsequently perfected
and eventually imposed through the control of mass media and propaganda.
The result of all this was, in fascist Italy, the identification of Mussolini with
the state and, consequently, with the nation. The popular cry "You are Italy"
was an expression of this identification implicit in Fascist doctrine from
the time of the formal foundation of the National Fascist Party. For
Gentile this identification was possible only when the head of the nation
embodied the universal rational will.
For the fascists, identification was the result of non-rational factors that
derived from man's natural disposition to identify himself with a community
of limited extension and to consider a man the symbol of the community.
For Gentile, the rational will was at the basis of political consensus and
fidelity. For the fascists, on the other hand, there was group sentiment.
However, however it was interpreted, the identification meant that the leader
had the obligation to impose himself because he represented the
responsible and directive will of the national community.
During the twenty years of the Fascist Regime, Mussolini assumed

more and more personal responsibilities and little by little the various organs
of the State atrophied. This process finds a typical example in the events
of the Grand Council of Fascism. The Grand Council, which had purely
consultative powers, met one hundred and thirty-nine times in the first
decade of the Fascist Era; but from 1932 until 25 July 1943 he was
summoned only forty-seven times. A similar involution can be found in
almost all organs of the state and the party. The system collapsed
suffocated by a fatal torpor. 158 When Mussolini was overwhelmed by Stalo

Badogliano's coup, the system was not capable of the slightest reaction.
Bottai, who had been one of Mussolini's closest collaborators, wrote a
very appropriate epitaph on the experiment: "It is not enough to act on the
masses, it is necessary to act on man and among men."
Bottai was a Gentile and, like Gentile, he was convinced that only
reasoned conviction can lead to absolute fidelity. At the very least, what
was needed was a group of convinced Fascists, of men whose will was
supported by a profound "reasoned" conviction. During the twenty years of
power, however, Fascism created only the appearance of this
conviction. Feeling and intuition are extremely vague things, and neither
can form the foundation of an enduring system.
Subjected to severe trials, feelings come into conflict with each other and it is
easy to change the black shirt for the red flag. Mussolini himself was
amazed at how quickly all traces of loyalty to Fascism disappeared.
157
In September 1943, when Mussolini rallied the Italian fascists for a restoration
of Fascism in northern Italy, one
of the few important figures of pre-war Fascism who publicly proclaimed

his adherence to the Republican Fascist Party was Giovanni Gentile.
In November. Mussolini met with Gentile and spoke to him of the resistance
opposed to Actualism by the "intransigents" of the Party. Gentile spoke of
the need for "pacification of souls", with an evident allusion to his own
doctrine of tolerance, developed in his last work, Genesis and the structure
of society, which he had just finished in September of the same year.
On November 26, Gentile accepted the nomination as President of the
Italian Academy. Throughout this period, he preached the renunciation
of revenge and violence, so that the moral and sentimental unity of the
nation could be recreated. 158 He took great interest in the Florentine provincial
leaders in favor of those who came
arrested on suspicion of political subversion. Returning from one of these

missions on April 15, 1944, Gentile was confronted at the entrance to his villa
by two men. One of them asked him if he was Professor Giovanni Gentile.
Having received an affirmative answer, the man fired all the shots from his
pistol's magazine at point blank range. Gentile died instantly. In retaliation,
the fascists arrested three anti-fascist university professors, but Gentile's
family members fought for their release in the following days. Gentile's body was
buried next to the remains of Michelangelo and Machiavelli, in the church of
Santa Croce in Florence.
morals as a consequence of a system formed by descriptive propositions.

Such a solution was necessarily doomed to failure; and yet it produced a
detailed and conscious explanation of nationality and of the relations of
men in society.
This explanatory process was accelerated by the coming to power of

German National Socialism, steeped in naturalistic racism. From this derived
the articulation of fascist racism, which saw the convergence of
sociological elements inherent in Fascism, its nationalism, and
biologism which was, at least in part, a consequence of the alliance of Fascism
with National Socialism. This development of Fascist political and social
thought shocked Gentile, not a little embarrassed Mussolini and confused the
critics of Fascist thought.
The final expression assumed by the fascist political and social thought was
an attempt at a synthesis of the neo-idealistic and naturalistic elements. The
synthesis was not fully successful, but it nevertheless produced a
fairly evolved system of thought, the characteristics of which reappear at every
turn in the totalitarian or semi-totalitarian regimes of our days.
THE ACTUALISM
AND THE TRADITION

SOCIOLOGICAL
PROTOFASCISTA
The contrast between Actualism as ethical idealism and Fascist doctrine
as the product of a naturalistic and sociological tradition persisted
throughout the Fascist period. Gentile maintained that the nationalist
exponents who had joined Fascism were linked to a form of naturalism to
which they would have been willing to sacrifice very important ethical values.
159 The latter conceived the nation as the natural product of common
group feelings, rather than as a rational certainty, endowed with will, of a
common destiny. The nationalists, for their part, maintained that Gentile's
thought was too "abstract" and "intellectualistic" to be effective, and
demanded ever greater "realism". AC Puchetti's Scientific Fascism is one of
the first examples of this way of seeing things. Panunzio, Costamagna,
Gini and Corradini were substantially of the opinion that Fascism, as a
system of thought, had a distinctly sociological character. Tripodi, who shared
this opinion, argued that the values underlying Fascism could be explained as
"traditional autochthonous values" proper to that historical community
which was the Italian nation.
160 This was a sentimental "constant" endemic to Italian life.

These were the "natural foundations" on which a policy that wanted to be
realistic had to rest. In essence, they cultivated a form of naturalistic ethics
that conceived of imperatives
with few exceptions, Fascism, as an ideological phenomenon, was
JL judged rather summarily, while the intellectual developments of his last

decade are almost never taken into consideration.
Instead, it was precisely in this period that the articulation of racism took place
fascism and the rationalization of the "socialization" of the

ephemeral Social Republic. Both arguments are fundamental to
understanding the Fascism model. The first, that is, fascist racism,
makes clear the continuity that underlies fascist thought, while
the second, socialization, reveals the radicalism implicit in its
totalitarianism.
Of these two doctrinal developments, fascist racism is the one that has
been most frequently misunderstood not only in Anglo-American
literature, but also in all world literature. However, the Italians who
might be able to deal with this aspect of Fascism were not,
for very various reasons, willing to deal with it objectively. Post-
war Italian literature was hopelessly controversial.
Any attempt that seriously aims at objectivity is considered "apologetic"
and subjected to official and unofficial censure. Even more restraining
is the generalized embarrassment that the Italians felt towards the
disastrous fascist experiment. ' They content themselves with judging
the entire period as an anomaly of history, as if the history of a
whole generation of Italians had been the product of a single man's whim.
More recently, with the emergence of neo-fascist apologists,
there has been a tendency to overlook fascist racism as an
aberration, a bubo due exclusively to National Socialist
influence. 1 The result has been a confluence of anti-fascist and
neo-fascist interpretations tending not to consider fascist racism
worthy of serious ideological investigation. At best, anti-fascists cite
fascist racism as proof that Fascism did not have solid doctrinal
foundations and that its positions, at various historical moments,
were only a function of its immediate political interests. Neo-
fascists, when they don't observe a
embarrassed silence on the matter, they treat fascist racism as an

ideological hindrance, a non-essential accessory. The best
contemporary scholars, as we have already said, tend to maintain a
certain confusion on the subject. Fascism is generally thought to have
initially resisted National Socialist racism and then succumbed to
Hitler's enticements by fully accepting German racism. 2 Renzo
De Felice, however, in his History of the Italian Jews under the
fascismo, which appeared a few years ago, finally treats the phenomenon
of fascist racism with commendable attention and detachment, but
concentrates its attention above all on the Jewish question, dealing only
marginally with the general question of fascist racism. 3 Therefore, to date,
there is no important treatment of fascist racism and, consequently,
there is not even a valid exposition of its genesis and its character.
Everything we say throughout this chapter is written with the intention
of serving as a corrective and a complement to what already exists in
contemporary literature. Above all, it is written that the intention was to
reveal the logic (and here the term must be understood in its broadest
sense and not exclusively in the formal sense) of fascist racism.
THE IDEOLOGICAL CONTEXT
Fascist ideology was a relatively stable compound of various

intellectual elements, namely: of a proto-fascist sociological
tradition, interpreted in a distinctly nationalist sense, associated with a form
of neo-Hegelian idealism that was already mature in Italy even before
the establishment of the first Fasci. Both elements retained a certain
independence even after the maturation of the fascist ideology. Olivetti,
Panunzio, Corradini and Gini, for example, exponents of the aforementioned
tradition, found themselves perfectly at ease during the fascist period,
they were among its main exponents, and some of them survived it.
Gentile, on the other hand, an exponent of the second current, was
assassinated in 1944; but Ugo Spirito, his disciple and leading fascist intellectual, survived
The exponents of the proto-fascist sociological tradition always put up

considerable resistance to what they saw as Actualism's attempts
to take over fascist ideology. They argued that Fascism, as a pragmatic
political system, had to continually demonstrate its interest in current
political issues, rather than worrying about "abstract" or "philosophical"
lucubrations. They tended to be "scientists," that is, to understand politics
as an applied science that deals with the norms that govern man's
behavior in society. They tried to investigate, explain, predict
and direct human behavior in the community, isolating
certain variables that influence its behavior. Long before the fascist
ideology developed, Panunzio, Olivetti, Corradini
and Mussolini had thought that man's behavior in society was governed
by interests and feelings; interests define the goals and rules of society,
while feelings identify the individual with the community that is his by
kinship, territory and traditions, with a human community, that is, united
by a common sense of identity. For the nationalists, this community was
represented by the national community governed by the laws, a
community, that is, sufficiently vast and diversified, such as to satisfy,
with its own resources alone, the functional needs of its components.
This community was based on the natural tendency of man, equal to that
of all social animals, to unite in preferential communities, in
typically ethnocentric groups.
The idealists, for their part, resisted what they regarded as a

schematic and "naturalistic" interpretation of what they regarded as an
essentially moral phenomenon. They believed that submission to the
community was a consequence of a voluntary commitment and
interpreted the system of normal relationships between individuals, which
is established within a nation, as the result of accepting consensus and
moral obligations. Their own language used normative terms rather
than terms typical of social science.
Mature Fascism attempted to merge the two interpretations into a broader

understanding of social dynamics. The masses, inert and supple,
are motivated by feelings and a vague intuition of their own interests.
The responsible and strategic elite components 1 are supported by
voluntary beliefs. The latter organize the passive masses, to achieve their
goals, by means of rites, symbols and passwords. The "naturalists"
tended to conceive of consent as a consequence of endogenous and
exogenous natural factors. Idealists tended to conceive of consensus
as a product of normative engagement. The Fascists thought that
order in society was a function of the superiority of the elite and the
acquiescence of the masses. The fascists, as an elite, sought to justify
their rule with moral arguments and to put it into practice by exploiting
the suggestibility of the masses. In this sense, they had gone beyond Gumplowicz's the
Pareto, Mosca, Sorel and Michels. Government had moral as well as natural
dimensions. The rule of the elite was justified by moral arguments.
The acquiescence of the masses was subjected to the suggestion, to the moral
contagion and to the imitation of which Sighele and Le Bon had already
spoken, by the use of suitable political formulas and political and social myths.
The fact that Fascism represented, therefore, the synthesis of the two currents of
pre-fascist thought, did not prevent that, from time to time, one of the two
prevailed at the expense of the other. Throughout the Fascist period, a residual
tension remained between the two. After 1937, under the influence of
National Socialism, this tension increased. In 1944, only Mussolini's
personal prestige prevented an open break between the two tendencies.
After Gentile's death (1944), given that Mussolini had by then become a hostage in
the hands of National Socialist Germany, the blame for racist excesses in
Italy must be attributed entirely to Fascism.
PRECEDENT AND GENESIS OF FASCIST RACISM
Simplistic and only partially true is the interpretation of fascist racism as a simple
slavish imitation of National Socialism. How true this interpretation is can be
judged only after having explained the conception of "fascist racism" in a certain
abundance of detail. Nowadays, the term racism is only used in a derogatory
sense and no longer has any logical meaning. The current use of the word is
almost exclusively emotional and associates "fascist racism" with any and all
discriminatory acts directed against a group that has distinctive characteristics.
The Ku Klux Klan is therefore said to be the defender of "fascist racism" ^
South Africa is said to be "fascist" because it adopts discrimination based on
racial data. In its worst sense, the expression "fascist racism" is used to mean
any and all acts of Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany.
Such a use of the expression is clearly baseless and disgustingly wrong.

Not all forms of racism serve as a prerequisite for genocide. Certainly,
contemporary scholars would distinguish between the "anti-racist racism"
of Senghor's myth of negritude and the racism of National Socialist Germany,*
and it is hardly a good service to knowledge to identify racism
South African with the racism of National Socialist Germany. As far as

we are concerned, the identification of fascist racism with National
Socialist racism is most regrettable. In its long history, racism has had,
and will continue to have, numerous forms and expressions; any serious
and responsible treaty must take into account their differences. In other
words, a taxonomy that includes an orderly set of categories will be
much better suited to a study of racism than a dichotomy that
distinguishes exclusively between "fascist racism" and non-racism or
anti-racism. Racism, understood as any system of propositions
concerning individual or collective human behavior that considers racial
derivation or phenotypic racial traits as important explanatory
variables, is at least as old as Aristotle's Physiognomonics.
Understood in this sense, racism has always played a secondary role in

proto-fascist and fascist thought. Greater importance was given to
him around 1935, and only in 1940 did he come to occupy an
important position in the fascist doctrinaire and ideological literature.
Shortly before 1940, Fascism openly declared itself "racist" and

attempted to recall the tradition of its beginnings to defend itself from the
accusation of imitation. Mussolini appealed to this tradition in 1938
in response to his critics: "I spoke of the Aryan race in 1921," Mussolini
affirmed, "and since then always of race. Only once or twice have I
spoken of lineage, meaning, as was evident, race.' 4 In Lai modo,
Mussolini attempted to document the existence of Italian racism at
its origins, an existence later reaffirmed by fascist apologists. 5
In one sense, Mussolini's claims were valid. But to explain in what

sense they were, we need to better specify what it was
the nature of fascist racism during the period in question. It will thus
become evident that the racism of the origins was essentially a
harmless product of Italian and non-Italian proto-fascist thought.
The speech Mussolini referred to in an attempt to document the origins of

fascist racism had been delivered by him on April 3, 1921 in Bologna
and his words had been: « Fascism was born [...] from a profound,
perennial need to our Aryan and Mediterranean race". In
same discourse, Mussolini had gone on to say that Fascism had dedicated
itself to making forty million Italians one "big family" united by "a single racial
pride". Fascism sought to instill in Italians a sense of "solidarity of the race".
6 Even earlier, in 1918, Mussolini had used racial categories for
explanatory purposes.
He had said that the "Latin race feels the beauty of individual audacity, the
fascination of danger and possesses a taste for adventure". 7
After 1921, the term "race" appeared regularly in Mussolini's speeches.

In 1923 he spoke of the flower of the race gathering around the pennants
of Fascism, of Fascism as the prodigy of the race, of Fascism as the
product of an old but still young race, and of Rome as the beating heart of
the race. 8 In 1924 and 1925 he defined Fascism as the inescapable
reaction of the race to the needs of the moment. 9 In 1926 he had affirmed
that the Genoese belong to « a race that had created its fortunes in very
difficult circumstances [...] a race that had reached peaks of sublime
heroism throughout the course of history... ». 10 In 1927 he had stated
that Fascism was concerned with the welfare of the race.
Between 1918 and 1932, Mussolini had regularly resorted to

expressions of this kind. Observed at a distance of time, isolated from
the historical context and from the voluminous complex of his writings
and speeches, these expressions can make us believe much more
than they objectively mean. The writings or speeches in which they appear
are exhortative, notable more for their emotional character than their
intellectual force. In English, the word "race" has no specific value: it had
even less in the Italy of that period. The term had very broad connotations,
but very few specific characteristics. Michels, for example, in 1924 wrote
of phenomena connected with "race or, to put it better... people or
nation". u
The undifferentiated and interchangeable use of the terms "race", "people"

and "nation" was common in the Italian and nationalist literature of the time.
The works of FT Marinetti, founder of Mussolini's nationalist and intimate
futurism in the early years of Fascism, provide ample
documentation of this phenomenon. The term "race" abounds
in the work of Marinetti 12 and it seems that it was from Marinetti that
Mussolini drew inspiration for using it so often. The identification that
Mussolini makes between the "Latin race" and the qualities of audacity
and taste for adventure, for example, is drawn directly from the Futurist
manifestos of that period; in fact, the manifestos say that the Italians have
the "will to conquer and adventure". 13 Also the exhortation
nor Mussolini's "pride of race" finds its source in futurist invocations.

Already in March 1919, two years, that is, before Mussolini appealed
to it, Marinetti had spoken ill of peoples lacking "race pride." 14 Even
earlier, in April 1915, the futurist Guglielmo Jannelli had stated that
Italians needed "race pride". 15
It is important to point out and establish once and for all that this "pride of
race" was conceived as "a new national consciousness". 16 The
identification between "pride of race" and "Italian national consciousness"
results specifically from the way in which the Futurists used the expression
"national consciousness" as a synonym for the expression "the prestige
of our race". Likewise, the use of expressions such as "our race", the "Italian
race", the "Italian blood" and the "Italian people" establishes their semantic
equivalence. 17 So two years later Mussolini, speaking of "racial solidarity",
explained the expression with the locution "a union of free spirits in the
Italian nation". 18
Mussolini's use of the term 'Aryan' in that early period to define Italians
proved to be as inauspicious as his use of the term 'race'. The term
"Aryan" was in current use in Italy and was used to indicate any one of the
many peoples who spoke a language that could be linked to the so-called
"Indo-European" languages. lE In 1903, Giuseppe Sergi had published
the volume Arii in Europa e in Asia, which had been preceded, eight years
earlier, by another volume of his, dedicated to the Mediterranean branch
of the "Aryan race" and entitled Origine e diffusion della lineage
mediterranea. Vilfredo Pareto, in his Treatise on General Sociology
(1916) makes frequent references to the "Aryan race" and its
Mediterranean branch. 20
Mussolini's use of the terms "Aryan" and "Mediterranean", seen in this

context, cannot serve at all to document a racism of the virulent type
such as was seen in practice in the following years. There can be no
serious doubt that the racism manifested by Fascism in its formative years
was little more than euphoric nationalism. The expression "our race"
was universally understood as a locution capable of distinguishing any
Italian from the French or English, for example, independently of
anthropomorphic characteristics. In 1923, Mussolini stated: «...before
loving the French, the English, the Hottentots, I love the Italians.
That is, I love those who are of my same race, who speak my same
language, who have my customs, who have my same history". 21
The fascist racism of that period was therefore devoid of any

specifically biological understanding. Nothing the Fascists said could
lead one to think that the supposed admirable characteristics of the
"Latin race" were hereditary and static. Both Marinetti and
Mussolini argued that Italians could be, and had been, corrupted by
inept governments, false philosophers, clericalism and egotism.
They appealed to the "will" of the Italians rather than to their biological
genes, to their "heroism" rather than to their heritage. Fascism, as well
as Futurism and Nationalism, was concerned with the nation, understood
as a social aggregate that has a moral, cultural and historical continuity.

22
^ Fascist programs, throughout the first decade of power, aimed at

improving the quantity and quality of the Italian population. They
were programs of an essentially demographic and eugenic nature,
which strove to increase the birth rate in Italy, to provide greater pre- and
post-natal care, to institute serious preventive programs aimed at
combating infectious diseases, at draining the malarial swamps, at
reduce the incidence of tuberculosis and promote athletics and
popular sports. 23 These programs were already hinted at in the
Futurist manifestos of the period immediately preceding the
Great War and during the course of the latter.
In the years of the Second World War, in an interview with Bruno

Spampanato, Mussolini defined his own racism in the following way: «I
have been a racist since 1922, but my own racism. Health care, the
preservation of the race, its improvement, the fight against tuberculosis,
mass sport, children in the colonies, this was racism as I understood it.
But there is also a moral racism that I have preached, the pride of
belonging to this millenary lineage born between the Alpine snows and the
fire of Etna. Our racism abroad? The exaltation of Italian prestige, of
ingenuity, of our civilization. 2^
In thus defining his own racism, Mussolini was referring in particular to the
period between 1922 and 1932, during which fascist racism was substantially
fascist nationalism.©
However, it is necessary to add some specifications to this

definition. We would not have a complete picture of the development
of fascist racism if we overlooked some divergent elements already existing
in this first period. Ever since Oriani's pre-fascist nationalist writings some
traces of biologism can be seen in the concept of "race". Oriani, for
example, who was also against the subsequent Fascist legislation on race,
made a distinction between race and nationality. He believed that races
represented the first major difference between men and nationalities a
further, more circumscribed distinction. In fact, he affirms that «
Certainly in the race there is an individuality, from which the
characters are maintained through all the geographical and historical
oppositions: every race has an original conscience and thought [...] The
race is therefore the first moment in the individuality of a people [...]
Every people, however, retains the essential character of its own race; all
subsequent creations will be inspired by its primitive conceptions, indeed
no people will perhaps ever be able to leave it [...] One can leave one's
homeland, it is impossible to cross the boundaries of the race; a white will
never be a black or a yellow; a difference remains even in the simplest
intimacies of the heart, on the most impersonal heights of thought ». 25
These sentiments were expressed in the book, described in 1909 by

Mussolini, still a revolutionary socialist, as "splendid" and reprinted, with a
preface by Mussolini himself, in 1943. Moreover, Mussolini himself continued to pose
highlighting the historical, cultural and political importance of the main

human races. In 1928, in the introduction to a monograph by
Richard Korherr, Mussolini spoke of the danger represented by the « colored

races », due to their exceptional prolificacy, warning that « the entire white
race, the race of the West, can be submerged by the other colored races... ».
And as a symptom of the threat he cited the black turbulence of Harlem, New
York. 26
The entire nationalist and futurist movement had also been tempted by an
ambiguous and poorly articulated anti-Semitism. Oriani had expressed
vague opposition to the presence of Jews in Italy, while for Corradini
the Jews represented "the denial of the renewed Roman conscience
of Italy...". 27 > But anti-Semitism remained a secondary and ancillary
concern for the nationalists, whose main efforts were aimed at reshaping
the patriotic spirit of the Italians.
However, this secondary and accessory concern found an echo in the words
of Mussolini who, in 1919, accused «...the great Jewish bankers of London
and New York, linked by race ties with the Jews who in Moscow as in
Budapest are taking their revenge against the Aryan race, which condemned
them to dispersion for so many centuries. In Russia, eighty percent of the
leaders of the Soviets are Jews, in Budapest, out of twenty-two people's
commissars, as many as seventeen are Jews... World finance is in the
hands of the Jews. Whoever owns the peoples' safes directs their politics.
Behind the puppets of Paris are (the Jews) ...who have the same • blood
as the rulers of Petersburg and Budapest. Race does not betray race." 28
But even in this case, if we want to be historically objective, we must

place Mussolini's statements in the context from which they are taken.
Indeed, they are no more indicative than similar statements which
were almost commonplace in nationalistic and trade unionist circles at the
time. Georges Sorel, for example, was a very ferocious anti-Semite in
words, but in words only. Sorel accused Jews of being social parasites,
destructive social critics and inveterate enemies of the
French nationalism. On a theoretical level, however, anti-Semitism remained

for Sorel "a personal matter, of secondary importance, which was, to a large
extent, independent of the foundations of his philosophy or sociology." 29
Mussolini's anti-Semitism, in this period, was of the same type. Seen in the
context of nationalist, futurist and syndicalist statements and against the
background of the sometimes very violent anti-Semitic declarations of
the Catholic Church at the turn of the century, Mussolini's remarks
appear utterly bland and colorless. After this period, he never again spoke
of Jews in a similar manner, while in 1929, as well as in conversations with
Ludwig in 1932, he denied that anti-Semitism had existed, or could ever
exist, in Italy. 30
Some of Mussolini's closest comrades of this early period were Jewish,

and his first official biographer, Margherita Sarfatti, was a Jewess. 31
One of the most valid judgments on Mussolini's position in this period,
after having considered it in the context of the time and objectively weighed,
seems to us to be the one expressed by De Felice: Mussolini cannot
be considered an anti-Semite for many, many years. Until
1937 the idea of state anti-Semitism was very far from him: under
fascism Italian Jews enjoyed no more or less of the same freedom that
other Italians enjoyed; the persecuted foreign Jews found in him, if not
exactly a protector, a politician who on several occasions helped them and
opened the doors of Italy to them as - it must be honestly admitted -
many other heads of state did not do for their countries". 32
However, Mussolini always harbored a certain distrust of the Jews. He

had forbidden his daughter to marry a Jew 33 and he was ill-
disposed, as all staunch nationalists generally are, towards those who had
cosmopolitan, international attitudes and who, in one way or another,
maintained contacts and commitments which transcended the borders
of the nation.
Undoubtedly, Nationalism, Syndicalism and Futurism, all of which later

merged into Fascism, had some aspects which, seen in retrospect, appeared
sinister. Gentile, for example, was always suspicious of Corradini's
nationalism and nationalists in general, because he realized that the
nationalists were not fully aware of the logical developments of the

ideas they advocated. The nationalists tended to consider the nation
as something given, a necessary presupposition, an extrinsic material or
biological reality, to which it is necessary to submit and not rather as an
internal ideal which one must conquer day by day and which
represents the yardstick with which the historic nation and its will,
personified by the state, must be constantly measured. 34
Gentile was always opposed to any moral judgement, praise or

blame, attributed collectively to nations, races or peoples and
denied the validity of Fichte's assertion about the substantial superiority
of the German people, just as he rejected Futurist declarations about
"the indisputable creative genius of the Italian race". 35 Gentile
argued that similar positions were nothing more than prejudices which,
as a moral duty, had to be overcome and overcome. 36 The events of
the Great War and of the post-war period somewhat reduced this
Gentile opposition, so much so that he wrote an article, very
condescending towards these same positions, on Oriani, which was
published in the nationalist press. 37 Despite this, he always held in
suspicion any form of nationalism preached on the basis of any kind of
naturalism or biologism, particularly if those who supported it were
inclined to attribute superiority or inferiority patents to this or that
nation. There is no evidence that Gentile ever changed this position.
For a whole host of reasons. Gentile, like Mussolini, came closer and
closer to the nationalists. 38 Eventually, idealists, nationalists and
futurists merged into Fascism. Futurism was completely
absorbed by Fascism, 39 while the nationalist elements proved more
stubborn and finally became the center of theoretical tension.
In the decade following the conquest of power, Fascism was concerned

with articulating its own ideology. In it, "race" was only a minor concern.
The "Fundamental Ideas" of the 1932 Doctrine contained a single
pertinent reference to race, denying that race constitutes the
material foundation of the nation. This does not mean, however, that
Fascism had not already formulated its own fairly specific racial doctrine.
THE RACIAL DOCTRINE OF FASCISM
As early as the 1930s, Fascism had developed a synoptic theory of race

that linked state, nation, and race to each other in a series of propositions
that made claims of coherence and explanatory validity. In that year, the
fascist theory of race had found academic expression in the works of
Corrado Gini, particularly in Birth, Evolution and Death of Nations.
After 1930, the fascist theory of race matured relatively consistently. The
theoretical tensions that built up around its central concepts are a clear
consequence of the clash between National Socialist racial theory
and the efforts made by Fascist Italy to give it space. However, there was
a particular Fascist racial theory, independent of these excrescences,
accepted by Mussolini, which remained practically unchanged
throughout the Fascist period.
Fascist race theory developed along the lines of earlier theoretical

and ideological commitments. The theoretical commitments were
those of the Gumplowictian and post-Gumplowictian tradition. The
previous ideological commitments were those made by nationalism and statism.
As ahhiam seen, nationalism represented the critical point of the

doctrinal orientation of Italian Fascism. National sentiment was conceived
as arbiter of class and steeple antagonism. 40 The new economic system
had to be pervaded by a feeling of national solidarity. From the new
awareness of national ends a vital feeling of dedication was to arise.
41 Fascism thought it had to transform «...the sovereignty of the amorphous
people... into the sovereignty of an organic people... a true political
revolution and at the same time a social revolution, creator of a strong
national society intimately and necessarily in solidarity» . 42
National sentiment was conceived as the natural and positive

predisposition on the part of a human aggregate to put the general interest
before the particular, 43 an expression of substantially social nature or
associativeness of man, 44 a predisposition expressed and strengthened by

resistance to outsiders to the group. 45 Starting from these emotional forces
and others connected to them, it was necessary to articulate an ethos which
would integrate the various social and productive components into a vital
organic unity convinced of its own collective, historical and cultural destiny.
48 The will of such a community manifested itself, logically, in the state.
The concept of race therefore had to be inserted into this pre-existing
conceptual framework.
The scientific material supplied by the Italian academics to the resulting synthesis
consisted of a conception of race understood as a dynamic constant, the
ultimate product of geographical and social isolation 47 and of
concomitant inbreeding, natural and artificial selection, and genetic

mutation. Within this conception, each anthropological race was
understood as the final product of a long historical process, a function of
prolonged endogamy, of the differentiated rate of demographic increase, of
selection and of genetic variation.
Each endogamous community was considered a race in formation; the
degree of uniformity of the type being a function of the duration of the isolation,
of the intensity of the selection to which it had been subjected in
particular environmental circumstances, of the size of the population and
of the reproduction rate of its constituent groups, 49 all things largely
determined by political circumstances.
In Fascist theoretical treatises, these notions were proposed by stating

that "nations established for a long time [...] can consolidate themselves
into races, become new races...": 50 "It is understood that the 'new
races' ... are nations solidified in races, that is, political-cultural unities
solidified over time and marriages in blood units and derived from the
harmonious and not unstable fusion of several ancient races... ». 51
It was argued that at any precise instant an anthropological race is a

statistical abstraction, a consequence of the fact that the researcher has chosen
a type of reference, or ideal, which allows one to choose the criteria used
to delimit the unit of measurement. Any population shows a natural
variability, and the degree of variability depends on very different
endogenous and exogenous factors. 52 In times of evolution, the main races
geographic regions (large races) give rise to relatively uniform local

variation (small races).^No race appears fully developed in history.
Each is the product of politically willed social isolation, selective
influences, and breeding practices that tend to stabilize specific
types in specific ecological pockets. Race formation must therefore
be understood as a dynamic political and historical process. As soon
as a local variation begins to expand because it possesses
some characteristic of greater vital value or greater fertility, it
remains subject to environmental conditions and genetic factors
which tend to introduce variations, distancing it from the original type^
Anthropological races, therefore, are understood as entities
abstract, as the result of anthropologists' attempts to bring order to the
abundance of data at their disposal. 53 These abstractions have
heuristic and didactic value, but their use has obscured the political
and dynamic dimension of the biological process of race formation.
Any less dynamic conception of race tends to identify "pure
races" with the abstract characteristics of the prototype of the
anthropologists. In reality, few individuals possess, in nature, all the
characteristics (even if the number of these characteristics is
limited) which are used as a classification criterion for the identification
of breeds. Most of the individuals belonging to a geographical race
have a mixture of characteristics attributable to two or more local
races. The natural variability of populations is further complicated by
variations caused by environmental factors. Fascist theorists claimed
that the environment can have an influence on the cephalic index, stature and pigmen
In a population the size of the Italian one, characterized by few

endogamous pockets, subject to various environmental influences,
one cannot hope to obtain an anthropometrically uniform population,
while this variability is not unequivocal evidence of a racial hybrid.
In the context of this dynamic hypothesis, the nation could be conceived

as a « melting pot of race », a politically defined endogamous circle
whose sovereign independence and internal mobility tend to relate all
the components to a single genetic current which, once granted
sufficient, it would produce a relatively distinct type, a "new race," in a
unity of blood. 55 Again in this ambit, the nation is conceived
as the political vehicle of a developing race. The State, as the conscious

will of the nation, can, through its laws limiting citizenship and establishing
norms regulating marriages, through a studied demographic and eugenics
program, through its immigration and emigration policy, act as absolute
arbiter in comparisons of the race that is being formed. 58 It can express,
in law, the will of the nation which aspires to become a viable and relatively
homogeneous race. The ideal state favors and accelerates the
process of formation of a particular race. The State defends the integrity of
the race in formation, protecting its elements, selecting its
components and defending its territorial borders.
Each nation is distinguished by the different components that make up

its population, in each nation, various elements of the "old" race types (the
products of previous communities: hordes, tribes or city-states) are combined.
57 Fascist theorists proposed this conception in order to be able to rationally
speak of an "Italian race", that is, a historical community which, according
to them, had been relatively isolated and endogamous for a thousand years.
58 In the same way, they spoke of the "British race", of the "Japanese
race", and even, sometimes, of the "North American type". 59 Each nation
was conceived as a race at a particular stage of development.
A nation made up of harmonious, assimilable components was

held to exhibit an inherent vitality, a common sense of purpose and destiny;
one, on the other hand, composed of disparate groups, of markedly
different racial types, was conceived as an artificial agglomeration devoid
of a sense of common interest. Such a nation would tend to fall
apart under the slightest internal or external pressure. 60 These
heterogeneously formed communities, it was argued, tend to fragment
into racial or ethnic islands that do not identify with the general community.
These islands come to form nuclei of irredentist, racial or parochial agitation.
61 On the other hand, a nation made up of similar "old races" (indistinguishable
by characteristics of marked social evidence) tends to coalesce, to
gradually produce a community held together by innumerable ties of blood
relations, until, finally, in ideal conditions, a new anthropological race
arises. It becomes a "purified" race, a racial fusion stabilized over time.
62
Fascist theorists therefore explained the concept of race by referring to it
to a politically defined population. Rather than a taxonomic or morphological

conception of race, Fascist theorists propounded a notion of "race-nation," of
politically defined circles induced by state laws and pedagogical activities to give
birth to genetic communities of ideal racial types. The ideal type for fascism
was the "Nordic-Aryan" type. In general, Italians were classified among the
family of peoples called Aryans. These peoples were thought to include elements
of several European 'old races' fused into one stable and harmonious 'new
race'. 63 The Nordic ideal was conceived as a tactical tool to favor a strictly
European orientation. The term Mediterranean, even if technically correct,
suggested to the Fascists an affinity with the Semites, which was politically
inadmissible. The kinship relationship with northern Europe was essentially
spiritual or cultural rather than morphological. 6 *
This conception of race constitutes the nucleus of the particular racial doctrine of
fascism, which conceived the race of the same dimensions and placed within the
same borders of the nation and provided the theoretical substrate for the
convictions already expressed by Mussolini since 1917. It should not be surprising
that we have arrived at this relationship, nor does it necessarily indicate that
Mussolini had these theoretical convictions at the time of the March on Rome.
The fact that Mussolini's use of the term race is compatible with the whole
development of Fascist doctrine in the last decade of the Fascist government
only implies an acknowledgment of the fact that the dynamic conception, which
referred the term race to a politically defined population, it is already found, in
essence, in the works of Gumplowicz, which exerted an enormous influence on
Italian syndicalist thought during the period of Mussolini's maturation.
Gumplowicz had given a definition of race which made it the logical

equivalent of "ethnic and social group," or "heterogeneous social element";
equivalence that conceived any politically or socially isolated group as
a race in formation. Social and political isolation was the consequence of the
natural predisposition of man, as a social and political animal, to unite in
associations
preferential and autonomous. These associations showed a syndrome of

attraction towards the group and repulsion towards the outside which
defined the effective gamic circles ( Blutsgemeinschaften .) These
concepts, and their rational corollaries, entered Italian literature and are
echoed in Pareto's Corso. He accepted the then current taxonomic
definition of race and proposed that the use of the term be specifically and
strictly limited to this. He proposed the use of the term "ethnic
group" (ethnicity) to refer to politically defined social elements. 65
The Italian academics of the Fascist period recognized this
distinction as just and accepted it, maintaining however, with
Gumplowicz, that the relationship between racial and ethnic entities
was not one of mutual exclusion. The ethnic group, under particular
conditions, could transform itself into a relatively homogeneous population, genetically dist
allopatric, and at this point could be considered an anthropological race in

the strict sense of the term. Therefore, Mario Canella distinguished
between protomorphic, archimorphic and neomorphic races, that is, races
at the various stages of progressive development. The nation was a gamic
circle, a race in the making. This Gumplowictian concept entered
directly into the fascist doctrinaire literature. Nicola Pende, one of the
leading fascist theorists of race, exactly developed the Gumplowictian
conception as the basis of the fascist conception of race. 67 . This was
an already mature conception in the work of Corrado Gini (published in
1930). 68 Gini was thoroughly familiar with Gumplowicz's works and
in his notes he quotes Rassenkampj and Die sociologische Staatsidee.
69 Gini also saw in particular the work of Canella, in which his (and
Gumplowicz's) influence is evident. 70
The continuity of Gumplowictian elements in the fascist theory of race can

be further documented by following this continuity in the influence
of the English anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith on fascist scholars and
ideologues. As early as 1919, Keith had proposed a Gumplowictian
populationist conception of race and argued that nations are the
vehicles for developing races. 71 Renato Biasutti, in his monumental
Peoples and Races of the Earth (1941) spoke
equally of the nation as "an anthropological reality, not only the center of
a particular conglomeration of racial elements, but a distinct center of
phenomena of fusion and harmonization which, as such, stimulates
the formation of new racial forms". 72
The nation is a particular anthropological and biological reality defined

in terms of a politically delimited genetic flow. Both Biasutti and Canella
bring this conception closer and closer to the ideas of Sir Arthur Keith. 73
Outside particular academic circles, Fascist doctrinaire literature

used these concepts to correlate races, ethnic groups, peoples,
and nations. The concept of race had a classification value and could
be used to define the races in formation. Races at various stages of
development were politically defined historical ethnic communities or
peoples. A single people within a particular political organization
constituted a nation. Optimally, "people," "race," and "nation"
denote the same category of individuals. The concept of "race" is
therefore used in reference to biological entities, but not exclusively
anthropological ones. 74 Guido Landra, one of the racist theorists of
fascist Italy, recognized that the term was used in this sense in the
works of Montandon, an active French collaborator of the doctrinaire
journal Difesa della Razza. 75 Montandon, in turn, stated that the
conception according to which "taxonomic races arise from national,
social and political formations" had been proposed by "English
authors", evidently alluding to the well-known theoretical works published
by Keith. 76 Keith, of course, did not hide the historical origins of these
conceptions. In postwar publications in particular, Keith documented how
much he owed Ludwig Gumplowicz intellectually. 77
Such essentially Gumplowictian conceptions allowed fascist theorists to

absorb racism into totalitarian nationalism, because, thanks to them,
the critical unit of study remained the historical national community which,
governed by laws and politically constituted, also remained the object
of supreme loyalty. and the custodian of values. In this way, the fascist
theory of race differed radically from the National Socialist one. The
National Socialists had ultimately accepted racism in the strict sense and
implicitly and explicitly abandoned nationalism. 78 The "race", understood in
strictly morphological sense, could not refer to the nation. In general,

the National Socialists tended to support a static taxonomic
conception of race and in particular rejected Gumplowicz's opposing dynamic
conception as 'typically Jewish'. 79
It is known that one of the last books read by Mussolini was

dedicated to the exposition of the thought of Gobineau, the French racist
taxonomist of the nineteenth century, much admired in National Socialist Germany.
Mussolini carefully annotated the passages documenting Gobineau's
criticisms of nationalism. 80 Like the majority of Fascist theorists,
Mussolini had realized that biological determinism, combined with a
strictly taxonomic classification of human races, was antithetical to all
nationalism. The fascist theory of race derived directly from the sociological
traditions of proto-fascism and literally took over all the conceptions first
organically expounded by Ludwig Gumplowicz in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century. As such, the fascist theory of race was totally different
from the National Socialist one.
How intimately the Fascist conception of race was linked to that of

Gumplowicz is indicated by the critical share played by the concept
of "ethnocentrism" in the explanations proposed by the academics of
Fascist Italy. Canella explicitly refers to the myriad of tendentially
ethnocentric behaviors identified by Gumplowicz: for both, all social aggregates
make use of a range of ideal types, a positive representation of the
group and a negative one of what does not belong to it. These
representations provide the reference points for the cataloging of moral
obligations. Through them, individuals come to identify with a particular
community of reference. This community not only constitutes the
preconstituted moral universe in which the individual matures responsibly,
but also conditions the individual to prefer other individuals of the same
community, thus establishing the essential conditions for endogamy and
racial differentiation. 81 The process by which these tendencies are
maintained and fostered includes all the interindividual and intrapsychic
mechanisms discovered by Gumplowicz, Le Bon and Sighele. Explanations
similar to those provided by Canella yes
found in the works of Gini, Biasutti, Pende, Landra and Alfredo Niceforo, and
document the substantial continuity of fascist thought from the proto-fascist
conceptions of Gumplowicz, Mosca, Pareto, Sorel and Michels up to the
latest theoretical and doctrinal expositions, of the definitive ideological
expressions of the Regime .
THE INFLUENCE OF NATIONAL SOCIALIST RACISM
Extraneous to this continuity were the conceptions of racial superiority and

inferiority and the useless, inappropriate and morally indefensible anti-
Semitism introduced by Mussolini in 1938. The intrusion of these indigestible
elements into the Fascist theory of race was only part of the price Mussolini
had to pay for the « Pact of Steel ». And it was all the more shameful as
Hitler had never placed questions of this kind at the foundation of the alliance
with Italy. Apparently, Mussolini thought that introducing such issues into the
fascist ideological system could reduce the psychological distance that
separated the peoples of fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany.
If this was the intention, no evidence proves that the goal has been
achieved, while many evidence demonstrates exactly the opposite. Not only
did the Italian people fail to act as these doctrinal contraptions claimed they
would, but such extraneous elements created deep tensions within the
Fascist doctrinal system itself.
This is not to say that some form of anti-Semitism could not have arisen from
fascist nationalism. At least one element of the set of fascist prejudices
against the Jews can be considered "inherent" in Fascism. One of the main
anti-Jewish theses was the one used by Paolo Orano, an early revolutionary
syndicalist and close friend of Mussolini, since the pre-fascist period. 82
He argued that in a totalitarian and solidarity community there was no place
for closed sects.
What Orano basically asked was that the Jewish community lose its
particular identity and assimilate into the totalitarian society. As early
as 1922, Michels had hinted at the possibility that fascist nationalism
might provoke just such a clash with the Jews residing in Italy. 83
Totalitarianism, with its tutoring, pedagogical and solidarity claims, seeks to

monopolize the loyalty of the citizenry. It tends to have exclusive control
over the education of young people and uses every means to eliminate
any ties, conflicting with the state, that citizens may have.
A typical example of this trend is the long and bitter struggle between the
Regime and the Church in Fascist Italy. It was possible that even the Jewish
community, absolutely immune to any influence from the North, could become
another of the victims of Fascism's march towards monolithic solidarity, but,
given the small number of Jews in Italy, extremely unlikely. 84 The best
exponents of Fascism, the idealists such as Gentile and Spirito, and
those who followed the syndicalist and legal tradition such as Panunzio
and Costamagna, continued to oppose the anti-Semitism derived from the
alliance with National Socialist Germany. Everyone recognized the
inestimable debt of gratitude that Fascism owed to the teaching
of men of Jewish origin such as Ludwig Gumplowicz, Roberto Michels
and Angelo Oliviero Olivetti.
Throughout this period the fascist theory of race continued to react to the
influence of National Socialist theories, as
the latter exercised ever greater influence over the Fascist doctrine.
With Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the latter was forced to refer to the National
Socialist doctrine. Between 1933 and 1938, the growing rapprochement with
Germany required an intense and laborious reworking of the
Fascist Doctrine of Race.* In 1938, the Manifesto of Italian Racism
was published, in an attempt to codify the official position with respect to
the racial question. Like all doctrinal statements, the Manifesto was
elliptical and synthetic, but it documented the influence of external
pressures that were deeply felt by Fascist theorists.
The years between 1933 and 1938 witness major changes in attitude
rather than substantial changes in the fascist ana/isi vis-à-vis the National
Socialist theory of race.
The initial contacts between Fascism and the National Socialist theory of race
took place immediately after 1932 and were marked by deliberate reserve and
hostility. Fascist opposition to National Socialist theory recalled

the youthful tradition of Mussolini who, in 1911, had made fun of the racial
speculations of Arthur de Gobineau, Ludwig Woltmann, Houston
Stewart Chamberlain and Vacher de Lapouge, all considered important
precursors of National Socialist "Nordicism". 85 In 1912, Mussolini was
once again making fun of these simplistic racist interpretations
of history. 86 Years later, as head of the fascist state, Mussolini reiterated
his criticisms. 87 Mussolini's statements had been explicit enough to make
any misinterpretation impossible. In 1942, Aldo Capasso was still able to
write that « Benito Mussolini, young but already very acute writer and
scholar, immediately perceived the weakness of this simplism [of Gobineau,
Lapouge, Woltmann, etc.] and exposed its extremes with corrosive irony ». 88
Fascist Italy has never slavishly aped the National Socialist theory of
race.
As we have already said, the fascist oppositions to the Nordic racial theories,
however, were based not only on the authority of the Cape, but were
more substantial. The National Socialist theory of race was, even in its
many and varied semi-official expressions, materialistic, 89 sometimes
theosophical 90 and almost always anti-Christian and anti-Roman. 91 From
a movement with substantially idealist philosophical orientations, animated
by the myth of Eternal Rome and which only a few years earlier had concluded
the Concordat with the Catholic Church, these positions could not be
viewed with sympathy. To this difficulty was added, during the first period of
the National Socialist rise, the tendency of German theorists to consider the
"Nordics" (understood as people endowed with a particular set of physical
characteristics recognizable at sight) the only "creators of culture" of the
history. The cultural dominance of ancient Greece and Rome was attributed
to the presence, in the respective populations, of individuals of Nordic origin.
The culture of the Middle Ages had been created by the Nordics,
and the Italian Renaissance was also regarded as the result of the infusion of
"Nordic vitality". Alfred Rosenberg, the leading theorist of National
Socialist racism, had gone so far as to suggest that Fascism itself could be
considered
the product of Nordic genes, having originated in Northern

Italy. 92 But given that Italy, a country whose inhabitants are
mostly of Alpine and Mediterranean race, could boast very little
"Nordic blood", such theses certainly did not seem made on
purpose to arouse much enthusiasm in the Peninsula.
In 1933, Gaetano Mosca wrote a scathing critique of biological and

taxonomic racism. Some commentators have interpreted this criticism
as an "act of courage" and a challenge to fascist racism, 93 while the
fact is that it was nothing more than the articulation of what was
the general fascist opinion of that period. In 1934, Giovanni Selvi, writing
in the official theoretical journal of the Party, Gerarchia, argued that
National Socialist racism was "scientifically groundless,
contradictory and schematic". 94 In that same year, Giuseppe Bianchini
characterized National Socialist racism as a betrayal of civilization. 95
In 1936, again in Hierarchia, José Gomez de Terán treated
National Socialist racism from « mystical and pseudo-scientific lyricism
w, 96 without giving it weight.
Moscow's criticisms of the National Socialist theory of the static race

were therefore no more violent and ferocious than those appearing
in the official publications of the National Fascist Party. The criticisms
of Mussolini himself were particularly harsh. In 1934, he stressed that
science "guarantees no one's 'purity of blood' and that 'the newest
'civilizers' of the North may well have unknown relatives
perhaps within the walls of Tel Aviv." $* These observations,
combined to his judgments on racism expressed to Emil Ludwig in
1932, indicate that he was far from accepting National Socialist
racism. 98
From 1933 until the end of 1936, with the exception of very few
non-representative sheets, the Italian fascist and non-fascist press made
it clear that an abyss separated the two regimes on the racial question.
In the early months of 1936, Gentile affirmed that the "Italian ideal" was
not a "sordid racism", but an "intelligently universal and humane"
ideal. After 1936, the ever closer rapprochement with National
Socialist Germany led to a moderate tone, but did not alter the substance
of fascist criticism. The criticisms of static and morphological

racism reappeared in the last ideological work of Antonio Canepa, in
1937, in the official Gerarchia in 1938, in the popular work of Luigi
Franzi published by the National Institute of Fascist Culture
in 1939, in the revised edition of the Doctrine of Fascism by Carlo
Costamagna in 1940, in the exposition of fascist racism by Enzo
Leoni in 1941 and in a book by Capasso in 1942. 100 Fascism
never totally adopted the National Socialist racial theories.
As recently as 1937, a minority of fascist theorists attempted to

interpret National Socialist racist literature favorably. Racism by
Giulio Cogni, 101 published in that year, is an example. But this work
demonstrated, with even more painful evidence, how
impossible any attempt at a synthesis between National Socialist and
Fascist racism was. ^
The book basically represents a paraphrase of Rosenberg's

Mythus des 20 0 Jahrhunderts, with the addition of some elements
taken from the works of Hans Giinther (who, moreover, was regularly
and widely criticized by fascist theorists). 102 An inevitable
consequence of the attempt was the abundance of the expression
"Nordic blood" in Cogni's text. Since there were very few clearly
identifiable Nordics living in Italy, the tactical disadvantages of such a
theory became immediately apparent. Later Fascist commentators
emphasized the failure of such an attempt. In 1939,
Franzi stated that if the National Socialist theory of race meant by
"Nordic" an individual endowed with a specific set of morphological
characteristics (tall, dolichocephalic, long-limbed, blond and blue-
eyed), then only twelve per cent of the Swedish population, the most
Nordic of all populations, can be considered "Nordic". 103
Never to maintain a strictly anthropological definition of "Nordic" would
have threatened to make the racist movement an esoteric
sect rather than a revolutionary force. This was already clear at Cogni's
time, so much so that Cogni himself had hastened to declare that
"Nordic blood" should not be understood as referring to individuals
having particular physical characteristics. Cogni maintained: «
Nordic blood, for those who do not know the Nordic theories, means simply and exclu
Germanic blood or, at least, the blood of the blond people who live in the North.
Nothing more imprecise if at least one goes back from the nonsense of the gazettes
and the infatuated Germans to the theoretical works and the racists who have
a conscience of what they are doing ». 104
Cogni went on to say that some "infatuated" had maintained that "superiority" could be
recognized by certain physical characteristics of Nordicness. But this was, for him, a
mental fixation, an anthropological nonsense. 105 He rejected the attempt to correlate
physical characteristics with a hierarchical order of spiritual values.
Cogni maintained that Nordicism should not be understood as a purely

anthropological concept. He identified the term "Nordic" with the less specific
"Aryan" (at the very moment that theorists of National Socialist Germany were
moving from the vague and ambiguous linguistic term "Aryan" to the more
anthropologically specific "Nordic") and then proceeded to arrive at the identification
of the "Aryan" with certain "spiritual attributes". He argued: 'The Nordic, the Aryan,
in the true sense, is not limited to this or that racial particularity; it is not enclosed within
the limits of the flesh and the intellect [...] Aryan is equivalent to genius, a profound
mystery of the spirit... ». 106
While he attempted to specify this identity, the concept always remained "mystical", "a
racial theosophy" which finds very similar expression in the works of Julius Evola. 107
This "spiritual" interpretation of Nordicism was the last and only serious attempt at a
synthesis of National Socialist racial theories in the body of Fascist thought,108 and it is
interesting to note that it could only be accomplished at the expense of its gnoseological
content. In 1938, below
under the auspices of the Ministry of Popular Culture, Fascist academics gathered to
arrange the Fascist theory of race into a single coherent exposition of interrelated
theses. The resulting document was the Manifesto of Italian Racism. Before
publication, the Manifesto was revised and probably corrected by Mussolini himself. 109
\ THE MANIFESTO OF ITALIAN RACISM

* Perhaps the most important feature of the Manifesto of Italian Racism was its
refusal to attribute a priori a patent of superiority or inferiority to any particular race. It
is not difficult to rediscover the theoretical and practical foundation of this reservation.
At the doctrinal level, Fascism had given politics, political organization, and nationalism
in its most coherent expression, a predominant value and considered them
decisive factors in the historical evolution. 110 Given that Europe is composed
of a great variety of minor races, 111 no national community could be of the size of a
particular taxonomic race. 112 All European nations were composed of mixtures
of these races. Defining one of these races superior to the others was equivalent
to threatening the integrity of the nation with the creation of castes, each comprising a
certain number of individuals who belonged to it on the basis of a set of
measurable and non-measurable physical characteristics. 113 This threat to the
integrity of the nation was notably hostile to the fascists. 114 Landra, one of the
authors of the Manifesto stated polemically: « It is pernicious to divide a people into
various races on the basis of a typology which uses certain somatic characteristics as
different , a selection criterion, in particular when different grades are attributed to
types in a hierarchical scale ». 115
The attempt to judge the value of individuals on the basis of certain indices of somatic
characteristics threatened, that is, to create a nation made up of closed castes and,
moreover, laid the foundation for an eventual "racist internationalism", very
similar to the "internationalism of class" of Marxism which could have caused a
horizontal fracture beyond national limits. 116
Furthermore, the notion that the measure of an individual's worth could be his or her
particular biological heritage clashed with the fascist philosophy of ethical voluntarism
and individual heroism. Fascist theorists did not mince words in rejecting "materialism
and biological determinism." 117 Nor were the criticisms determined exclusively by
previous philosophical positions. Costamagna, still in 1940, based his reservations
on the scarcity both of indisputable scientific evidence demonstrating the heredity
of psychic characteristics, and of experimental data correlating physical racial
characteristics with
mental racial characteristics. 118 Capasso, while accepting biological

determinism to a certain extent, nevertheless added that individual
variations took away the certainty of the aphorism: "Race is destiny". 119
He went on to state that the multiplicity of types of which
is formed the modern European has so confused the individual

hereditary characteristics that it is impossible to attribute particular mental
characteristics to a particular individual, whatever his physical
characteristics. 120 Criticisms of this type were formulated by
numerous fascist commentators throughout the last period of the
regime. 121 The tendency to highlight the differences between
the somatic type and the psychological characteristics is very evident in
the writings of Giovanni Marro. 122
Fascist racism differed from Nordic racism, as we have seen, because it

advocated a substantially historicist, political and dynamic interpretation,
against the anti-historical, biological and essentially static orientation of
National Socialist theories. For the most part, the theories of the
National Socialist theorists conceived of race in a substantially
traditional way, defining it as a taxonomic entity, belonging to which was
determined by the possession of a certain number of hereditary
biological characteristics. World history was conceived in terms of
the interaction of these static racial and biological types (Nordic,
Mediterranean, Alpine, and so on) that were endowed with different
qualities and each had its own set of mental and physical attributes. The
story was understood only as a record of the contacts between these
different racial groups, their progressive mixing and the consequent
degeneration of the higher type ( Entnordung). 123 The political task
of our era had to be that of reconstituting the lost "purity" of the superior
race and, consequently, of establishing the environmental conditions
favorable to its duration.
Mussolini had already lashed out against this schematization and,

in September 1940, during an interview with Yvon De Begnac, he reiterated:
« races exist [...] This is an irrefutable fact. But there are no superior or
inferior races. Materialistic interpretations should not be allowed,
especially on this subject ». 124 He had already stated
equally to Ludwig in 1932 125 and in 1939 he had praised an article

by Mario Missiroli in which it was said: « Biological diversities do not
authorize, in scientific settings, tables of differential values, any
reference to 'superior' or 'inferior' human races . One can only
speak of different races.' 126
The interpretation of history as the struggle of anthropologically

defined races was considered a gross and excessive schematization.
This conception seemed to be based on the belief that isolated human
races are uniformly endowed with well-defined and enduring
characteristics, which can only be altered by mixing of races. Fascist
theorists had already countered such conjectures with empirical
arguments, even before the advent of National Socialism in
Germany. Demographic statistics had shown that in fascist Italy, even
if a certain group possessed a particular physical or mental
characteristic, this same characteristic could be found distributed
throughout the population according to a normal distribution curve:
that is to say, it was found in a very evident in a few individuals, minimally
in just as few, while the rest possessed it to an average extent. That
is, there was an individual variability in the
possessing group-specific characteristics (except, of course, as far as

immutable characteristics were concerned). Given the normal
variability in the possession of breed characteristics and the diversity of
the reproductive rate among various groups of the population, each
generation has group characteristics that have been transmitted to it
by only some of the individuals of the previous generation. If this
different rate of reproduction gives the character to particular sectors
of the population which congregate at one end of the distribution
curve or the other, the characteristics of the entire group will change,
sometimes with surprising rapidity, in a relatively short time. without
interracial hybridity. 127 This being the case, race would not be a
historical constant, but a historical product, a function of dynamic
demographic processes and of the normal distribution of
characteristics in the population under consideration. Fascist theorists soon emphasize
considerations, and other similar ones, in defense of a conception of race

that took into account the intrinsic variability and the collective genetic
"motion". 128 These positions not only provided support for the general
dynamic and progressive orientation of Fascism, but also defended the
"racial integrity" of the nation. Measurable and non-measurable variability in
the population was not to be understood as material evidence of broad
racial hybridity. 129 Local variations could be understood as a consequence
of local mating systems and particular selective factors. The
threat of dividing the fascist nation into racial castes was thus
neutralized 130 and the attempt to reconstitute the lost "racial purity" was
not considered a serious political argument. 131
The reservations of the fascist theorists were directed primarily against

those aspects of the National Socialist theory of race which threatened
the integrity of their system. Philosophically, the Fascists had accepted the
concepts of individual initiative and moral responsibility, which they felt
threatened by biological determinism; at the doctrinal level their belief in
the supremacy of politics was threatened by the biological
interpretation of history; finally, on a tactical level, their fidelity to the unity
of the nation and to the substantial dignity and equality of its components was
compromised by a system of racial classification which threatened to divide
Italians along racial lines which attributed to some a superiority, to
others a inferiority based on certain physical characteristics. Induced by
these considerations, Fascist theorists felt they had to take on the responsibility
of formulating a coherent racial theory that accorded both with the
philosophical and ideological conceptions and with the tactical demands of
Fascism, and with the available scientific evidence.
The fascist racial doctrine therefore constituted a relatively coherent

application of a very specific set of fundamental concepts that had
been its heritage since the proto-fascist period. However, the
rapprochement of Fascism with National Socialism was not without influences.
Thus, while the Manifesto maintained that « to affirm that the races
exist does not mean affirming, a priori, that there are superior and
inferior races, but only that there are different human races »• almost all
the theorists involved in its formulation were supporters of the particular
thesis of the biological inferiority of the black race. 132 In almost
every issue of the doctrinal review Difesa della Razza there was an
article in support of this thesis. Despite some dissenting voices among
fascist academics and theorists themselves,133 the
tendency to conceive the Negroid races as biologically inferior was
almost general. But the empirical data cited by the fascist
theorists could lend themselves to at least two interpretations: the
deficiencies of the Negroes in carrying out the "aptitude tests",
for example, could be interpreted both as a demonstration of a
natural genetic inferiority and as evidence of environmental
difficulties; statistically proven differences in brain morphology and
cranial capacity could be interpreted as indicative of reduced intellectual
capacity, or they could be denied any causal value. Fascist and pre-
Fascist Italian scientists alternately preferred one interpretation, and
Fascist theorists chose one over the other for reasons that were anything but scientifi
We have already said that the very first Italian nationalists

demonstrated a vague and, at that time, theoretically secondary,
sense of racial differences. Oriani had spoken of the "irreducible
differences" between the Caucasoid and Negroid races; Mussolini had
spoken of the threat of the "coloured races". The gradually
growing concern about race, brought about by the advent of National
Socialism in Germany, required a painstaking investigation into the
matter. It is difficult to say whether Fascism.! left to his own
devices, he would have gone on to theorize unfortunate
differences between the major human races. The legislation
against mixed marriages, issued by the Fascist regime after
the conquest of Abyssinia, was motivated exclusively by Mussolini's
concerns for "Italian prestige" and not by those, non-existent, for the
protection of the biological heritage of Italians. 124 Mussolini thought
that Italian men, driven by what he termed "the irresistible thirst for
sex," diminished Italy's stature in the eyes of the natives by
indiscriminately uniting with their women. Mussolini's concerns on the
matter, however, never reached the doctrinal level, but were always dictated, mainly,
policies and tactics. When he reformed these laws in 1938, he justified

them by arguing that the "lack of racial dignity" on the part of the Italians
diminished their stature as "bearers of civilization" in the eyes of
the native populations. 135 He did not resort to concepts of racial
superiority as such. As we have already mentioned, in 1940 he
rejected the definition of "superior" and "inferior" as referring to human races.
Mussolini seemed more interested, in the tradition of the first futurists and
nationalists, in making the Italians a "race of rulers" 136 of the Nietzschean
type, sure bearers of Italy's civilizing influence, rather than in
staunchly supporting the thesis of biological superiority of the Italian
race or race
caucasoid. Mussolini saw colored races as a political, not a biological

danger.
The Fascist doctrinaires, finding themselves faced with the obvious need
to insert Mussolini's tactical legislation into a doctrinaire
scheme that would also satisfy the National Socialists, with whom
relations were becoming closer day by day, overcame the
difficulty by accepting an unfelt biologism. At this point, the racial doctrine
detached itself, in many important respects, from the actualist
philosophy, considered by Mussolini himself to be the
official philosophy of Fascism. Under the influence of National Socialism,
a secondary subject of nationalist literature came to pose a tremendous
threat to the internal coherence of fascist ideology.
Due to this increase in tension, the Manifesto itself harbored

numerous inconsistencies. His first thesis, for example, defined race as
a "material reality" by virtue of which "human masses" can be
classified by means of hereditary physical and psychological
characteristics. While classical taxonomists could not accept the
inclusion of psychic characteristics in the classification of races, many
classical anthropologists already at that time had certainly included
them among the hereditary racial characteristics. For critical purposes, we
can accept its inclusion. Such a definition of races
geographic and minor (geographical races include Caucasoid,

Negroid, and Mongoloid races; minor ones, such as Nordic, Alpine, and
Mediterranean races) would agree with classical taxonomic
schemes. The fourth thesis, on the other hand, introduces the concept
of "Aryan" into the discussion. The term "Aryan" has no specific
biological or anthropological reference. It is only, in every sense, a
purely linguistic and cultural term which refers to a family of peoples
who spoke an Aryan or Indo-European language and were
bearers of some characteristic of the Aryan culture. As we have
seen, Fascist theorists believed that the Aryans had been a mixture
of minor European races with widely varying physical characteristics.
137 Likewise, the "Italian breed" to which the sixth thesis refers is a
breed that possesses a great variety of physical characteristics:
differences in stature, cephalic index, pigmentation and constitution. A
race of this type no longer accords with the anthropological and
morphological definition of a race" proposed in the first thesis. The
definition, in the very body of the Manifesto, has changed not
too covertly, from what can be defined as a classic anthropological
definition, to a definition of population. The "Italian race" to which the
sixth thesis refers is a community identified as a "reproductive
environment", an incipient or perhaps mesodiacritical race,
whose members show a vast range of physical characteristics. Any
affinity of "psychic" characteristics in such a community must
necessarily be interpreted as a consequence of cultural factors. Instead,
many Fascist theorists thought that the "Italian race" showed particular
and hereditary psychic characteristics that are peculiar to it. 138
Giovanni Marro, in particular, gave a new definition of the concept of race for
justify such a statement, which reads as follows: "By race we mean a

human grouping which shares a harmonious complex of spiritual talents
and tendencies, constituting a specific moral entity, a
grouping which has a historical past as its formative substratum,
an uninterruptedly transmitted patrimony from generation to
generation which directs, sometimes even polarizes, the
manifestations of both the individual and the community ». 139
Hereditary morphological characteristics took a back seat in the

classification which made "intrinsic spiritual characteristics"
primary. 140 Canella argued: «An Italian, of the Nordic or Jalic type, will
still be Italian, very different from a Scandinavian or a Dutch; a French
Mediterranean cannot have the same mentality as an English
or Spanish Mediterranean; the character of a Ukrainian Alpino will not be
that of a Bavarian or Umbrian Alpino, and so on ». 141
These "spiritual characteristics" common to all Italians were vaguely

conceived as "biopsychic" and heritable. 142 Naturally, the
only proof of the inheritance of spiritual characteristics consisted in the
historical and cultural continuity of the "Italian people". But this proof,
dialectical and speculative, lent itself itself to many conflicting
interpretations. The most immediate was that of induced continuity, of
the transmission of cultural characteristics through formal and
informal teaching, of the suggestion and characterization due to
development.
What is important to note here is that the Manifesto, in the course

of the discussion, makes indifferent use of two different and vaguely
defined conceptions of race. The fascist theorists, who were aware of
that definition of race which correlates the physical characteristics of
minor races (pigmentation, stature and cephalic index) with their
psychic characteristics (whatever they may be), took pains to deny the
value of these correlations in the course of their exposure. To defend the
spiritual unity of the Italians, Capasso denied that an Italian with
Mediterranean physical characteristics had a specifically Mediterranean
mentality or that an Italian with Nordic physical characteristics inevitably
had a Nordic mentality. 143 No Italian could be attributed
particular mental characteristics on the sole basis of his physical
appearance. In support of this thesis it was stated that the physical
characteristics were much less plastic than the psychological ones
and repeated the elements of the "old" or anthropological races of which
the "new" Italian race was composed, while the Italian race
possessed a "magnificent psychological unity and coherent". 144
"Mysteriously", continued Capasso, "[Italian] character is determined by
its given racial composition rather than by environmental influences". 145
Commonly all of this was interpreted to mean that, while not yet
much was known about human culture, it was not necessary to
introduce mysteries to explain cultural continuity. Minimal were the
doubts on the fact that, while a specific hereditary potential is an
essential condition of cultural assimilation, the inheritance in itself, does not
provides the necessary and sufficient conditions for the

production or assimilation of a particular culture.
The synthesis of classical anthropological and populationist conceptions

is not fully successful in the Manifesto. This and other confusions
that abound in the Manifesto and in the writings of fascist theorists who
attempt to explain it can be interpreted as a consequence of the
discrepancies that arose between the previous doctrinal considerations
and the immediate tactical ones. The primary concern of the fascist
theorists was that of protecting the unity of the nation. Any racial
conception that threatened this unity was inadmissible. The classical or
morphological anthropological conception, adopted in the way
the National Socialists intended to adopt it, constituted a real threat. In
1939, in a conference held at the University of Berlin, Guido
Landra emphasized these particular difficulties. 146 The subdivision of
citizens into hierarchically ordered categories according to taxonomic
criteria would have divided Italy into a multiplicity of races and racial
hybrids, each bearer of different intrinsic values. The unity of the nation
would have been irretrievably lost. To prevent this from happening, it
was introduced into the body of the Manifesto, which initially
proposed a morphological conception, a populationist interpretation of
race. This evident contradiction was overcome with the conception of
nations as "protomorphic" or "adiacritic" races, that is, races in
formation, while anthropological or pandiacritical races were
conceived as the historical product of prolonged selection and
genetic isolation. 147 The Italian nation, considered as a politically
circumscribed genetic community, was therefore attributed uniform
psychic characteristics which would inspire in the population a feeling of
common destiny and collective value. The fact that these characteristics
were conceived by many Fascist theorists as inheritable probably
depended on Fascism's acquiescence in National Socialist biologism (and the
revival of nationalist biologism) The political agreement between

National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy required a
substantially unitary orientation. It would have been tactically impolitic
to reject biologism in its entirety, which was therefore reinterpreted
by fascist theorists (not without theoretical difficulties) in such a way as
not to constitute a threat to the integrity of the nation. Since 1938, many
minor fascist theorists attempted a synthesis of biological
racism and nationalism, adopting a conception that attributed certain
mental characteristics to particular human communities.
Geographical human races, identified by an infinite number of
measurable and non-measurable physical characteristics. they were
thought to possess related psychic characteristics, and so were
the lesser races (constituent components of geographic races.) But the
European races had merged on the European continent and produced
various gene communities of varying size and extent. The
possibility of hybrids between local breeds was admitted. But each
population, due to the long endogamous reproduction, was
developing a "new race" which, in sufficient time and under favorable conditions,
would have produced a morphological race with uniform

anthropological characteristics. Such a process, however, involved
establishing periods of time. The immediate unity of the nation had
to be supported by the feeling of common destiny. This feeling of common
destiny was affirmed on the basis of the existence of psychic
characteristics which, in a mysterious way, were understood to be
common to all Italians unlike the physical characteristics.
However, these common psychic characteristics could not be explained
as a consequence of a common history and culture, because
Fascism, precisely in that period, was taking on anti-Semitic legislation
contrary to mixed marriages (due, first, to relations with National
Socialism ) that could only be defended by appealing to some kind
of biological determinism.
The attempts made to deal synthetically with the problems posed by

the situation of the moment forced the fascist theorists to assume
positions which could hardly be defended with any coherence. Once it
was the psychic characteristics that were less plastic than the physical ones (e.g
to support legislation aimed at contrasting mixed marriages between Italians and

Jews), 148 once again it was the psychic marriages that were more plastic than
the physical ones (to support the homogeneity of the Italian nation in the face of
the evident physical variations of its population). 149 On the one hand, races were
defined in terms of human groups endowed with similar physical and mental
characteristics (to justify the legislation contrary to mixed marriages between
Italians and non-Europeans), on the other, in terms of "stable" hybrids of two or
more anthropological races (to defend the equality of all Italians regardless of
their racial heterogeneity). The term "Nordic" was sometimes used to denote a
certain race having common physical and mental characteristics and sometimes
to mean a cultural orientation. On the one hand, the doctrine of racial
superiority and inferiority was renounced (to defend the integrity of Italians
of Nordic, Mediterranean, Alpine, Dinaric or hybrid origin), while on the other,
marriages between Italians and non-Europeans were prohibited with the
assumption of superiority of Europe's biological heritage.
Fascist theorists, and with them Mussolini, tended to favor the populationist
definition of race (the "new races" they spoke of). This definition, while
making the concept of race compatible with nationalism (given that the nation is
conceived as a politically defined genetic community which constitutes the material
basis for the development of a race), nevertheless does not lend itself to a
precise determination of the hereditary psychic characteristics and uniforms
of this community (and in fact there was talk of hereditary spiritual tendencies). If
psychic characteristics were hereditary, they would have to vary as physical
ones vary; this would have been true if race had been understood in purely
biological terms. If the psychic characteristics were transmitted according to
Mendelian laws, they would have to vary according to the physical ones.
Accordingly, any feeling of common end, common
culture and common destiny could only be conceived as induced, and not as
inherited.
The difficulties evident throughout the Manifesto become insurmountable when

one examines the ninth thesis, dedicated to the Jews, and drawn up with the aim of
providing a doctrinal justification for the anti-Jewish laws promulgated by the Regime in
1938. The fact that anti-Semitism was foreign to Fascist ideology and
unnecessarily burdened it is evident from the enormous confusion
surrounding the subject.
The ninth thesis holds that "Jews do not belong to the Aryan race."
But it was admitted that the Aryan "race" consisted of a vast group of minor
races including the Nordic, Dalonordic, Alpine, Mediterranean, Dinaric,
Baltic, united by tenuous ties of linguistic similarities and origins.
cultural. 150 Canella, discussing the Jewish "race", stated that "The
Jews do not constitute an anthropological race in themselves, but a
mixture, in various dosages, of the most disparate racial elements, first of
all Arabs and Assyrians, and then Egyptians, Ethiopians,
Mediterranean , negroid, baltic, alpine, northern, etc. ». 151 The Jewish
group, therefore, contained at least certain elements of the same
minor races making up the Aryan race.
While some anthropologists and some fascist apologists maintained that

the Jewish type had peculiar physical characteristics,152 the majority
of Italian scholars agreed with Canella on the fact that "the so-called
Jewish race [...] cannot be considered a real race [ ...] but a mixture of
very heterogeneous racial elements ». 153 Whatever distinction could be
made, it could not be made on the basis of strictly anthropological
criteria. The best that could be proposed to justify the anti-Jewish
legislation was the hypothesis that, while the Jews... «do not
constitute a race in the strict anthropological sense, they nonetheless
constitute a very compact ethnic group [...] and present a forma mentis so
typical that it might be legitimate to consider them, albeit with some
reservations, as belonging to a 'psychological' race.' 154
Even if they belong to different "somatic types", they demonstrate

"mental and moral characteristics which, in general, identify them". 155
The arguments again assume a formulation similar to that adopted to

demonstrate the "psychological unity" of the "Italian race". If there is a
unity, it is the historical and cultural unity of a human aggregate which lives
in a cultural system which shows important elements of historical
continuity. And again, to explain such a continuity, it is not necessary
to introduce racial issues (strictly understood
biological). The Jews demonstrate no greater anthropological

homogeneity than that demonstrated by the Italians or the Aryans. The
customs, traditions, and institutions of both Jews, Italians, and Aryans all
show some continuity.
Explaining this continuity by referring to some hereditary factor means

unconditionally accepting an absolutely indefensible biological schematization.
The Italian scholars themselves did not accept this explanation willingly and
again in 1943 ammo
The proponents of racial theories state that «... we have not always realized
exactly the very great difficulties of various kinds which a truly scientific study
of racial psychic characteristics entails... it still remains to be established
how much, in these, one can consider really innate and hereditary and
what, on the other hand, is a consequence of environmental factors ». 15S
Almost all the doctrinaire attempts to provide a rational justification for the anti-
Semitic laws proved inadequate, since they represented only attempts to
superimpose shreds of an imported mystical and biological racism, a
consequence of the ever closer alliance with National Socialist Germany, on
the neo-idealism of the fascist philosophy .
Mussolini, in his conversations with Ciano, stated that he was convinced that
the "theories of Rosenberg" would not have succeeded, in any case, in
surviving the war. 157 Later, he confided to Spampanato:
« The Manifesto on Race could have been avoided. It is a scientific

abstruseness of some scholars and journalists, a German text translated
into very bad Italian. It's a far cry from anything I've ever said, written, or
signed. I invite you to observe the old issues of the Popolo d'Italia. I have always
considered the Italian people as an admirable product of various ethnic
fusions founded on a geographical, economic and, above all, spiritual
unity. It was the spirit that spread ours
culture all over the world". 158
The attempt to include biological racism in fascism reveals the depth

of the differences which separated the ideological maturity of Fascism
from National Socialism. The political alliance with National Socialist
Germany also brought about the development of latent biologism
in the writings of some Italian nationalists, who attempted to make race

the principal custodian of values, thereby threatening to subvert the
entire rational construction of Fascism. Mussolini, who seemed to
have surrendered to what he believed to be the political necessities of
the alliance with National Socialist Germany, had neither the desire
nor the possibility to control the situation. The alliance with
Germany was of primary political importance and for it Mussolini allowed
the ideological coherence of Fascism to be compromised to a
considerable extent. The gradual increase of German influence in the
sphere of doctrinal elaboration was totally contrary to fascist
idealism. Gentile, for example, had befriended many German Jewish
scholars expelled from Germany and had even helped some of them
flee Italy when anti-Semitic persecutions began. 159 He was one of the
very few Italians who remained absolutely immune from any form of
anti-Semitism and who, at grave personal risk, dared to express
his opposition by paying public homage to his Jewish teacher,
Alessandro D'Ancona, in 1941, when the anti-Semitic campaign
was already at a very advanced point. 160
There is almost no doubt about Mussolini's personal convictions.

Mussolini's personal dealings with Jews do not demonstrate
systematic bias. His friendships with Angelica Balabanoff and Margherita
Sarfatti were close and long-lasting. Aldo Finzi was minister in
first Mussolini government and Guido Jung was finance minister for many
years. In March 1919, many Jews participated in the foundation of
the Fascist Party and as many Jews, throughout the Fascist
period, occupied important state posts. Mussolini himself said in 1941
that he "cannot forget that four of the seven founders of Italian
nationalism had been Jews. He had personally interceded with Hitler in
favor of Henri Bergson and had "aryanized" numerous Italian Jews
decorated for valor. Long after the enactment of the Fascist anti-
Semitic laws, Jews in Italy continued to occupy a number of important
official and unofficial positions. 182
Mussolini's anti-Jewish attitude was not dictated by theoretical

considerations, but exclusively by tactical, i.e. political, considerations.
Like many other nationalists, he was opposed to political Zionism

which entails a double pledge of allegiance. He was suspicious of any
community that had its own closed institutions. But towards mid-1936,
Mussolini realized that Hitler's intransigence was transforming the
Jewish problem into a matter of particular political importance. In 1933,
Mussolini had tried to convince Hitler that state anti-Semitism
represented a danger and that 'Every regime has not only the right but
the duty to eliminate from positions of command those who are not
fully trusted; it is not necessary, and can even be harmful, to bring
Semitism and Arianism into the field of race, what is instead a simple
defensive measure... ». 163
When he realized he could not convince Hitler, he decided to win

over the National Socialists with a test of good faith, introducing anti-
Semitic legislation in Italy as well, which he considered only a gift
intended to consolidate the Italian-German alliance.
« There is no doubt, in fact, that Mussolini's decision to introduce ...

state anti-Semitism in Italy was substantially determined by the
conviction that in order to make the Italian-German alliance solid, it was
necessary to eliminate any glaring contrast in the politics of the two
regimes ». 184
Thorough investigation of the character of fascist anti-Semitism is beyond

our scope; to give an idea of it, it suffices to know that this "had two
well-defined characteristics and absolutely cannot be put on the same
level as the German one or even that of the other satellites of Germany,
including Vichy France". 185 Fascist anti-Semitism had a tactical value...
and always represented a burden on the consciences of the
fascists. It has been amply demonstrated that as late as 1943 Italian
officials, with the connivance of Mussolini, systematically opposed any
German attempt to deport Jews from the territories occupied by the
Fascists. 186 Rosenberg complained about the protection that Mussolini
granted to the Jews, and the "intransigent" Fascists denounced to
Goebbels the "foolish tolerance" shown by the Duce towards the Jews
and the Freemasons. 167 An anti-Semitism that discriminates
undermined individuals solely on the basis of their belonging to an alleged

biological community was not compatible with the social and political
values with which Mussolini had identified Fascism. Attempts intended
to provide a logical and doctrinal justification for fascist anti-Semitism
gave rise to considerable theoretical tensions in the ideological system of
fascism. The laws of racial discrimination could be validly defended
only by appealing to collective biological values, to group superiority
or inferiority. Mario Missiroli, for example, in an article on the racial
problem explicitly commissioned from him by Mussolini, maintained
that «the highest spiritual values are a conquest of our conscience, the
result of an effort and of a perpetual selection and, as such, are not
linked to any datum of nature, because, in this case, nature would
superimpose itself on the spirit, which is manifestly contrary to the
ethic of Fascism, entirely founded on the absolute, indisputable
supremacy of the will and of moral responsibility" 133
Such positions did not admit the concept of biological determinism,

which could have better explained the Italian anti-Semitic legislation,
which presupposed a doctrine of collective guilt. Giovanni Preziosi,
perhaps the only serious anti-Semite of Fascist Italy, therefore argued,
from his point of view, that "whoever possesses a drop of Jewish
blood is bound by racial solidarity". lo9 Only the concept of biological
determinism can legitimize racial discrimination.
At the time of the establishment of the Social Republic, in 1943, two

currents of Fascism had clearly emerged. 11 Fascism had split in
two on the racial question. Hardline fascists flatly rejected Gentile 170
and argued for the need to restructure fascist philosophy on the
basis of National Socialist biologism. For a while. Preziosi, a close friend
of Alfred Rosenberg and an outspoken critic of Mussolini, 171 was
considered by the National Socialists as a possible successor to
Mussolini himself. 172 His opposition to Gentile was so violent that at
first it was believed that his current was guilty of the murder of the
philosopher. The intransigence of the group headed by Preziosi,
towards Gentile, had been so lively that the philosopher, at first,
had refused to participate actively in the life of the Fascist Republic
founded in 1943.
Only a personal appeal from Mussolini convinced him to accept the

presidency of the Italian Academy. 173
Gentile's assassination, which took place in April 1944, deeply affected

Mussolini who, only after the philosopher's death, submitted to
National Socialist pressure and appointed Preziosi, whom he
considered "repulsive", Inspector General for Race. 174 This
appointment characterized the last, most tragic phase of anti-Semitism in Fascist Italy.
However, Mussolini, who still deplored the excesses of anti-Semitic

propaganda in 1941,175 was still responsible, given the nature of the
fascist regime, for the despicable form that the same propaganda had
already assumed since 1938. And from 1943, Mussolini himself began to
to speak openly of the French «Judeo-Masonic-Bolsheviks», of «Jewish

capitalism», of «Judeo-Masonic intrigues», of the Americans «instruments
of Israel», of an «Israel pursuing total and ruthless revenge», according
to one's "talmudic doctrine". 176
Despite this, anti-Semitism does not figure in those documents that can be
considered the political testament of Mussolini. In his conversations in
March 1945 with Maddalena Mollier and in April 1945 with the prefect
Nicoletti and the journalist Gabella, a few days after his death. Mussolini did
not touch the Jewish question at all. It seems that he did not
consider it an essential issue for Fascism. His attitude in this regard was one
of distrust of organized Judaism and in particular of political Zionism. The
attitudes publicly assumed by international Jewish groups, particularly
during the Ethiopian campaign, increased his distrust. But what ultimately
determined the introduction of the anti-Semitic state policy in Fascist
Italy was the alliance with National Socialist Germany.
Fascist doctrine on race constituted a relatively coherent and

specific body of propositions that arose from the fundamental conceptions
inherited from the pre- and proto-fascist tradition. Its critical elements can be
traced back to Gumplowicz, and in their specifically fascist form they
accorded with the totalitarian nationalism of fascist ideology. The
increasingly intimate relations with National Socialist Germany provoked
theoretical tensions within the doctrinal system and favored the growth of ancillary
elements that could be found in the nationalist tradition of Fascism. Minor anti-
Semitic themes were exaggerated under National Socialist influence and
secondary biological issues came to the fore. National Socialist racism was
absolutely incompatible with nationalism and, consequently, the attempt to
amalgamate the elements of static and taxonomic theory created serious
difficulties for the doctrinal system of Fascism.
In retrospect, a fairly complete specifically Fascist racial doctrine can be

reconstructed. Until 1938, this doctrine existed in the shelter of the burdens
of National Socialist elements. Only then did the additions deriving from the
relations between Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany
begin to weigh down the Fascist ideology. All the leading thinkers of Fascism,
including Mussolini and Gentile, recognized the resulting inconsistencies.
In essence, the Fascist racial doctrine was, in itself, markedly different from the
National Socialist one. The effort to make them mutually compatible
created enormous problems for Fascism and it never succeeded in
convincing the National Socialists that fascist racism was a serious matter.
Among external observers, the conviction prevailed that Fascism did not have
a racial doctrine, that it limited itself either to imitating National
Socialism or to making ad hoc statements on the matter. Neither interpretation is
true. There was a specifically Fascist doctrine on race, but it was later
contaminated by elements
introduced through contacts with National Socialism. Both the original Fascist
doctrine on race and the extraneous elements that coalesced around
it can today be recognized with some certainty.
Fascist racism was an endogenous creature, the product of early Fascist

commitments. It was one of the expressions of totalitarian nationalism which
became the nucleus of Fascist doctrine after 1918, an expression not
incompatible with the fully articulated ideology as it manifested itself in 1932.
5 last stage of the doctrinal development of Fascism was accomplished in

JLj framework of the Italian national tragedy. The country had been trampled for a few
months by the armies of one of the most powerful military alliances in history. In the
night between 25 and 26 July 1943, a palace conspiracy had brought down Mussolini,
who was held prisoner, until the first week of September, initially on the island of Ponza,
then on the island of La Maddalena in Sardinia, and finally on the Gran Sasso. On
8 September, the Italian radio had announced the unconditional surrender of the
Badoglio government to the Allies, by the Marshal himself.
Immediately after the announcement of the surrender, the King and Badoglio had fled
Rome, to take refuge in southern Italy behind the Allied lines, while the Germans occupied
the capital. The Italian Army, left without commanders and upset by contradictory orders,
had dissolved: the Germans had disarmed and deported to concentration camps in
Germany about six hundred thousand Italian soldiers. German military units had
occupied all the main strategic points of the Peninsula and the German air force had wrought
havoc among the Italian fleet which, according to the orders received, was heading towards
the Allied ports to surrender. Allied aviation, in turn, had begun a series of indiscriminate
bombings of cities. The Italians were considered enemies defeated by the Allies, traitors
by the Germans.
Meanwhile, political activists had organized the National Liberation Committee (CL/V),
which became the nucleus from which the anti-fascist partisan bands then originated, and
which unleashed the savage fratricidal war that raged in Italy during all the last six hundred
days of Fascism. In their turn, small fascist units had begun to reorganise, having recovered
from the sudden blow caused by the fall of fascism. Some fascist hierarchs, who had
found refuge in Germany. 0 solicited Hitler's support for the reconstitution of a provisional
fascist government in the northern part of the peninsula cut in two. Shortly, after the
announcement of the surrender, the Italian radio broadcast the notes of the fascist anthem.
Youth
, while Pavolini
he implored the Italian soldiers to oppose the King's surrender order, in the name of
the reconstituted national fascist government.
On 12 September, a group of gliders under the command of the German officer Otto
Skorzeny landed at Campo Imperatore on the Gran Sasso and freed Mussolini (a
first attempt had been made by four Italian aviators who were shot). Laboriously
lifted off the Gran Sasso, the plane on which Mussolini was landing at Pratica di Mare
airport, from where a Heinkel took the Duce to Vienna and from here to Munich; in the
Bavarian capital, Mussolini saw his family for the first time after his arrest in
July. On 14 September he was flown to Hitler's headquarters, where the two
dictators greeted each other with a cordiality and friendship defined by Goebbels
as exceptional. The two men had a secret conversation that lasted two hours.
All the evidence available to us indicates that at that time Mussolini was physically
tired and morally broken. The German doctor who examined him after his release
said that he was "a very sick man, who had bravely endured excruciating pain for four
years."
Mussolini was overwhelmed by the immensity of the tragedy that had fallen on the
nation and convinced that Fascism, as a political movement, had been
definitively defeated. 1 In the end, only Hitler's threat to unleash on Italy the
revenge foreshadowed in his speech of 10 September induced Mussolini to
attempt the reconstitution of the fascist government. To prepare the new
government. Mussolini met in Rastenburg with a small group of fascists.
The Germans pressed for the new government to be formed as soon as possible,
but no one ever seriously thought that such a government could any longer have any
political effectiveness. Goebbels argued, in a judgment that seemed to be
shared by almost all German rulers, that «Fascism seems [...] to no longer have any
political force. We have to proceed very coolly and realistically about this. We must
use Fascism as much as possible, but of course we must not expect Firn possible. In
the Fiihrer's calculations, Italy was a power factor. But now it is no longer [...]
Italy has abdicated as a people and as a nation. This is
occurred, according to the law of nature and the principles of justice in historical
development". 2
Mussolini himself conceived of his government first of all as a buffer against

German revenge and secondly as a means for the "pacification of Italian hearts",
to try to limit the fratricidal animosities which threatened the outbreak of civil war.
Hitler, on the other hand, supported the need for the fascists to proceed
with the punishment of the "traitors of Fascism", starting with those members of
the Grand Council who, with their vote on the night between 25 and 26 July, had
opened the regime's crisis by providing the King the pretext for dismissing
Mussolini, and was astounded when he realized that Mussolini harbored no
intention of revenge. Goebbels writes that « the Fiihrer expected that the first
thing the Duce would have done would have been to take full revenge on those who
had betrayed him. But Mussolini did not demonstrate
this intention, thus highlighting its true limits. He is not a revolutionary like the
Fiihrer or Stalin. He is so tied to his own Italian people that he lacks the great
qualities necessary for a revolutionary on a world scale ». 3
Even Franco Martinelli, who certainly cannot be accused of pro-

fascism, after having examined all the known testimonies, affirmed that "revenge
had no attraction for Mussolini.
He was rather moved by the desire to avoid the definitive ruin of the nation, to
save what could be saved ». 4 Carlo Silvestri, a lifelong anti-fascist, maintained
that it was Mussolini's intention to "limit the tragic consequences of the situation and
make the wild passions (unleashed by events) more humane". 5
To achieve these purposes. Mussolini tried in every possible way to reconstitute the
Italian army and police forces, to ensure that the Italians dealt with other
Italians, and not with the Germans, and that the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of the nation could be defended by Italian forces.
He also made sincere efforts to try to appease the anti-fascist opposition. He
said he wanted a national unity government expressing the full range of
political views. Both of these
attempts, that of reconstituting the armed forces of the nation and that
of placating the fratricidal passions, proved absolutely fruitless.
Italian units continued to fight throughout the rest of the war, some under
German command, others under the guidance of "condottieri" (*) such
as Valerio Borghese, but an effective Italian army was never reconstituted.
The Germans continued to harbor doubts about the Italian commitment and
did what they could to frustrate Mussolini's efforts. 8 Even the attempt to
prevent the civil war did not achieve any concrete results. By the time
the first congress of the reorganized Republican Fascist Party was
convened in November, acts of violence and individual terrorism on
both sides had exacerbated the situation.
During the PFR Congress in Verona, the participants were brought the
announcement of the assassination of the Federal of Ferrara, Iginio
Ghisellini. A punitive Fascist expedition immediately left Verona for
Ferrara, where it summarily executed eleven hostages. From then on, a
painful series of ambushes and hostage shootings began which shook Italy
for the rest of the war. The brutality demonstrated by both sides spared
no one. During this fierce struggle, on April 15, 1944, Giovanni Gentile was
also assassinated.
Along with the effort to rebuild the Italian army and to appease fratricidal
passions, during these last days of Fascism, Mussolini also
dedicated himself to another great enterprise: the socialization of the
Italian economy. In this chapter, we deal principally
(*) In Italian in the text ( NdT .).
mind of this final development of Fascist doctrine. Socialization was the

ultimate expression of Mussolini's social and political thought and
revealed, in the last hours of Fascism, the ideals that had animated
the first national totalitarianism of the twentieth century.
THE SOCIAL CONCEPTIONS OF REPUBLICAN FASCISM
From the moment of his reappearance on the Italian scene, Mussolini made
it clear that he intended to reconstitute a state that was "national and social
in the deepest sense", a fascist state brought back to its doctrinal origins, a
State that would finally eliminate the plutocratic residues and make work,
in all its forms, its own "unbreakable basis". 7 During the first meeting
of the Council of Ministers of the new Republic, he reiterated that the
State must possess «a very pronounced social content, such as to resolve
the social question at least in its most strident aspects, that is, such as to
establish the place, the function, the responsibility of work in a truly
modern national society". He ordered the merger of the various
trade union confederations into a single General Confederation of Labor
"in the ambit and climate of the Party, which gives it all its revolutionary
strength". 8
In November 1943, the reconstituted Republican Fascist Party,

which at the time had two hundred and fifty members, issued its
own Programmatic Manifesto. Since a Constituent Assembly was never
convened in the besieged Republic, the Programmatic Manifesto
essentially became the Constitution of the Republic of Salò. The Manifesto
was drawn up by Pavolini, de facto Party Secretary, and by Nicola
Bombacci, a former socialist and communist deputy and a childhood
friend of Mussolini. It was Mussolini himself, however, who inspired the
document and revised it before its presentation to the Fascist
Congress, which approved it, by acclamation. 9 More than half of the
Manifesto is devoted to the social question, to fascist socialization. 10
The Manifesto resumed Mussolini's intention to make "the basis of the

Social Republic... manual, technical and intellectual work in all its forms".
While guaranteeing private property, he argued that private property would
not be permitted "to be disintegrative of the physical and moral
personality ... through exploitation." Furthermore, all economic activities
that transcended strictly private interests and, in terms of scope or
functions, involved the entire national community, had to fall within
the sphere of State interests. Public services and war manufacturing were
to be managed by the state through parastatal bodies. Throughout industry,
whether state, parastatal or private, the labor forces would elect
representatives to management boards who would run all companies
and set local and regional wages and profit sharing. In the agricultural
field, wherever
private initiative did not meet the criteria established by the State for the
productive exploitation of the soil, the land
it would have been expropriated and parceled out among those who
could have worked it productively or, depending on the case, entrusted to
cooperatives or state farms. The artisans and small industrialists could have
continued to work as private entrepreneurs, but exclusively within the
limits of state controls on quantity and quality and at controlled prices.
Each worker had to be officially registered with the trade union
belonging to the single Confederation which included all workers, technicians
and professionals with the exclusion of the owners who were not themselves
company managers or technicians. All the social legislation of the
previous Fascist period was confirmed and the 1927 Labor Charter was
taken as the starting point for the further path.
National minimum tariffs were to be established and workers were to gradually
gain ownership of the house, after the monies paid for rent had repaid the
principal and interest on the house. The payment of the rent thus came to
constitute a purchase title.
This was the program of the revived Fascism and its profound socialist content
was evident to all, friends and enemies. At the fifth meeting of the
Council of Ministers in January 1944, Mussolini had the fundamental
premise approved for the creation of the new structure of the Italian economy
, n in which it was said that "the State, in accordance with the ninth
declaration of the Labor Charter and the programmatic postulates of the first
report of the Republican Fascist Party of Verona, assumes the direct
management of companies that control essential sectors for economic and
political independence of the country, as well as companies supplying raw
materials or energy and other services essential to the smooth running of the
country's economic life".
The expropriation was offset by the issuance of negotiable, transferable

and interest-bearing bonds.
The nationalization of these key sectors of the economy was accompanied by

a general process of "socialisation". State-owned industries were to be
administered by a management board elected by all
employees of each particular company. The council thus elected was to

deliberate and decide on all matters concerning
10 development of production, within the ambit of "a unitary national plan

established by the competent bodies of the Italian Social Republic".
In private joint-stock companies, a collegiate council had to be set up

made up of trade union representatives of workers, administrative
employees and technicians, in the same number as the representatives
elected by the shareholders. In individual private industries employing
fifty or more persons, a management council of workers, administrative
clerks and technicians consisting of at least three members had to be
established.
Each enterprise had to have a director. In nationalized industries the

director was appointed by the state. In private industries,
The director could be the owner of the industry itself or a person

appointed by the management board. The director was politically and
legally responsible to the state for maintaining the
production and discipline. In each industry, public or private, the

management council, elected by all employees, had the power of decision
for all matters concerning internal regulations and the controversies that
could derive from them. The profits of private industry could not exceed
limits established annually by the state in accordance with the
economic needs of the whole of the productive community. The surplus of
profits with respect to the established maximum was shared
between the employees of the company concerned and the State. The
sums thus collected by the state would be spent on social programs.
On February 12, 1944, the Republican Cabinet began translating the

Fundamental Premise into law. 12 On the 13th, it was announced that all
joint-stock companies whose capital exceeded one million lire or which
employed more than one hundred employees were to be socialised. These
enterprises were supposed to operate under the direction of a) an
assembly; 6) a board of directors or management; c) a board of statutory
auditors; d) a director. The assembly, made up of all employees and shareholders
of the company, with an equal number of votes for each category, would
have elected a board of directors and a board of statutory auditors. The board
of directors would be composed of representatives of labor and capital in
equal numbers. The board of statutory auditors would be made up of labor
representatives. there director of the enterprise was to be elected by the
assembly and appointed by the council.
In industries not included in the previous regulation, an administrative

council composed of representatives of labor and capital in equal numbers
had to be organized. In individual private enterprises with capital of less than
one million, or with fewer than one hundred employees, a management
council had to be set up made up of at least three members elected by the
workers, administrative and technical employees.
The election of representatives to the board of directors or management, to
the board of statutory auditors and of the director was the right of all
employees and had to take place by secret ballot.
Angelo Tarchi was appointed Minister of Corporations, who was entrusted

with the responsibility of overcoming the obstacles that Mussolini already
knew would be encountered on the road to socialization by "the intrigues
of the plutocracy in Italy". 13 The minister also had the authority to intervene
in the event that some industrial enterprise could give rise, according to his
judgement, to "serious fears". Furthermore, since the directors of the
companies were politically and legally accountable to the state, the state
retained full control over the economy.
THE RESISTANCE
TOWARDS THE
FASCIST SOCIALIZATION
These were the fundamental lines of the new structure of an integral
fascist economy. Before announcing the resolutions of the Con
Council of Ministers of February 13, 1944, Mussolini had warned

the Germans of his plan for profound economic reforms. Needless to say,
the Germans, who were accountable to Hitler for maintaining discipline
and production in Italy, opposed the plan, fearing that Italian industry
might feel the backlash of such important reforms. Dr. Rudolf Rahn,
ambassador to Italy, got in touch with Mussolini and reported to Berlin
that it was Mussolini himself who had proposed the
restructuring of the Italian economy in this sense. He also reported that
the Italian capitalists had turned to General Leyers of the German General
Staff, asking him to intercede against the fascist programme. Rahn also
reported that he had thoroughly discussed the program with Mussolini
and that Mussolini was firmly opposed to modifying the program itself,
intended to definitively break the capitalist opposition to Fascism.
Mussolini accused big capitalism not only of resisting Fascism but
also of actively helping the CLN and the communist partisans who had
begun to show themselves in increasing numbers throughout Italy.
Mussolini argued that the nationalization of key sectors of the economy
and the socialization of major private enterprises was 'long overdue and that
state-owned and government-controlled industries had long
demonstrated their superiority over private ones. Mussolini's
measures, Rahn reported, were directed primarily against those industrialists
and business owners "who were for the most part the typical
representatives of high finance," which invariably places private interests
above those of the nation. 14
Regardless of Hitler's and Rahn's passive support, German officials in Italy

continued to obstruct the implementation of the socialization
decrees. The obstacle of the Germans was accompanied by resistance
of socialist and communist organizers among the wary and apathetic working
classes of Italy. This unique union between German, Italian capitalists and socialist
and communist elements constantly threw a spanner in the works of Fascism's
desperate efforts to deprive the capitalist class of its economic base. Tarchi noted,
with bitterness, that the industrialists were making common cause not only with
the Germans, but also with the "secret action committees", socialist and
communist, to obstruct the fascist laws on socialisation. This plot against
nationalization and socialization actually defeated all efforts aimed at obtaining the
application of the laws by the spring of 1944. Mussolini decided at a certain point
to try to overcome the German resistance and, on June 30, he ordered unilaterally
the immediate application of the decrees. General Leyers immediately let it be
known that the Fascist laws were not to come into force in certain firms.
Nonetheless, some seventy industrial enterprises were socialized during the last
ten months of the Fascist Republic, most of which were not considered by the
Germans to be essential to the war effort. Socialization mainly affected
publishing companies. Some steps were taken towards socialization in the
paper, graphic arts, consumer products and
chemistry. Companies such as Alfa Romeo, Dalmine, Motomeccaniche,

Burgo, Fiat, Acciaierie and Ferriere Lombarde, Puricelli and ,the Montecatini ,
VOlivetti were interested in socialisation. But Mussolini's work was hampered by

strong resistance from the combined forces of the German military, Italian
capitalism, the socialist and communist action committees, and the indifference of
the working classes. This strange combination of forces derailed the last
efforts to achieve a fascist socialism.
FASCIST SOCIALISM
Critics have tried to see in this last stage of Fascist doctrine another example
of Mussolini's incomprehensible changes and his doctrinal acrobatics, or they
have thought that it was a simple expedient, characteristic of Mussolini's personal
politics,
intended to win over the working class to Fascism. 15 Neither of the two
interpretations is true.
The first hypothesis cannot be taken into any consideration, because it would
be necessary to have proof of the non-continuity of Mussolini's thought, of the fact
that socialization, as a programme, had no precedents in Mussolini's
thought or in fascist doctrine. However, there is evidence to the contrary.
The second interpretation is absolutely unconvincing. Mussolini was well aware
that the security of the Fascist Republic rested on German bayonets. If he
had cared only about maintaining power (the alleged reason why he should have
captivated the working classes) he would not have needed to deceive the Italians,
because the Germans were enough to ensure it.
Mussolini was smart enough to understand that Italians, on the whole, were
not very enthusiastic about the resurgent Fascism. All the evidence we have at
our disposal tells us that Mussolini conceived of his Republic as a political
and social legacy to be left to Italy which would emerge from the war, an
Italy which would certainly have been an Italy without Mussolini. In January 1945,
four months before his death, Mussolini appointed Giuseppe Spinelli Minister
of Labor and entrusted him with the responsibility of spreading "social mines"
on Italian soil. 16 Mussolini hoped that the process of socialization could
be brought to a point where it could not be overturned by the monarchical and
capitalist restoration, that is, he hoped that Fascism could bequeath post-
war Italy a socialized economy.
Socialization actually represented a maturation of tendencies already inherent in

the original fascist formulations, and clearly manifested at the time of the Second
Conference of Union and Corporate Studies held in Ferrara in May 1932. The
foundations for socialization were provided by the socialist and anti-bourgeois
approach of national syndicalism, combined with the totalitarian tendencies of
neo-idealism. At the 1932 Conference, Ugo Spirito, one of the best-known pupils
of Giovanni Gentile, spoke about it.
Spirito presented the conference with a communication entitled "Individuo e

State in the corporate economy », 17 indicative of the course that was going
taking the fascist thinking after seven years of absolute power. Given
the nature of the communication, Spirito had submitted the text to
Mussolini, at the suggestion of Gentile who had already read and
accepted it, for approval. 18
From Spirito's communication it is clear that Fascism, while explicitly

criticizing some of the fundamental concepts of Maixist socialism,
nevertheless recognized some positive values. Spirito
conceived of fascist corporatism, as it had developed up to that
point, as transient: a hybrid and transitory form which would eventually
abandon all capitalist residues to transform itself into "integral corporatism",
in which private property would no longer be subject to particular interests
independent of the interests of the State and sometimes contrary to
them. 19 He foresaw that the fascist revolution would go through
different stages of development. If you don't want to cause chaos in an
industrialized nation, you cannot completely change the social and
economic order in the blink of an eye. Fascism represented
a conservative revolution, but, nonetheless, always a revolution. In thus
defining the fascist revolution. Spirito echoed the judgments
expressed by Mussolini throughout his political life. In 1919,
Mussolini maintained that « a political revolution is made in twenty-
four hours, but in twenty-four hours the economy of a nation, which
is part of the world economy, cannot be overturned. We do not
mean by this that we are considered a sort of 'bodyguard' of the
bourgeoisie... ». 20 Speaking of the economic transformation of society,
Mussolini maintained that any important economic reform "presupposes a
preliminary elaboration of institutions and consciences". 21 In 1944 he
confided to Rahn: "I have always been very cautious in economic
matters... and I have already expressed the opinion on other occasions
that if surgical solutions can often be applied in the political field, in
the economic field it is necessary to adopt medical methods, if not even homeopathic b.
At the beginning of the Fascist enterprise, these sentiments were

accompanied by the conviction that capitalism, as a productive
system, still retained the vitality required by the productivist program of
Italian nationalism. 23 It was only in November 1933 that Mussolini was
convinced that the crisis that had tormented capitalism in the last four years was not a
crisis "in" the system, but a crisis "of" the system. On the same occasion, he
spoke of a "complete organic and totalitarian regulation of production", of
a "regulated" and "controlled" economy which would abolish capitalism. 24
In fact, the first attempts at fascist intervention in the Italian economy took
place many years earlier, with the Palazzo Chigi Conference and the signing of
the Palazzo Vidoni Pact, in 1925 and 1926. With the Palazzo Vidoni Pact, the
Confederation of Industry recognized in Confederation of Labor Corporations
the sole representative of Italian workers.
The agreement formed the basis of the collective agreements they would regulate
the relationship between capital and labor over the next decade. At the time
(even according to the judgment of well-informed American scholars) the agreement
was considered an important victory for the fascist workers' unions. Edmondo
Rossoni, head of the Fascist trade unions, considered the internal factory
commissions, widespread at the time, as a remnant of the socialist factory
occupation movement of the 1920s, docile tools in the hands of employers and
ineffective for collective bargaining. In their place, the unions had received the
official recognition of the unitary confederation which, legally, could deal with
the Confederation of Industry on an equal footing. Furthermore, the acknowledgment
of the compulsory nature of collective agreements foreshadowed an ever
greater integration of the state into the nation's economy.
Rossoni conceived the Pact as a step in the direction of an integral totalitarian state.
25 Although Rossoni's interpretation proved to be excessively optimistic as
regards the benefits that would derive from it for the working classes, the
Pact was nevertheless, as subsequent events demonstrated, the first
step in the direction of totalitarian control of the economy. However, it is certain
that not all the business class welcomed the Pact with jubilation. 26
From that moment on, the Fascist social and economic legislation became
increasingly protective and interventionist. The Law of 3 April and the regulation of
1 July 1926 marked further interventions by the Fascist state in the Italian economy.
In 1927 the Labor Charter was adopted as a legal norm regulating the relationship
between capital and labour. While the seventh
article of the Charter maintained that "the corporate State considers private
initiative in the field of production as the most effective and most useful instrument
in the interest of the Nation", the ninth stated that "State intervention takes place when
there is no or insufficient private initiative". But even more important and
significant was the affirmation according to which « the private organization of
production being a function of national interest, the organizer of the enterprise is
responsible to the State.. ». Simultaneously with the promulgation of the Charter,
Giuseppe Bottai, commenting on it, openly clarified the meaning of this last
clause: « Since the functions of commerce and private industry are functions of
national interest, entrepreneurs are obliged to carry them out in accordance with the
national and are responsible to the State for the address given to the production ». 27
Regardless of the euphoric declarations of the apologists of Fascism throughout the period
before the Second World War, the responsible fascists admitted that the
existing mechanism for collaboration between classes and categories did not solve the
social problem. 28 Fascist trade unionists, for example, complained about the continuous
violations of contractual obligations by employers. 29 The fact is that the intelligent fascists
recognized that the conciliation mechanism instituted by the State was unable to effectively
resolve the disparities between the producing classes.
Eventually, Mussolini released it into the public domain
this fact. In January 1944, he wrote that twenty years of experience had taught the
fascists that "the state cannot [...] limit itself to a purely mediating function between
the classes, since the greater substantial strength of the capitalist classes nullifies
any established juridical equality through a union mechanism between the
categories [...] this major force of the capitalist classes manages to dominate and
turn all the action of the state to its own advantage... ». 30
In any case, since the 1930s it was evident that Fascism, for its purposes, would have
had to create institutions and systems that would limit the independent power of
the wealthy classes. And he had to act in this way not only to make the state truly
sovereign, but also to defend those values
socialists who had never been abjured by many fascists. Even

Corradini had affirmed that Fascism is "the overcoming of
socialism, not the dispersion, not the destruction of the socialist work".
And he continued: « This is good to say... it is fundamental; it is an
essentially fascist statement. There is a historical nexus between
socialism and Fascism, I dare say a historical continuation. Fascism
surpasses socialism, but reaps the good fruits of the socialist work and
this work ... according to its own law continues ». 31
By the time Spirito presented his communication to the 1932

Conference, these sentiments had merged with the totalitarian
aspirations of neo-idealism. The result of this union was
variously defined as "fascist communism", "fascist Bolshevism", "fascist
socialism", "leftist fascism".
Spirito was interested in what he himself called the "internal logic" of the
fascist revolution. This "logic" was affirmed on the basis of the
actualist belief in the existence of a "speculative identity" between
the individual and the State. "The first thesis was the identification of
the individual and the State", Spirito himself reiterated many years later,
32 thus remaining closely linked to Gentile's conception. Gentile himself,
in commenting on Spirito's communication of 1932, maintained that
this had clarified the definitive identity of the two terms "individual" and "state".
33 Indeed, this identification succeeded in annulling the distinction,
long held by liberals of all confessions, between individual and collective,
public and private interests. About a year later, talking about the corporate
legislation. Mussolini stated that its "fundamental premises" were the
following: "There is no economic fact of exclusively private and
individual interest; from the day in which man resigned himself or
adapted to live in the community of his fellows, from that day no act
that he performs begins, develops or ends in him, but has repercussions
that go beyond his person w . 34
The fundamental philosophical premise of the liberal economic and

political order, the distinction between private and public acts, is
rejected. In essence, all acts are public acts and all interests are
public interests.
The central point of Spirito's communication concerned the tendency

of fascist corporatism, as it had come to form, to recreate some areas of
particular interests which made it impossible
the identification of individual, category and class interests with the

interests of the State. Industrial enterprises had made enormous use of
anonymous shareholdings from the propertied classes who
did not participate directly in the enterprise. Workers identified
themselves with the unions that served their immediate wage interests
and were in practice barred from direct participation in management.
The managers of these companies often had a marginal function, not
identifying themselves with either capital or labour. Each class and
each category pursued distinct and often conflicting interests and the
state only had the function of mediator. What was missing was a real identity of intere
Spirito argued that this phase could only represent a transitional

phase towards an economic system that would synthesize
interests, a social order in which any individual, category and class
would identify their well-being with the collective well-being. This
result could have been achieved only by overcoming the dualism
that troubled traditional corporatism. Corporatism, as it appeared then,
had given rise to a confederation of industrial organizations,
which represented capitalist interests, and to a confederation of
workers' unions. A radical identity of interests could have been
achieved only by establishing a single integral corporation
that abolished the distinction between entrepreneurs and
workers. Spirito argued that this could only be achieved by
making each firm the property of everyone who worked there. The
workers would thus become owners and their efforts would not only be
rewarded by wages, but also by the profits on their shares of capital. In
this way, they could participate directly in the industrial process by
electing the management board of their companies. Production
would thus take place within the limits of "a unitary and national
economic programme", while the National Councils of Corporations
would be transformed from class conciliation bodies into directive bodies
of the production. 35 Corporatism would thus have become technical,

organic, rational and totalitarian.
Spirito called for a unified national economic program, the direct

participation of workers in the management and direction of the
company, the elimination of institutional distinctions between classes and
the consequent abolition of classes themselves. 38 He admitted that
his programmatic proposals were socialist, that they represented a certain
type of National Socialism. He argued that «... one does not do a good
service to Fascism when one opposes it in a completely antithetical way to
Bolshevism, such as good against evil or truth against error... If today
the energies in which the new is expressed political orientation are Fascism
and Bolshevism, it is clear that tomorrow will not belong to one of these two
regimes as it will have denied the other, but to that of the two which will have
been able to incorporate and surpass the other in an ever higher form. Fascism
has the duty to make people feel that it represents a constructive force that
historically goes to the vanguard and leaves behind, after having reabsorbed
them, socialism and Bolshevism ». 37
Over the next two years, Spirito published, in theoretical journals of the
Regime, a series of articles devoted to explaining what the neo-idealists
and syndicalists claimed were the revolutionary demands facing fascist
corporatism. In 1934, he drew attention to a problem that had left the fascist
trade unionists in doubt: the participation of the workforce in the
management of the enterprise. Continuing to support the need for the
national organization of labor in industrial unions. Spirito stated that it was
also necessary to set up factory commissions which "participated directly in the
management of the individual enterprises". 38
In this way, the radical fascists had specified what they believed was the
"integral corporatism" which had always been implicit in Fascism. It is not
difficult to find these intentions in the programmatic proposals put forward by
the Party as early as 1921. The majority of the fascists had accepted the
need to reach a compromise with the forces operating in the Italian milieu after
the March on Rome, but after twelve years of power , after eight
years of political monopoly, trade unionists and neo-idealists were growing increasingly
impatient.
In the years following Spirito's communication and the reappearance of anti-capitalist

hints in Mussolini's public statements, some foreign commentators foresaw the
advent of a typical "non-Marxist socialism" in Fascist Italy. Pierre Drieu La Rochelle,
Marcel Deat and Mihail Manoilesco spoke of a fascist "neo-socialism" and defined
fascist corporatism, as it was then constituted, an "intermediate form" destined to
definitively eradicate the last traces of capitalism. 39
In 1934 Mussolini repeated that capitalism, as an economic system, was no longer

valid. The fascist economy was to be based not on individual profit, but on collective
interest. The reorganization had to be based on the premise of the "self-regulation
of production entrusted to the producers", a programmatic proposal which concerned
not only the manufacturers and employers, but also the workers. Mussolini argued
that this "means that the workers, the workers, must enter ever more intimately to
know the production process and to participate in its necessary discipline... if the last
century was the century of the power of capital, this twentieth is the century of
power and the glory of work". 40
In the same year. Mussolini sketched a plan of collaboration with the socialist
Emilio Caldara and the socialist periodical II Lavoro throughout this , that during
period had been allowed to continue publications.

Large numbers of socialists rallied around the Fascist pennants, and even Arturo
Labriola, the revolutionary syndicalist with whom Mussolini had collaborated as a
young man in Switzerland, returned to Italy from exile at this time. 41
Starting from this same period, the first programming bodies made their appearance
in Italy. The guild institutes, which were initially mainly bodies intended to smooth
out the conflicts of interest between the various classes and categories, gradually began
to take
advisory and planning functions. Their meetings began to be more frequent

in order to be able more easily to formulate development plans, and national
development coordination, for the respective productive categories.
There was a gradual increase in the presence of economic experts in
the technical offices of the Ministry of Corporations, in the National
Research Council and, finally, in the Permanent Committee for
Price Control of the National Fascist Party. In 1936, Mussolini announced
a "plan" for the self-sufficient development of the Italian economy.
42 Mussolini spoke of the nationalization of key sectors of the economy; of
the need to deprive these sectors of their de jure immunity,
immunity they had already lost de facto. He also spoke of the indirect but
efficient control of other sectors of the economy and argued that in the
system that was forming, workers became, with equal rights and equal
duties, collaborators in the company in the same capacity as suppliers
of capital or technical managers [ ...] In the fascist era, work, in its infinite
manifestations, becomes the only yardstick by which the social and
national utility of individuals and groups is measured [...] With the
economic transformations I have told you about and with this
innovation on the political and constitutional terrain, the Fascist
Revolution fully realizes its fundamental postulates, which the gathering
in Piazza San Sepolcro, seventeen years ago, acclaimed". 43
In 1937 Mussolini approved the vast measures of state intervention in

the extractive and productive industries. 44 He also said that the banks
would be transformed into institutions of public law and that their policy
would be increasingly directed by the Minister of Finance, the Minister of
Corporations and by the National Fascist Party itself. The credit
institutions increasingly fell under the aegis of the government's will, and
their control provided the fascist state with the most effective tool for
controlling the economy. Italian credits abroad were placed under the
control of the Undersecretary for Credit and Exchange who,
consequently, also assumed control of the flow of Italian imports and exports.
It was not difficult to predict the consequences of this trend on

the Italian economy. In 1938, H. Arthur Steiner wrote: « It goes without
saying that in Italy the wealthy classes have lost much of the enthusiasm
they might have had for Mussolini's Fascism. This is one of
reasons why Mussolini tends to secure the support of the working classes,
one of the explanations for a more intelligent union policy ». 45
It is a fact, however, that Steiner* confused causes with effects. Mussolini's

syndicalist and totalitarian aspirations had been held back by the compromises
required by the political and economic situation that loomed after he had
come to power. The immediate aftermath of Fascism's seizure of power saw the
traditional socialist parties resolutely opposed to Mussolini. He had won
the support of some sectors of the industrial bourgeoisie for his long and
violent struggle against the socialists who had opposed the
entry of Italy into the Great War and who had continued to fight against national
unionism after the war. The first Fascist squads were made up of war veterans
who, apart from their unionist beliefs, were nationalists. They were
helped, to a considerable extent, by industrialists and landowners terrified
by the socialist and communist successes of the immediate post-war period.
The Monarchy, linked to the conservative and landowner sectors of the
middle bourgeoisie, had allowed Fascism to assume political dominance.
Conditioned by all these forces. Mussolini had tempered the original Fascist
claims. As it extended its power, Fascism found itself in the ranks of many
conservative and capitalist elements who had given the movement the
fundamental support for the conquest of power. In the same party,
various currents had formed around these entrenched and politically powerful
interests. Behind the monolithic facade, these forces devoted all
their energies to extending their control over the state apparatus and
their influence in the Party itself.
REVOLUTIONARY FASCISM AND THE "DI ARCHI CO" SYSTEM
In November 1943, two months after the establishment of the Republic of

Salò, Mussolini declared that the first twenty years of Fascist government had
been conditioned by compromise. 43 He admitted that his totalitarian regime had
been, in practice, anything but totalitarian. He denounced the "diarchy" that had
governed the twenty years of Fascism: "The big bourgeoisie, industrialists,
farmers, bankers, while not exposing themselves in the front line, also marched under the
royal insignia". 47 For twenty years Italy had been governed by a "diarchy":
on the one hand the traditionalists and conservatives gathered behind the
Monarchy, on the other a revolutionary counter-elite within the Party
organization. The duality of political direction appeared evident in the system of
parallel institutes: for example, the traditional Council of Ministers
deriving from the pre-revolutionary Statute was opposed by the Grand
Council of Fascism, created by the Fascist Revolution; the traditional army
which swore allegiance to the Royal House was opposed by the Militia which
swore to Mussolini. Fascism had introduced its own hymns, greetings
and rituals, while the Monarchy had kept its own.
Mussolini argued that within this de facto diarchic state, "plutocratic elements
and sectors of the clergy" pursued particularist interests and exerted
their influence to thwart the aims of Fascism. 48 "Well-identified industrial and
financial groups", united behind the Monarchy, had waged a "vile and implacable
struggle" against the social and economic policy of revolutionary Fascism. 49 All
the forces of reactionary capitalism had gathered behind the Monarchy. 50
Constantly, Mussolini maintained that Fascism had been betrayed by the
big bourgeoisie that had been in league with the Monarchy for all the twenty years
of the Fascist Regime. 51
It is certain that, at the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, vast
sections of the industrial and financial bourgeoisie viewed the fascist experiment
with more than considerable distrust. Already in 1931 the archives of the
fascist secret police had begun to fill up with reports indicating that "while in the
aftermath of the March on Rome it was above all the wealthy and capitalist
classes who praised Fascism and the Duce, savior of order and of Society,
defender of Italy against Bolshevism, now the situation has changed. The Duce is
today more popular among the working masses than among the capitalist
bourgeoisie which is strongly annoyed by the scope of the new social laws, by
the sharecropping contracts and collective regime created for the peasants,
and by all those provisions that benefit of the working masses. The bureaucracy
murmurs that too much is spent on public works, and goes so far as to whisper
that Mussolini is gradually, gently
and silently, towards a form of Bolshevism. In short, there is the

reaction of class egoism against the avant-garde policy of the corporate
state ». 52
And, as if to validate this relationship, the first act of the Badoglio

government after 25 July was the dismantling of the whole institutional
apparatus of the corporate state. It was evident that many Italian
economic and military leaders considered Mussolini's corporatism
particularly heavy, not so much for what it had accomplished up to
then, given that Mussolini was often more than accommodating in
negotiations with the propertied classes, but for the threat to
privilege and for the control it entailed. Socializes her?/One was not a
simple reaction to defeat and humiliation. As early as 1938, Mussolini
had outlined a socialization program essentially identical to that later
developed in the Italian Social Republic. At that time, he had clearly
stated that he accepted the essential points of the program
presented by Spirito in the communication to the 1932 Conference in
Ferrara. 3 In 1941, Mussolini repeated this to Ermanno Amicucci. at
the time Minister of Corporations, the same programmatic sketch of
fascist socialization. 54 These confidences seemed designed to
generate distrust between industrialists and the landed aristocracy.
From 1932 onwards, the internal development of Fascism and

the potential threat it posed to the industrial, financial and landowner
classes were crystal clear. In 1935, Panunzio, when the final phase of the
fascist development had already begun, argued that "the workers
[...] assume the ability and ability to manage production in the
general and mixed framework of the corporative economy" of the
nation: this characteristic of fascist socialization had been defined three
years earlier by Spirito as "integral corporatism" and was defined
in 1935 by Panunzio as "integral syndicalism". 55 Almost at the
same time, the official journal of the Party, while insisting on the non-
existence of classes in the totalitarian state, admitted that "the
bourgeoisie still tries to maintain a position of 'ruling class'..." 56
THE FASCIST CONCEPT OF PROPERTY

In 1939, the Fascist Confederation of Farmers published a comprehensive

exposition of the Fascist Conception of Private Property. It then
became manifestly clear that fascist thought was
inextricably wedded to the conceptions of radical national syndicalism and
neo-idealism. The central and recurring theme was the one articulated
by Bottai in 1927: in fascist Italy, while the ownership of the means
of production had to remain in private hands, the responsibility
for the maintenance and orderly development of production in the interest
of the community rested with the State . Salvatore Gatti stated that the
substantial difference between liberalism and Fascism consisted in the
different conception of the responsibility of private property towards
the Fascist state. In his view, this responsibility essentially
eclipsed the individualistic and atomistic conception of private property.
"In the Fascist conception, the interests of society are no longer
antithetical, opposed to those of the individual." 57 The underlying
logic of the neo-idealistic belief in the ultimate identity of the particular
with the universal was thus transferred to the legal conception of private property.
For the Fascists, property implied a legal order which in turn implied
the existence and supremacy of the state. Property exists only when a
human aggregate is governed by a sovereign order. The attempt to
distinguish property rights as if these rights were antecedent to or
independent of the state was considered a typical bourgeois
rationalization, inherited from the French Revolution... and
radically wrong. Ownership logically and practically depends on a
fundamental normative order. Consequently, property rights are derived
and entail obligations towards the legal system from which they
derive. The obligations are specified, and the rights granted temporarily,
by the State, which represents the articulated and definitive will of the
organized community. 58
"Private property is sanctioned and guaranteed not by a natural right of

the individual, not by the alleged inviolability of this right erroneously
considered as absolute, but because it is useful in its instrumentality in
its productive manifestations, in the interest of the nation... ». 59
For Panunzio, this was the "social conception of property in the Fascist
Regime". 30
The liberal conception of private property, as a right enjoying

procedural privileges over public laws, was considered an analytical
consequence of the liberal conception of freedom, an abstract
conception that understands freedom in a negative way, as
the absence of state interference. Sovereignty, therefore, does not
belong exclusively to the state. The State exercises the functions of a
police officer in the service of the protection of individual private
property. The opposing fascist conception, on the other hand, affirmed
that property can exist only in a normative context, in an order, based on
definitive sanctions which are the prerogative of the truly sovereign state.
Property can only be understood as a legal and social concession

based on the peaceful coexistence of subjects within the sovereign
state. 62 Because of its consequential and instrumental nature, property
was conceived as subject to collective discipline.
The fascist conception of property, therefore, while not admitting

collective property as such, nevertheless conceived individual property
rights as strictly subordinate to collective discipline. Fascists were
not interested in individual ownership of property, but in its subordination
to collective control. Property was conceived more as the fulfillment of
social functions than as a manifestation of individual rights. 63 It
was clear that the conception of property with a social function was
broad enough to include the socialization of the means of production if
this was required by national interests, according to the
interpretation that the State gave of the latter. 64
While there was a certain, clear resistance to Spirito's original

proposal to transfer the means of production into the collective
ownership of the Fascist Corporations, it was just as clearly
admitted that the social conception of property could lead, and in fact
did lead, to an ever more direct commitment of the labour, as
the ultimate source of property, in the management and administration
of industry, in a way that unequivocally anticipated the laws on
socialization issued by the Italian Social Republic. 65 It was predicted that the work
he should have assumed the management functions, shared the

responsibilities and enjoyed the resulting profits. If work, like language, is
inconceivable outside a normative and juridical social context, property,
which is the true product of work in common, must show all the characteristics
of sociality. Property must fulfill social functions and all forms of labor must be
inherently and responsibly engaged in the production process. The various
interests must be merged into an unbreakable and unitary collective
enterprise. This could be achieved, according to arguments that were
simple variations or explanations of the themes treated by Spirito at the
Ferrara Conference in 1932, only if property was conceived as a social
product, responsible towards the community which is its necessary foundation,
and if the work was intimately and responsibly introduced into the
management and profit sharing of the national industrial activity.
By the time Italy entered World War II, therefore, the lines of demarcation in
the dispute between the fascists and their conservative opponents had
already been clearly drawn. Fascism was evidently committed to
the realization of a non-Marxist national socialism, already clearly implicit
in the first doctrinal formulations of the movement. The military struggle did
nothing to limit the bitterness of the internal revolutionary struggle taking
place within the fascist Statpr. In 1940, Panunzio, writing in the official
journal of the Party, maintained that the ongoing war could not overshadow
the fact that it continued with no less intensity « the
vertical war, economic and social war [...] the antithesis is only one, and it is
between these two terms: plutocracy and work. There is only one triumphant:
work ». 66
THE END OF THE COMPROMISE AND THE ADVENT OF SOCIALISM

FASCIST
With the catastrophe of 1943, the Monarchy disappeared and regained its
positions only thanks to the victorious allied armies. The Badoglio government
had upset the economy of the corporate institutes founded during the
fascist period and the National Fascist Party had been suppressed. When
Mussolini reappeared, after the liberation from the Gran Sasso, they remained afloat
only those fascist exponents who had accepted the revolutionary

syndicalism and neo-idealism of Mussolini's primitive programme.
Typical examples were Nicola Bombacci, a radical socialist and
therefore a communist, and Giovanni Gentile; the two men were among
Mussolini's most important advisers during the republican period.
Mussolini himself, even before knowing who would gather around the
flags of the new Republican Fascist Party, spoke out in favor of the primitive
fascist, syndicalist and neo-idealist programme. He first had the
intention of calling the new republic the Italian Socialist Republic.
Only in the end did it accept the denomination of the Italian Social
Republic, which always presented itself as an expression of an Italian
socialism, a national socialism. "Socialization is nothing else,"
Mussolini maintained, "if not the Italian, human, ours, feasible realization of
socialism... The September capitulation marks the ontological liquidation of
the bourgeoisie, considered globally as a ruling class." 67 "The
Republic of the Italian workers", he stated on another occasion, "has
already set the stage for the decisive realization of all those
postulates which, during forty years, were inscribed on the banners of the
socialist movements". 68
In March 1945, one month before his death. Mussolini told Ivanoe
Fossani that he had been and remained a socialist. 'The accusation
of inconsistency,' he told him, 'has no foundation. My conduct has always
been straight in the sense of looking at the substance of things and not
at the form. I have adapted myself to reality in a socialist way ». 69
Even Cesare Rossi, a no less reliable witness, maintains that

Mussolini remained tied to socialism throughout the course of his
political life. 70
On the twenty-first anniversary of the March on Rome, in the tragic days of the
Republic, Pavolini announced: «By decision of the Duce, in a forthcoming
meeting the party will specify its own programmatic directives on the
most important state problems and on those new achievements to be
achieved in the field of labor , which, more properly than social, we have no
hesitation in defining socialist ». 71
Several days later, Ferdinando Mezzasoma, Minister of Propaganda of the

Social Republic, maintained that the Republic was founded
on the "true socialism" that Mussolini had never abandoned. 72
These doctrinal developments were not without effect. A not small group of
socialists gathered around the flags of the new Republic and in November
1944 Mussolini even took the initiative to free the socialist Corrado
Bonfantini to try to bridge the gap that divided the fascists from the orthodox
socialists. Piero Pisenti, Minister of Justice, considered the differences
between fascists and socialists purely formal and started negotiations with
Gabriele Vigorelli and Bonfantini to attempt a collaboration between
socialists and fascists in order to achieve the programmatic goals of
fascist socialism. 73 The socialists, however, had already organized behind
the forces of the South and these attempts were in vain.
After the fall of the Social Republic, one of the first acts of the National
Liberation Committee, dominated by socialists and communists, was the
repeal of the socialization decrees. The proclamation of 25 April 1945 stated:
« The CLNAI, considering the anti-national objectives of the fascist
legislative decree [of']... 'socialization' [...] with which the so-called fascist-
republican government attempted to yoke the working masses of Italy
occupied in the service and collaboration with the invader [...] in order
to ensure ... the continuity and strengthening of productive activity in the spirit
of effective national solidarity, ... decrees: the legislative decree [...] is
repealed". 74
The justification was very strange. Regardless of the reasons, Fascism

had enacted laws that could provide the industrial proletariat with a
powerful means to fight against the Italian propertied classes.
Socialization had created union colleges and management councils that had
the de jure right to significantly influence the nation's entire production
process.
To avoid the "anti-national objectives" of the laws on socialization, the

election of communist and socialist representatives to the factory
councils and colleges would have sufficed. Instead, the entire legislation was
abolished and control of the Italian production process returned to the capitalist owners.
Even today, this control remains in the hands of the same owners. What
advantages socialists could derive from social legislation were sacrificed to the
"national interest," an interest in which Fascism, by its own admission, had
undermined its trade unionist and national socialist aspirations for more than
a generation.
GENTILE AND THE CRITICISM OF CLASSICAL MARXISM
The fact that the upsurge of fascist socialism was neither casual nor artificially
tactical is demonstrated by the development of Giovanni Gentile's thought
throughout the fascist period, from 1925 to 1943. Even more indicative is the
fact that Gentile began his intellectual activity with important studies on Marx,
published in 1897 and 1899, when he was in his early twenties.
Gentile, who was eight years older than Mussolini, published A Criticism
of historical materialism four years before Mussolini published his first article,
in 1901. The essay was precisely a brief but close critique of the Marxist
theory of history. It was an early work, neither particularly original, nor
demonstrating an extensive survey of Marxist literature. The arguments
advanced were not completely consistent and the study did not address first-hand
material. The second essay, The Philosophy of Practice, published two years
later, when Giovanni Gentile was twenty-four, is instead an exquisitely original
work. Based largely on knowledge of the classical German philosophical tradition,
Gentile's reconstruction of Marx's thought has stood the test of time. Even after
the most recent publications of Marx's early philosophical works, the
Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and the complete text of the
German Ideology of 1845, Gentile's interpretation remains one of the best.
Only a few very recent studies are equal to it in depth of investigation and validity
of analysis. 75
The Critique, on the other hand, has value in that it indicates the nature of
Gentile's reservations regarding Marxism understood as a science of history.
Gentile turned his attention to the socialist interpretation of historical materialism,
which considers Marxism a scientific theory of history capable of offering a set
of natural laws governing human associations;
by virtue of these laws it is possible to make relatively precise predictions about

the future development of society. To illustrate the previsions of classical
Marxism, he quotes Arturo Labriola: «The advent of communism is not a
postulate based on a critique of the dominant society, nor a freely chosen goal;
the advent of communism is the result of an immanent historical process
[...] We are forced to admit [...], in the unfolding of events, the existence of a
necessity, which transcends any of our sympathy and any of our subjective
acquiescence » . 78
Labriola conceived of historical materialism as a scientific explanation of the

course that history would follow, the experimental proof of the inevitable
social revolution immanent in the process of social life itself.
Precisely against these affirmations Gentile raised his main criticisms, denying
that man can "discover" natural or social laws. He argued that such an
idea, although widespread and corresponding to common sense, was
fundamentally wrong. Men do not limit themselves to contemplating the
"facts" and observing the "laws". The "facts" reveal themselves only in the
context of one or another perspective, a perspective which provides the criterion
for choosing what should constitute the facts themselves. Neither physicists
nor historians limit themselves to observing events taken at
random and indiscriminately. They observe by choosing, since they have
already established the criteria of importance and relevance and
they follow criteria which regulate the acceptability of descriptive propositions
proposed as true. Furthermore, these synthetic propositions are strung
together systematically, in the form of valid arguments.
These forms require a commitment to coherence and an intersubjectively

established system of rules of passage from one to another. In
In other words, for Gentile, explanations and predictions are valid only when
men, equipped with values, goals and intentions, translate them into facts in the
empirical world. A world without men does not contain "facts", it is not
characterized by any "laws", because only the values of man characterize
events as important and pertinent and only the commitment to coherence
allows the application of the rules of deduction to the world .
Basically. Gentile argued that any belief rests on a set of values, tacit
or expressed. Men deal with physics because in this way they can
dominate the environment to make existence safe and the future
predictable. In the formal sciences, the criteria for accepting
propositions as true are based on the acceptance of axioms from
which they start. The whole process presupposes an implicit
acceptance of the value of coherence.
What is true of all science is also true of history. Gentile continues:

« History conceived as something external and independent of men
has neither importance nor laws. Only men see an importance in
history and act according to its laws. It is man, in short, who makes
history and the laws that govern it". 77
Gentile's opposition to historical materialism represents a special

case of his opposition to positivism. A decade later, Mussolini
raised the same objections and, consequently, brought about
the transition from positivism to pragmatism.
Gentile's theses were more than a simple rejection of historical

materialism or economic determinism. He did not accuse Marxists
of mere bias in their analysis of the human factor in the historical
process. He admitted that Marxists recognize that man makes history
in the sense that men must do something for history to have anything
to record. However, he argued that the cognitive act intrinsically
implies a link with expressed or implicit antecedent values.
Any cognitive act necessarily implies a commitment to coherence and
truth, a willingness to admit that the inner contradiction is false and
that definitions of truth require more than subjective conviction.
He argued that classical Marxism had not understood the cognitive
act. Human values cannot be explained by historical materialism,
because historical materialism is an attempt to explain and predict
which is itself part of man's cognitive act and as such rests on a set
of implicit human values. Any explicit explanation of human values
necessarily implies the existence of antecedent values. This is the
substance of Gentile's reservations about positivism in general
and historical materialism in particular. 78
These reservations were deeper and certainly more explicit than

any of those advanced by Mussolini himself. But some of the
consequences of Gentile's position were substantially identical
to those of Mussolini's position. If any human act, including
the cognitive act, implies a link to a set of implicit or explicit values,
there is no such thing as "pure science". But, even worse,
even when actual scientific work is done, even when fundamental

values are not questioned, any set of descriptive and analytic statements
of science does not provide a valid premise by itself for a
deductive conclusion that has decisive force. In the premises some
new value must be introduced which allows the transition from the
premise itself to the conclusion. 79
Gentile went on to say that historical materialism need not

necessarily be interpreted in the characteristic positivist way
The gods orthodox socialism of the era. He argued that the positivist
interpretation was largely due to Engels and did not necessarily
represent Marx's thinking. Gentile also argued that historical
materialism could be given a better interpretation in Hegelian
terms, an interpretation more faithful to the philosophical orientation
of Marx as a young man. According to Gentile, Marx, as a young man,
had fought that form of materialism which makes men simple
observers of the natural processes of the world, and had instead
conceived men as participants in these processes in an
exquisitely Hegelian sense. Men participate in a dialectical and
developmental process, in a world-historical process which influences
and is influenced by their activity. In the context of such a totally
immanentist interpretation, any attempt to give prominence to a
particular set of abstract, economic, material or moral
variables is to arrive at the paradox and misinterpret the entire Hegelian dialectic.
It is certain that Marx's arguments can be understood in this

sense; his propositions are almost always elliptical and have a
synoptic and shorthand character; which is why he often seems to
state that all conceptual or ideological products of man can be
exhaustively explained by referring to the material forces of production and the relati
production by which the production process itself takes place. It seems

to argue that ideological variables such as philosophy, morals, the arts
and perhaps even science should be understood as dependent
variables, while the productive forces and production relations would
be independent variables, sufficient to explain reality. In this sense,
many Marxists interpreted historical materialism at the time.
But it was an interpretation opposed by Sorel, Croce and Gentile ((for
partly coinciding and partly divergent reasons). Gentile
Ì argued that this interpretation used violence against clear intention
of Marx. In The Philosophy of Praxis, Gentile argued that Marx had

intended to say that "the materialistic doctrine which refers to the
modification of situations and to education forgets that situations are
modified by men and that the educator himself needs to be
educated [.. .] The coincidence of the modification of situations
and human activity, or self-modification, can only be understood and
rationally understood as a revolutionary practice ». 80
Gentile interpreted Marx's thought differently: it is men who make their

own history, in a substantial sense; the abstractly defined economic
and material variables are in a dialectical relationship
9fl9
283
and immanent with those defined as ethical or philosophical, in a way that today
we would call one of interdependence. 81
Gentile's interpretation has a solid foundation. After the publication

of many of Marx's texts, which were not known at the time Gentile wrote, evidence
has gradually accumulated that such an interpretation of classical Marxism is
possible. Classical Marxists have argued that Marx's German Ideology endorses
an interpretation of strict economic determinism and cite phrases in
which Marx speaks of "phantoms forming in the brain of man" as "sublimations
of the material process of life..." ; he speaks of "civil society" and of "social relations"
as "determined by the productive forces of the moment..."; or explains « all the
various theoretical products and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy,
ethics, etc. ...» referring to the «real process of production, which starts from the
material production of life itself...». 82 But Gentile can cite examples of sentences,
of totally opposite value, in which Marx considers "individuals" themselves
"instruments of production". 83
If individuals themselves are instruments of production, it appears rather

difficult to conceive of them, their thoughts and their aspirations as deriving from a
primary process which takes place in the productive base of society, a base which
includes the instruments of production. It should be said that the activity of
individuals and the reasons that determine this activity are as
fundamental as the production process itself, because they are part, by definition,
of the process itself. And we have seen that Mussolini used a similar argument to
support his neo-idealism and voluntaristic interpretation of historical
materialism.
Mussolini pointed out that Marx had stated that "of all the instruments of production,
the greatest producing force is the revolutionary class itself." 84
If individuals and the revolutionary class itself are themselves productive

forces, any dichotomy between the primary productive variables and the
derived and "ideological" ones disappears. There can only be a relationship of
interdependence between them. In this sense, Gentile's interpretation
agreed perfectly with those of Pareto, Mosca, Michels and Mussolini. It was a
voluntaristic interpretation in the sense that it left room, within the historical
process, for the activity of man's will and commitment, for man's
praxis. He was not specifically anti-Marxist unless one accepts as the only
legitimate interpretation that of a particular school of Marx scholars. Neither
Sorel, Michels nor Mussolini considered themselves anti-Marxist in giving this
interpretation. Nor Gentile. On the contrary, he appreciated the Marxist
efforts considering them an attempt to reintroduce, in a positivistic key, the
truths of Hegelianism. 85
It is obvious that Gentile found in Marx all the elements of an essentially

Hegelian vision of the world. The concept of man placed at the basis of Marx's
ideas was a Hegelian concept. « The ego (the empirical ego)... is real only as
an element of a collectivity, of a society, as a term of the social relations
which gradually make the ego more
concrete". 88 This was a conception at the same time Hegelian, Marxist

and Gentile of the relationship between the individual and society. It was
a conception of the relationship between the individual and his own
social group also shared by sociologists of the Gumplowictian tradition, from
Mosca to Michels, and which is found in the early writings of Mussolini.
Outside history, outside the community in which he lives and works, the individual is nothing.
Marx, argued Gentile, rightly "opposed to that nominalistic intuition which

conceives society only in terms of individuals, who may get along well, but who
nevertheless always remain intrinsically independent of one another.
(Marx) rightly observes that this interpretation is an abstraction, that first of all
society exists and that individuals exist only as a part organically related to
the whole ». 87
The individual is such only insofar as he is social, he is political. For Marx, this
concept was expressed by the epigrammatic phrase that the substance
of man is "the totality of social relations".
Gentile maintained throughout his life this conception of the individual understood
as intrinsically connected to his own historical, cultural and economic
community. In his latest writing, Gentile maintained that "at the bottom of the ego
there is a We, which is the community to which he belongs, and which is the basis
of his spiritual existence...". 88
We have seen that this conception remains fundamental for Actualism and is
already clearly expressed, for the first time, in Gentile's essays on Marx, where it
is not only clearly defined, but even identified with the fundamental
presuppositions of Marx's philosophy. What Gentile was to define as the
"speculative identification of the individual with his community" was fundamental
to both actualism and Marxism. 89 In this sense, Gentile, like Mussolini, was
never an anti-Marxist. In fact, in the introduction to the new 1937 edition of his
early essays (that is, at the apex of the political power of Fascism), Gentile
affirms that the essays themselves contained "the first seeds" of his social
and political philosophy of mature age . 90
GENTILE AND SOCIALISM

FASCIST
But, in addition to a common conception of man, Gentile's essays denote
the fact that he shared with Marx some critical elements that were to
mature in that "humanism of work" whose practical implementation
was attempted during the Italian Social Republic. Since the empirical
individual becomes a person only in the relationships he establishes with
his fellow men in a historically and socio-culturally defined community,
work, in all its forms, has an intrinsic value. The individual creates
himself in work and this fact constitutes, for Gentile, the moral value of the activity.
91 Man is what he does and consequently whatever he does has moral
value. This is a conception that Gentile never abandoned and
which is found in all his works published throughout the period of the
Fascist regime. In the preliminaries
to the study of the child, published in 1922 and reprinted in various

editions throughout the Fascist period, the work is defined as "that
universal human activity" which serves the "supreme goal of human
existence": self-fulfilment. 92 A similar definition of work can be found
in War and Faith, published in 1919, and in almost all of Gentile's
major works published over the course of a quarter of a century. 93 In
Genesis and the structure of society, this concept matured as follows:
"The humanism of culture, which however was a glorious stage in
man's liberation, is being followed today or will happen tomorrow by the
humanism of work. Because the creation of big industry and the
advance of the worker on the scene of great history has profoundly
changed the modern concept of culture. Which was a culture of
intelligence, above all artistic and literary, and neglected that vast area of
humanity which does not overlook the freest horizon of high culture but
works at the foundations of human culture, where man is in contact with
nature, and work. He works like a man, with the awareness of what he does, that is with
awareness of himself and of the world in which he embodies himself. In other

words, it works by deploying that same activity of thought, so that also in
art, literature, erudition, philosophy, man gradually thinking poses and solves the
problems in which he is knotting and untying his existing existence. The farmer
works, the craftsman works, and the art master works, the artist, the man of
letters, the philosopher works. Gradually the matter with which you work,
Man has to challenge himself, he lightens and almost dematerialises himself,

and the spirit in a beautiful way frees itself and frees itself in its own air, outside of
space and time; but matter has already been vanquished since the hoe tills the
earth, breaks up the gleba and associates it with the attainment of man's end". 94
This is the rational justification, proposed by Gentile in his latest work, of the
Fascist State of Workers, the Republic of Salò. It is a maturation of elements
already contained in Gentile's first essays on Marxism and is a clear
example of the constant attitude maintained by Gentile towards orthodox Socialism.
In his first Fascist writing, "Gentile argued that a distinction must be made
between the various forms of Socialism that developed during the early years of the
twentieth century. 95
Fascism opposes particular theoretical formulations accepted by some official

socialist organizations. Fascism denies, for example, that class struggle represents
the definitive conflict that characterizes historical development. Fascism
also rejects the materialism and determinism that many theorists identify
with socialism. But Fascism is in itself a variant of Sorelian syndicalism, which
defines itself as voluntaristic, neo-idealistic and aristocratic socialism. Neither
Fascism nor Gentile have ever rejected this current of socialist thought. "Fascism",
argued Gentile, "on the other hand, through the legacy of some Marxist and
Sorelian inspirations [...] and through the influence of contemporary Italian
idealistic doctrines, in the midst of which the fascist mentality has
nevertheless matured, understands philosophy as the philosophy of praxis »
. 9s
In thus defining Fascism, Gentile referred to the tradition of which he himself was a
part. One of his first works was the essay Philosophy of Praxis. He had played
Marx and the
historical materialism in the neo-Hegelian sense. He considered the importance

given by Marx to praxis as a form of voluntarism and neo-idealism, and this
interpretation of his was shared by the young Mussolini and by many of the
revolutionary syndicalists and pragmatists who made up the
Italian intellectual, political and social avant-garde in the first four decades of
the twentieth century.
Gentile's judgment of Socialism, like that of all the best Fascist intellectuals,
was therefore not purely negative. As early as 1919, he maintained that
Socialism was "a vital, healthy and salutary force of Italian political life". 97
Around 1935, when the Second Congress of Union and Corporate Studies
unleashed the long-standing and bitter controversy on "fascist socialism",
Gentile affirmed calmly that in principle the socialists were right to fight
capitalism as an economic system ». 98 With this statement, he echoed the
communication of Spirito, which had provoked the clash between the
conservative wing and the radical wing of Fascism. In essence, he
said no more than Mussolini himself said. The way in which Gentile interpreted
Socialism as a political and social movement never differed substantially
from the way in which Mussolini interpreted it in his formative years.
There is no evidence that Mussolini was intimately familiar with Gentile's

early works on Marx and Marxist socialism, but they were well known
among revolutionary syndicalists, with whom Mussolini had had very
close relationships as a young man. Arturo Labriola, one of the first mentors
and collaborators of the young Mussolini, had been greatly influenced by Gentile's wise men.
Labriola's interpretation of Marx's works denotes the unmistakable
influence of Gentile's voluntarism and neo-idealism.
Labriola specifically cites Gentile's essays in his book Marx in the
economy and as theorist of socialism, published in 1908; his interpretation
of Marx's philosophy is almost identical to that advanced by Gentile.
Furthermore, Gentile's essays were known to Croce and Sorel, so that his
ideas were current among socialist theorists throughout Mussolini's
formative years. How well known Gentile's essays were is emphasized by the
fact that Lenin himself recommended them as a "remarkable" contribution
to the theoretical literature devoted to Marxist studies. 99
Gentile's ideas were therefore well known in the socialist circles

actively frequented by Mussolini in the period prior to the
formation of Fascism. And essentially, Gentile's idealism followed a
trajectory parallel to that of Mussolini's political and social thought. From the
outset, Gentile's reservations about Marxism, as it was then understood,
were essentially the same as those of Mussolini and the
revolutionary syndicalists. The one thing that deeply divided trade unionists
and neo-idealists was the trade unionists' class prejudice. But when the latter
accepted nationalism as the foundation of their theses, the differences
between neo-idealism and national syndicalism became insubstantial. In
1921, that is, at the time when the essential structures of the Fascist
Doctrine were being outlined with extreme clarity, Mus
Solini said he was a Gentile neo-idealist. 11 Fascism has always

considered itself a progressive and neo-idealistic form of socialism; by the
time between 1930 and the outbreak of war, even his conservative
followers had come to believe him so. Precisely during this period
many of the socialist syndicalists whom Fascism had driven away from itself
because of its tactical anti-socialism reconciled with it. Arturo Labriola, who
had gone into exile, returned to "Proletarian Italy" to share the fate of
Fascism. Labriola himself affirmed after the defeat of Fascism, as a
socialist and trade unionist, that "corporate organization was
already Socialism and it shouldn't be sacrificed so lightly". 100
The course followed by Fascism between 1930 and 1940 is clearly

evidenced, and is demonstrated, by the writings of trade unionists and neo-
idealists. The controversy that followed the discussions in
Ferrara in 1932 abundantly clarified the totalitarian socialist intentions of
Fascism. The right to private property was to be understood as a contingent
and not an absolute right. The national economy had to be regulated
by an integrated and centralized programmatic plan. The working class had
to be gradually led to the management of enterprises and work had to
become the foundation of the state, in the sense that the value of the
individual, or that of a productive category, had to be judged on the basis
of its contribution to the national welfare. 101 This development had
become so evident that in a speech given in Rome on June 24, 1943, in defense of the
Fascism, Gentile could categorically speak of "an order" fascist

"...founded on the principle that the only value is work: human work
which is the implementation of spiritual life in the complex of its
economic goods and its ethical ideals" 102 and continue by stating that
"whoever speaks of Communism in Italy today is an impatient
corporatist" making it clear that Fascist Italy had the decisive
intention of realizing, ultimately, a form of Socialism suited to the
national situation. 103
Fascist socialism was neither an aberration nor a political tactic: and

this fact is demonstrated not only by the maturation of a current of
neo-socialist political and social thought, but also by the fact that
Gentile, in the period of interregnum between the fall of Mussolini
in July and his reappearance in September 1943, during which he
remained completely alien to organized Fascism, composed the
rationale for Salò's neo-socialism. In fact, during this short period,
Gentile wrote his last book in defense of Fascism: Genesis and
structure of society. The book, written when Gentile had no contact
either with Mussolini or with other Fascist leaders, contains
sentences and entire passages which reappear as they are in
Mussolini's first declarations regarding the intentions of the nascent
Fascist movement. Mussolini, who in the meantime had never met
Gentile again nor knew anything about his book, spoke of the Fascist
State of Workers and the State of Labour, using expressions which
are found in Gentile's defense of the "humanism of work".
There is no evidence that Mussolini ever read the last work
di Gentile, which was published only after the defeat of Fascism and the
death of its leader. However, it contains the rational justification of
fascist socialism, of the radicalization of corporatism.
Naturally, Gentile was one of Mussolini's main advisers during the last
period of Fascism. 104 Neo-idealism had so assimilated
Mussolini's neo-socialist and trade union-nationalist sentiments that
the advice of the socialist and communist Bombacci was
considered absolutely compatible with that of the neo-Hegelian Gentile.
Mussolini had begun his political career as a Sorelian trade

unionist. As such, his Marxism was already independent and
unorthodox. Surely, his judgments were different from those of orthodox
European socialism expressed by the various social democratic
parties. Mussolini, like Sorel, conceived of revolution in essentially
moral terms. The working class was itself, and in its totality, the
vehicle for moral regeneration. The individual identified himself
with the class to which he belonged and only towards the
class did he have obligations. Without belonging to a class, the
individual could not become a person in the moral sense. Class
membership and class struggle provided the orientation, the
foundation, for moral attribution and normative evaluation, the moral
substance for the life of the individual. The class had, of course, its
own ruling elite, a small minority with leadership posts. The
outbreak of the Great War forced proletarian trade unionism to change
its orientations and transformed it into national trade unionism. The
nation became the object of allegiance. Italy became a "proletarian
nation" and it was identification with this community that provided
the moral substance of the personality. At this point, Sorelian
syndicalism began the long and lasting process of rapprochement
with Gentile's neo-idealism. Between the two ideologies there was an
essential compatibility of judgments and moral convictions. The nation
would realize the socialist and syndicalist inspirations of proletarian
syndicalism and the moral goals of neo-idealism. By its own admission,
for fifteen years Fascism compromised its intentions in order
to attempt to bring about the synthesis of antithetical non-
Fascist elements. The result was a compromised state, termed
"diarchy" by Mussolini. Conservative opposition to Fascism rallied
around the Monarchy. The big financial and industrial interests,
allied with the landed aristocracy, used the Church and the
Monarchy to curb the revolutionary totalitarianism of Fascism.
Only the surgical separation from the Monarchy and the establishment
of the Fascist Republic in northern Italy allowed the realization of the
Fascist social programme. The result, the fascists argued, was a
national socialism, implementing Sorelian ideals within a national
context. In Gentile's "humanism of work", which found political expression in the Fasci
TOTALITARIAN SOCIALISM
Fascist totalitarianism was affirmed on the basis of what Gentile had
termed "the speculative identity between the individual and the state." 108
It was thought that the fundamental interests of the individual and
those of the community organized in the State were fully
compatible. The pedagogical responsibility of the revolutionary aristocracy
organized as a unitary party had to make this profound compatibility evident.
It was clear that, given these premises, Fascism could not be content with
merely being the mediator between particular interests within the
politically organized nation. Fascism was supposed to transform society until
there was no longer any distinction left between public and private
interests, between collective and individual interests. This was the essential
point of Spirito's communication at the 1932 Conference in Ferrara.
The fascists rightly considered the distinctions between public and private,
between the collective and the individual as part of the legacy of the
pluralistic and individualistic conception of society left by classical
liberalism. The neo idealists and radical syndicalists had never
ceased to systematically oppose this conception. Both the neo-
idealists and the syndicalists were heirs to a collectivist and anti-individualist
tradition which developed in Germany in the form of neo-Hegelianism and
in Austria as sociology of the Gumplowictian type.
This collectivist and anti-individualist tradition took on a radically

totalitarian form in Fascist Italy, represented by the logic of transpositions
which constituted the core of the fundamental myth that legitimized the
regime. By means of a series of transpositions, the individual was
identified with the nation, the nation with the state, the state with the party
and the party with its leader. If these identifications were to be something
more than mere sophisms, the regime had to assume responsibility for
creating institutions and bodies that would bring together and harmonize
all the activities of individuals and of the various classes, productive
categories, all regional and census interests , in the state.
The systems employed by the Fascist regime to implement this program are now part of
the institutional history of Mussolini's Italy. Outside the very structure of the party,
workers and entrepreneurs were organized in unions and confederations placed under the
aegis of the state. Once the work was done, the workers remained under the constant
supervision of the highly organized Dopolavoro and other organizations for "leisure time".
The young people were organized in the Opera Nazionale Balilla, which later became
Gioventù Italiana del Littorio: the boys were Balilla and avant-garde; while the girls were
placed in corresponding organizations; then there were a whole series of cultural and
university organizations intended to preclude the possibility of any influence that could
counter the fascist efforts aimed at educating all citizens, of all ages and social origins, in
the secular ideology of the Party.
Tascism aspired to a complete identity of the individual will with the collective one.
Precisely this identity was the keystone of the
Fascist social and political thought: conception succinctly expounded by

Gentile in his latest work:
« The human individual is not an atom. Immanent to the concept of individual is the concept
of society... Only identity accounts for the necessary and intrinsic relationship of the
two terms of the synthesis, which requires that the concept of one term also contain
the concept of the other... A I hope no one is to escape the importance of this concept,
which for us is the keystone of the great social edifice ». 107
For the Fascists, this identity had to be achieved between the "individual" and the "State".
Gentile could therefore argue that "the State represents the true personality of
the individual" and at the same time the unitary will of the nation, a thesis already
advanced by him in the Foundations of the Philosophy of Law, published in 1916. In
this sense, he was already fascist even before the birth of Fascism. 109 The
conclusions to which this thesis leads were evident in the Riforma dell'educazione,
published three years before the March on Rome, in which Gentile states: «In conclusion,
it can be said that I, as a citizen, effectively have a will of my own; but that, upon further
investigation, I find that my will coincides exactly with the will of the state and that I want
something only up to
to which the State wants me to want it [...] Since the Nation, like the State, is of
our own nature and composition, it is evident that the universal will of
the State is one with our concrete and current ethical personality ». u
This thesis was regularly exploited by fascist intellectuals throughout the

fascist period. In his defense of fascist socialism, Spirito argued in
1932: «The individual must finally realize that in the process of conquering
true freedom, he cannot stop at intermediate and hybrid forms [...] he must
seek and find an absolute identity between its end and the end of a State [...]
because private and public will be the same thing". m
In 1942, Gerardo Pannese expressed these ideas in epigrammatic form: "In

the Fascist ethic, the end of society is identical to that of man".
112 In the Official Doctrine the same idea was expressed in this way: «The
man of fascism is an individual who is a nation and a fatherland [...] Fascism
is a historical conception, in which man is not what he is but in function of
the spiritual process to which liberalism [...] contributes denied the State in the
interest of the particular individual; fascism reaffirms the state as the true reality
of the individual.' 113
Initially, the individual might conceive of his own interests as distinct from, or
even contrary to, those of the state. The fascists argued that these interests
must, instead, in the definitive sense, be absolutely compatible. Ultimately,
what the individual wants is what the state wants. This concept constitutes
the rational substance of the new fascist definition of "liberty" and
"democracy." When they speak of "freedom" and "democracy", the fascists
refer to an antecedent "truth". This reference clearly demonstrates that
there has been a new definition of the two terms. The "truth" of reference
clearly demonstrates that the meaning of the terms "freedom" and "dem
crazia » has been modified. The "true" freedoms and democracy

defended by Fascism are the freedom and democracy of totalitarianism, the
identification of the individual with his original community, that is, with
the nation organized into a state.
During the Fascist period, it was admitted that to achieve this identification
an enormous pedagogical and institutional work was needed,
requiring systematic education in a whole set of normative principles.
To this end, the fascists openly and frankly used all systems of
moral persuasion and mimetic and emotional suggestion. They exploited
the suggestibility of the masses by employing systems already known
for a long time to social psychologists and briefly outlined by Le Bon and Sighele.
By creating an atmosphere of great emotional tension, they tried to
instill in the souls of Italians the conviction that the individual, the Italian
nation, the Party and the Duce were ultimately one and the same. The
will of one was the will of all. And this fact constituted the fictitious
democratic consensus on which the Regime rested, the legitimation of
Mussolini's plebiscitary and "popular participation" dictatorship. This
conception provided the rational substance of the transcendental
leadership of Fascism, as Fascism itself had come to understand it. This
rationale was not religious but philosophical. Mussolini did not govern by
God's will, but as the presumed embodiment of the common will.
Fascist socialization must also be seen in this context. The main

characteristic of Fascism was totalitarianism. 114 The fact that Fascism
failed to create a totalitarian society depended on numerous historical and
economic factors which do not concern us here. His intentions, almost
from his first appearance as a political force, were immediately very
clear. Every individual, every faction, every economic and political interest
had to converge towards the aims of the nation as they were intended by
the Party and its leaders. Interests that resisted being bent to these
ends were considered "anti-national" and "anti-social."
Gentile's opposition to the much-touted Concordat between the
Fascist State and the Holy See was based above all on his adamant
refusal to conceive of the possibility that the State could cede even a
minimal part of its sovereignty to any secular or religious interest. So
much so that immediately after the stipulation of the Lateran Pacts, a long-
standing skirmish began between the Fascist regime and the Catholic
Church. 115 The Concordat could be considered at most a
compromise and, after the initial enthusiasm for an event that
was considered a great diplomatic success had faded, the
fascists themselves considered it as such. While managing, over time, to live without se
clashes with the regime, the Catholic Church always remained an

undigested and indigestible element of the totalitarian fascist state.
More important than the struggle with the Church was the fact that the Italian
economic system inherited from Fascism allowed particular interests to
gather around private property in such numbers as to give a
particular imprint to entire classes and productive categories. The working
classes were concerned only with working conditions and wages, while the
wealthy classes were concerned only with
maintain a system favorable to them of incomes and taxes. These interests

fueled the hostility of various groups against the totalitarian aspirations of
Fascism. What was in the interest of labor was not in the interest of capital
and what was in the interest of the state was not necessarily in the interest,
however understood, of either category. Consequently, Fascist
theorists increasingly placed emphasis on the need to harmonize various
interests by depriving private property of its ability to act as a center of private
interests. For these reasons and with these intentions, one of the staunchest
enemies of private property as an institution was Spirito. He argued that
private property fostered the development of special interests and
divisions in what tended to become a monolithic, totalitarian society.
Spirito supported this thesis in particular in the communication presented at
the Third International Hegelian Congress held in Rome in 1933. 113
The more consistent Fascists admitted that private property and

capitalism, as an economic system, hindered the totalitarian aims of fascism.
In 1943 Mussolini listed the specific faults of the system which he attributed to
Italian capitalists: 1) the hoarding of raw materials in an attempt to increase
personal profits, to the detriment of Italy's war potential; 2) resistance to the
autarkic plans of Fascism, because these plans could damage the system of
other profits; 3) resistance to the social policy of Fascism, because this would
have made the workers less "malleable".
Under the capitalist production system, the Fascists argued, labor has no
intrinsic interest in the economic activities of the
nation because the workers are forced to worry only about their own
precarious living conditions. Since, moreover, the living conditions of

workers are a function of their ability to demand ever higher wages, their
interests are sectoral, particularistic, different from those of the nation as a
whole.
These were the considerations that led the fascist theorists to ask for heavy
limitations on private property and an ever greater intervention of labor in the
management and direction of the enterprise. From these
considerations originated the boards of statutory auditors, the management
committees and the programs for sharing profits. Socialization would, in a
single blow, break the resistance of the possessing classes and introduce
work into the industrial enterprise, causing a fusion of interests such as to
allow the Fascist State to achieve that totalitarian unity to which Fascism had
always aspired.
Fascist socialization was conceived as the culminating moment of fascist

corporatism; it was supposed to resolve the dualism between capital
and labor which for too long had been an impediment to the total unity of
the Fascist state. 117 It was clear that, within the unified framework of the
National Fascist Labor State, the inclusion of labor in the industrial enterprise,
through elected representatives, had to be carried out within the limits of a
national plan controlled by the technical bodies of the Party. The
direct responsibility towards the State of the directors
of the various enterprises ensured control of the Party. The Fascist

Republic therefore remained totalitarian, subject to the guardianship,
pedagogical and entrepreneurial control of the Unitary Party. 118 The
freedom that Fascism continued to propagate was freedom understood in
Gentile's neo-Hegelian sense of identity between individual will and
collective will, of unity of public and private interests. Fascism continued to
support "individual freedom and class freedom, but constructive freedom
within the framework of the State...". 119 Any other freedom would have
been fictitious, capricious. For Mussolini, the state remained the
ultimate arbiter of the national will, the concrete expression of national
life, the repository of values, the moral substance and ethical personality of
each individual. 120 The individual was the State and the State was Italy; and Italy was Fasci
All the Italians. Such a series of transpositions constitutes the underlying

logic of classical totalitarianism. 121
It is obvious that the self-criticism and tolerance of divergent opinions

allowed by the Fascist Republic could only take place within the restricted
ambit established by the unitary party. Mussolini was extremely clear on the
subject even in the last months of the Social Republic. He affirmed: « In
recent times there has been clear talk. Those who accept our program [...]
will be able to work with us, inside or outside our ranks [...] We cannot and
must not go further, out of respect for our fallen, out of dutiful solidarity
with the fascists of the invaded lands, for our own personal dignity.
And we won't go any further" 122
Despite the many tactical changes in the order of importance of things

that occurred in the chaos of the last months of the Republic, Mussolini never
gave up the totalitarian aspirations of Fascism. He conceived of Fascism
as a national and totalitarian socialism, the only viable form of socialism
in the twentieth century. Given the conviction, manifested in him
from his early youth, that any society is governed by an organized
minority and that the masses have an inalienable need to be
guided, this was the only logical conclusion to which his political thought and
social.
And this was in fact Mussolini's final political and social conception: a
national socialism, containing all the elements of revolutionary
syndicalism fused with the nationalism caused by the crisis of the First
World War: all firmly cemented by neo-idealistic philosophy.
For Mussolini, the nation represented the ethnocentric community into which
men organize themselves in practice, as moral agents, to support the
struggle for life in the modern world. In its best and most valid expression,
even fascist racism was useful for this conception of the nation.
Mussolini's socialism, in turn, had as its logical foundation the total
identification of the individual, of the category and of the class, with the
nation. Socialization constituted Mussolini's last effort to implement this
identification through the elimination of particularistic centers of interest.
At the basis of the political and social system it was supposed to
realize this vision of society, there was a myth, a reasoned

system of beliefs about man and the world animated by particular
normative beliefs. The descriptive propositions concerning man and

the world derived largely from the sociological tradition dear to
Mussolini. The normative convictions were essentially those of
Gentile's neo-idealism. Their synthesis was neither one nor the
other. It was the ideology of Fascism. Still deeply convinced of his
own ideas, Mussolini fell under the machine-gun fire of
political assassins on the afternoon of April 28, 1945, three months
before his sixty-second birthday.
Mussolini's death marked the end of the Fascist experiment
-IJ in Italy. For some, the defeat of the Axis Powers represents the
disappearance of a particular "Fascist Era", of a certain historical
period, that is, now happily outdated and quietly relegated to the books
dealing with a dead and buried past.
However, the years that followed the conclusion of hostilities failed to

bring with them the shoots of that freedom, that international harmony
and that collective well-being, which had seemed the highest
aspirations of the allied "anti-fascist" powers. It quickly became clear
that the achievement of the hopes which had illuminated the path
of the world in the dark and tragic years of the world war could not
be a simple consequence of the defeat of international "fascism". The
suspicion immediately arose that, if the Second World War
had also marked the end of an era, that era had been only one
phase of a larger, more complex and perhaps more threatening
era: the era of totalitarianism.
RIGHT-WING TOTALITARIANISM E
OF LEFT
The inability on the part of some of the most acute political observers of the
our time to predict the political developments that would follow the end of hostilities,
after the second world war of our century, was, at least in part, a consequence
of the prevailing tendency to imagine the relations "Marxism" and
"Fascism" (however understood or misunderstood ) in a linear fashion, as if each
of the two occupied one end of a continuous line from 'Left' to 'Right', from 'extreme
liberalism' to 'authoritarianism'. Under the influence of this widespread conviction,
sociologists devised graduated scales of "voices" which reflected this
monolinearity by placing the "extreme liberal", i.e. "Marxist" points of view, as far
away as possible from the opposing points of view, i.e. "fascists". If Marxists
sinned, it goes without saying that
they sinned for good. In essence, experimental psychologists accepted the critical
ancillary assumptions characteristic of Marxist interpretations of contemporary
political movements. Marxists of all persuasions have reiterated the fact that Marxism
and its variants have always been, in essence, "democratic." Fascism,
whatever form it took (and Marxist commentators have included among fascist
movements political systems as diverse as the plebiscitary dictatorship of Louis
Napoleon and reformist "social democracy"),1 has always been considered
fundamentally "undemocratic". Consequently, sociologists have constructed
variable patterns of behavior which purport to distinguish between the two
ideologies in terms, for example, of 'universalism' and 'particularism',
'equality' and 'hierarchy'. The "left-wing movements" would be "universalistic and
egalitarian" and therefore, in reality, democratic, while the "right-wing movements"
would be "particularistic and hierarchical", and therefore fundamentally anti-
democratic. 2 The empirical studies conducted to experimentally identify the
"fascists" were governed by these auxiliary presuppositions. The result was one
paraphrase of the presuppositions themselves. In the study of "potential

fascists", i.e. of "authoritarian personalities", very widespread in America in
the immediate post-war period, the research was conducted on
the basis of an extremely schematic conception of the right-left continuum,
expressed in terms of American political schemes, which they served the usual
terminology of Marxist or para-Marxist analyses. 3
However, it soon became clear that "Fascism and Bolshevism, which until a
few decades ago were considered worlds apart, must increasingly be
recognized as having many very important common characteristics.
Their common hostility to civil liberties and political democracy; their common
dislike of parliamentary institutions, individualism and private initiative*;
their image of the political world as a struggle between morally irreconcilable
forces; the idea that all their adversaries secretly conspire against them and
their fondness for secrecy; their belief that all forms of power are, in a hostile
world, concentrated in very few hands and their aspirations to
concentrate and bring together all power; this set of characteristics shows that
the two extremes have much in common.' 4
The great hopes which animated the entire "anti-fascist" grouping throughout
the Second World War collapsed on the fact that the different variants of
Marxism were not essentially democratic, but essentially represented
totalitarian political systems as opposed to the parliamentary democratic
system as they were was Fascism. The typology used to classify the
various political systems before the war proved fundamentally flawed.
Marxism-Leninism and its variants, which proliferated after the end of hostilities,
had characteristics much more similar to those of Fascism than to those of
Liberalism and parliamentary democracy, which represents its
characteristic political expression. The gradual recognition of this fact
has led experimental scientists and political scholars to devise a system of
classification with which to make the investigation more effective in their field
of study.
If political behavior is a function of individual psychologically genotypic

predispositions acting within a
particular sociopolitical situation, and if left-wing and right-wing

extremists exhibit analogous political behavior, one should assume
that their individual psychological genotypic profiles, as revealed in
diagnostic tests, show analogous similarities. During the last ten years,
experimental psychologists have attempted to construct scales of
values, and to conduct research that could confirm this intuitive
experimental hypothesis. However, there is no conclusive evidence that
such similarities have been found. For example, HJ Eysenck's analysis
of T. Coulter's 1953 study, 5 which asserted the existence of such
similarities, has been subjected to ruthless criticism. 3 M. Rokeach,
on the other hand, who used a scale designed to measure the subject's
predisposition to conceive the world in closed categories, in terms
of "dogma", puts forward the hypothesis that right-wing extremist
attitudes and left are contrasting feliotypic manifestations of
identical individual predispositions. 7 IA Taylor's studies, in turn,
have provided empirical evidence to support the view that the basic
individual predispositions of left-wing and right-wing extremists are
similar in many important respects. 8 More recently, H. McClosky and
J. Schaar have provided further evidence that there are fundamental
similarities between left and right radical ideas. 9
These studies provide conjectural evidence which leads us to

believe that radical ideologies share some characteristics of
psychologically genotypic predispositions. The fact that the population
samples on which the tests were performed represent local communists,
and non-communists belonging to a communist state, and that the
"fascists" willing to take the test were equally of local origin and
frequently chosen, or self-proclaimed such, based on a strange list
of political opinions that have very little to do with the political ideas
of real fascists, weakens the probative force of such research.
However, together with the descriptive evidence that can be drawn
from a careful examination of the political opinions expressed by Marxist
exponents of various tendencies, by fascist exponents and by all those
who remain true fascists, they allow us to quite reasonably
assume the existence of a basic similarity in the structure of the
personality that underlies the extremist political orientation, both of the right and of the
The possibility of assuming this reinforces the conviction that Fascism, and
the variants of Marxism that today attract so much attention, are species of
the same race: totalitarianism. If Anglo-American political commentators
had not allowed themselves to be influenced by Marxist or para-Marxist
influence, this fact would have become apparent long before the war broke
out. Astute observers like Ely Halevy and Franz Borkenau said
the same thing. Halevy argued that the
Russian socialism, despite having sprung from the democratic and anti-
statist tradition of classical Marxism, had very soon begun to take
on the elitist, authoritarian, nationalist and statist traits typical of
Fascism, so much so that he was able to openly declare that "Bolshevism
is, literally, a fascism'". 10 Borkenau, in turn, went so far as to think that
Bolshevism was a "conscious and intentional imitation of
Fascism...". u
That this was the case should have been evident before the war, if Anglo-
American scholars had taken the trouble to treat Fascism as a serious
political movement and to inquire about its ideological commitments.
The fact is that both classical Fascism and contemporary Marxism
are rooted in the same ideological traditions and have some
fundamental normative beliefs in common.
Mussolini was a cultured and convinced Marxist. His definitive political
convictions represent a reform of classical Marxism in the direction of a
return to Hegelian elements. Gentile, a neo-Hegelian, conceived of
Marxism as a variant of Hegelianism and Fascism as its most coherent
current expression. Leninism, like Fascism, is heir to a heritage of the
same kind, which manifests itself, for example, in the conceptions of the
relationship between the individual and society and in the arguments
isomorphic with respect to the fascist ones, which provide the justification
for the respective practices totalitarian policies.
CLASSICAL MARXISM AND TOTALITARIAN ETHICS
The similarity of the arguments that underlie both Marxism and Fascism is
revealed even in the most elementary analysis of the normative
claims of Marxism itself. Marx, even in his very first manuscripts, was
always concerned with formulating a
theoretical conception of man. Its original conception was a vague "model" of man
as a social being, a simpler descriptive scheme, of course, of the being it
was intended to represent. As a model, it was designed to offer a concise
representation of the real, more complex and elusive being, and to facilitate
intimate knowledge. In the Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx
reduced the model to the bone and the relationship between the individual and
"social being" always and regularly became that of identity. « The
individual is the social being. His life [...] is [...] an expression and confirmation of
social life. The individual life and that of the species (Gattungsleben) of man do not
differ… ». 12
Framed in this way, the model becomes a conceptual analytical scheme in which
the Hegelian legacy is recognizable, a legacy common to almost all left-wing
Hegelians of that period. Moses Hess, a Hegelian and mentor of both Marx and
Engels, identified this model with that of "modern German philosophy." «The
individual [...] according to contemporary German philosophy», stated Hess, «is
the species, the totality, the human
ity... ». 13 This vague and ambiguous conception always remained at the center
of Marx's theoretical discussions. "Man", Marx argued, "is the human world,
the state, society", and the essence of man is nothing other than "the ensemble
of social relations". 14
This conceptual assumption produced in Marx the conviction that "the real
science" of society can be founded only by making "the social relation of
'man to man' ... theory"; 15 and this relationship the fundamental principle of
,
was considered by him, in a certain sense, an identity. The theory that attempted
to explain this relationship drew its deductions from a whole series of descriptive
propositions that could be considered its premises. The propositions used for this
purpose were understood as broad empirical generalizations capable of producing
increasingly specific theorems, themselves subject to empirical confirmation, or
disprovement. The theory was expressed in terms of very broad (and therefore
vague) and successive laws according to which certain changes in the
productive forces would cause changes in the division of labor in society, which, in
turn, would lead to alterations in the relations of production. The very order in
which the various propositions are placed indicates the implications of the
conceptual model, providing the full range of determinants, guiding

the strategy of research and explanation with the isolation of independent
variables. The variables have been defined as belonging to the
productive forces, to production relations, to superstructural or class
interests, just to mention some of the most important categories.
The changes in the variables belonging to one or another category are
correlated as if they followed certain laws, which indicate the direction in
which the same variables influence each other. The theory
established the gnoseological corollaries of the initial definition scheme.
Marx defended his use of the theoretical scheme and of the initial
definition of man from which he had started, with typical arguments. He
believed that the concept of man he proposed: 1) was intuitively more
tenable than the mechanistic and atomist conception of "bourgeois" social
theory; 2) had precise empirical correspondents and, consequently,
could give rise to a whole variety of verification studies; 3) provided a
narrower range of phenomena to study. 13 All of this can be
expressed in the language of current theory building in social science.
But social science is ideally concerned with the formulation and
dissemination of "if-when" or "theoretical" propositions, and with
descriptive or explanatory treatments, which systematically refer to
recurring phenomena, for the purpose of prediction and control.
However, it does not admit among its legitimate interests the issue of
imperatives, or the identification of ideals towards which man should
tend. Marx's analysis, on the other hand, reached unmistakably normative
conclusions, expressed in terms of appeal rather than empirical judgment:
it led to the "doctrine that man is the supreme Being for man himself..."
and ended in the « categorical imperative to overthrow all the conditions
in which man is a being humiliated, enslaved, abandoned and
contemptible... ». 17 Marx's prose, especially that of his years is helpful
nili, is full of imperative force. "Man is the supreme being for man": 18 an
evident value joins the injunction; "we need to rekindle in the hearts [...] of
men their human conscience, freedom. Only this sentiment [...] can make
a community of men devoted to their supreme ends spring from a
society...". 19
Thus, Marx's model of man was the basis of normative conclusions and at
the same time fulfilled scientific or purely descriptive functions. What
interests us here is the fact that a single, identical theoretical model
could fulfill these different functions. The initial concept was, in essence,
"normic", in the sense that, although it was a theoretical model having a
prima facie descriptive character, it also possessed a normative force
capable of providing support for imperatives.
In his theoretical treatment, Marx identified man, as an individual,

with his society, with the human macrosphere, or with the set of social
relations that constitute society and/or the macrosphere. The individual,
Marx argued, is neither a particular thing nor a being possessing an
abstract essence. Man, Marx seems to maintain, is an existence which is
social activity, a variable in the complex of interacting variables.
The gnoseological significance of such formulations is quite obscure;

these same formulations, however, have the specific characteristics of
the defining propositions, empirical or theoretical. They are at the basis
of normative conclusions, because implicit in such a treatment is at least
one proposition rich in normative force. The emotional characteristics
revealed even by a superficial analysis make evident how it is
possible for Marx to implement the passage from presumably descriptive
propositions to normative results.
Traces of the procedure exist almost everywhere, not only in Marx's early
writings, but also in the works of his maturity. In the notes he wrote, for
example, for his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, he argued,
as we have seen, that "man is, in the most literal sense of the expression,
a zóon politikon, not merely a social animal but an animal that can become
an individual only in society.' 20
From the gnoseological point of view, this appears little more than a
deduction from the vague and presumed relationship of identity that was
thought to exist between the individual and society. But such a deduction
has a "vectorial force": it not only describes or defines, but tacitly
recommends. The deduction has persuasive force. The identification of
the conditions necessary for the implementation of the individual involves, psychologically,
recommendation to support and encourage them. The conditions necessary for

this implementation should be defended and favored.
Marx's definition of man, defended by references to his theoretical fertility,

if expanded, to his confirmability and conciseness, if applied to the empirical
field, has emotional implications that allow the passage from
gnoseological premises to normative conclusions. Marx's definition possesses
the dual characteristics of a concise theoretical proposition that can operate in
an organic social science theory and
it can just as well be used as a normative ideal. Men should implement

themselves and if man, in an unspecified sense, is society, he is the
set of social relations (if society is the necessary prerequisite for the
implementation of individuality), then society and macrosocial relationships have
at least an instrumental value and, by virtue of the identity relationship, also an
intrinsic value. Actuation means inalienable identity between the individual and his
productive community. This seems to be one of the logical consequences
of the affirmation according to which the essence of man is a set of social
relations, according to which man is the world, the state, human society. "What
must be avoided above all", argued Marx, "is the restoration of 'Society' as an
abstraction opposed to the individual [...] Man, however particular an
individual he may be [...] is equally the totality… ». 21 A relationship thus
conceived is assumed to support normative conclusions, and Marxist ethics
thus assume an empirical or naturalistic character.
This concept of man was at the heart of the "humanism" of the Hegelian left. For
Moses Hess, it meant that "only as a social being is the human being truly and
truly alive", 22 while Marx argued that "...my personal existence is social activity
[...] My general consciousness is only the theoretical form of that of which the
real community, the social fabric, is the living form, even if nowadays the general
conscience (Gattungsbewusslsein) is an abstraction with respect to the real form
and as such opposes it antagonistically". 23
By identifying the individual with a "totality" (be it society or the

Sfato), it is possible to demonstrate, by means of a series of not too complicated
substitutions, that without society the individual is not really a
individual, he is not really a man; and, furthermore, that the interests of the "total" and of
the individual must ultimately coincide. Thus, the justifications of normative judgments
manage to assume an almost demonstrative character and have consequences for
social and political conduct.
Consequently, Marx's goal, i.e. the resolution of the social contradictions which
compromised what he called "the unity of the human essence [...] the practical identity
of man with man", 24 had to bring together justifications, both formal and empirical or
theoretical, and also had to provide the rationale for political conduct. In this sense, it has
a decidedly Hegelian character and implications: "individuality", "actualization" and
"freedom" are Hegelian "individuality", "actualization" and "freedom", the union of
particular with the universal. It is about the harmony of the self with the other. The
«emancipation of man», which constitutes Marx's explicit moral ideal during his first
revolutionary activity, is understood as «the genuine and harmonious life of the
species...», 25 which was to find expression (in the Manifesto of Communist Party) in
the search for "an association in which the free development of each is the condition
for the free development of all". 28
Marx tries to bridge the gap between "is" and "ought" by channeling
the recommendation implicitly contained in the apparently descriptive and

defining proportions that identify (in a non-specific sense) the individual with his social
macrosphere. If man is his society, a disharmonious, contradictory and unreal
society can only give life to a disharmonious, contradictory and unreal individual.
The Marxist concept of alienation, in fact, is supported on the basis of this presumed
relationship of identity. To become a fully human being, who harmonizes
essence and existence, man must restore the harmonious identity of the particular
with the universal. This harmony of ultimate interests is the condition for the
"development of human power as such", which Marx, in his maturity, made the "end in
itself". 27
Contemporary Marxists seem, at least intuitively, aware of the nature of Marx's

arguments. While the model
of man proposed by Marx is defended with references to its

theoretical fertility, the possibility of its empirical confirmation and
descriptive conciseness, it is also admitted that the same model serves
more than theoretical and descriptive purposes. Once it is
identified with the seat of implementation and freedom, moral judgments
are able to find a solid foundation. Self-actualization and freedom
are self-imposing values, and Marx's conception is admitted to provide the
basis for Marxist ethics and political activity.
Therefore, Adam Schaff can argue that "the propositions of socialist

humanism and its precepts [...] flow from the theory of historical
materialism, and in particular from the specific conception of man as a
social product, as a product of the 'totality of social relations '... » 28
Schaff is sufficiently educated to know that no union of descriptive
propositions can ever provide the ultimate basis for ethical conclusions.
In the set of propositions from which a normative judgment derives there
must be at least some element of moral evaluation. Schaff, therefore, does
not claim to offer a demonstration, but resorts to metaphor and speaks of
a socialist ethics which "springs" from the Marxist theory of history.
The passage from the descriptive to the normative field is possible only
because individuality, freedom and self-actualization are defined by
Marx in terms of social relations. Outside of social relationships,
strictly speaking, there is no individuality, no personality, no humanity.
If one accepts such a definition (essentially a redefinition, since it is
formulated to oppose the atomistic "bourgeois" definition of man), a
reasonably specific set of values follows (psychologically). What can
be opposed to Marx's values? Depersonalization,
inhumanity, slavery, humiliation? Marx's initial definition (proposed in
descriptive form), which identifies the individual with society, has
in itself sufficient strength to permit the ethical conclusions which
remained fundamental to the Marxist initiative throughout the life of
its founder and which now they provide the rationale that legitimizes
Leninist political action.
The ethical arguments emanating from Marxist countries are

regularly based on a similar "logic". A treatment apparently
descriptive of the "essence" of man is identified with the totality of
social relations; from this derives the prescriptive ideal of "human society" or "social
humanity". 29 In this way, what Marx had called man's "supreme end", namely his
fulfillment and freedom, the full development of his personality, 20 is only possible
within the intricate and harmonious network of human relationships socialists
implemented in harmoniously integrated social collectivities of various shapes, functions
and sizes. The perfection of man, the realization of the ego, requires the perfection of the
relationships and institutions of the society in which man himself lives. Society is
the essence of man; the better the society, the better the man. In this way Marxist ethics
conceives a substantial identity between collective interests and individual interests. Thus
Marxist philosophers argue that the distinctiveness of Marxist ethics is the resolution of
what "bourgeois" ethics holds to be the inevitable antagonism between the individual
and society. 31 Thus, the major achievement of Marxist ethics is thought to lie in the
"harmonization of the private interest of the individual with the collective or social
interest". 32 The fact remains that the presumed harmony is the analytical consequence
of defining the essence of man as the totality of social relations.
The identification of the individual with any human aggregate (society or the state)
fulfills a variety of tasks. The most important, for our purposes, is that of effectively
emptying the concept of freedom of any descriptive content. In the West, freedom
has traditionally been defined in terms of the absence of social and legal
impediments to an individual's freedom of action. Once the individual basically
identifies with his collectivity, impediment and absence of impediment lose their
descriptive meaning and freedom cannot be defined in a concrete way. Once such
an identification is accomplished, the individual constrained by his own collectivity is only
ostensibly constrained. Since the collectivity is a greater self, by submitting to its
demands the individual obeys a law which, in a certain sense, has given itself. He remains,
according to this logic, despite empirical constraint, the autonomous moral agent who
works freely to obey his truest self. Freedom and constraint merge and the needs of one
are no longer distinguishable from those of the other.
Only an apparent freedom remains (the performance of acts that are in

conflict with the interests of the community) and a real freedom (the
performance of acts that are in harmony with the interests of the community).
Thus, Soviet moral philosophers argued that "a properly understood

personal interest is an interest that is always compatible with the goals of the
community", 33 paraphrasing what Engels already wrote in 1845: "In communist
society, the interests of individuals are not conflicting , but they are identical
[...] public interests no longer differ from the interests of each individual »
. 34 Similar claims are based on the
alleged identity relationship between the individual and his community and provide
the statutory myth of one-party totalitarian rule.
Only as long as freedom is conceived negatively, as the absence of a collective

impediment imposed on the individual's freedom to act in the
its own interest, a real distinction is possible between freedom and

constraint, between private interest and public interest. As long as freedom is
understood in this way, a free act is an act performed by the individual as an
autonomous activity, justified by personal interests and motives. Any conflict of
interest between the individual and his community can then be openly addressed
and resolved by comparing the merits of the individual and the collective interest in
each particular conflict respectively. The most generous interpretation of
Mill's first principle, 'any compulsion, as such, is an evil', is one which regards it
as a formal or procedural maxim which requires that any compulsion imposed
by public authority on the freely chosen activity of the individual is justified by
neutral and important public reasons. 35 This does not necessarily imply that
individual freedom of action has value in and of itself, but it does advance an initial
presumption in favor of individual freedom of action, which must be overcome.
Given the individual's vulnerability to society, his intrinsic importance against any
organized community or unorganized congregation, such an initial presumption
has considerable value. It simply means that the burden of proof, to justify the
constraint imposed on the individual, rests with the strongest public power.
It means that the defenses of the individual against even the least restrictive
demands of the community are not further weakened by the requirement that the
individual himself justify to society any unlawful action.
conformist undertaken by him. The individual cannot be asked to

demonstrate that his every single act is compatible with the
collective interests, without admitting that otherwise the result would,
in all probability, be a community with a greater degree of conformity.
This absurd solution seems to be anticipated with satisfaction by Soviet
philosophers: "People cultivate the habit of framing their action," we are
told, "according to the needs and opinions of the community." 38 Elsewhere,
one of the corollaries of this point of view is expressed thus: cc The
community of interests, the social, political and ideological unity of men
in socialist society, provide the basis of complete personal happiness m. 37
Marx effectively pointed out the inadequacies of the arguments put forward
by "bourgeois" philosophers in support of the "atomistic conception of man"
and rightly emphasized that the theses adduced to justify
psychological individualism were not convincing. There was no empirical
proof that man is an atom and society is an aggregate of atoms. The
conception of man opposed by Marx enjoyed more solid empirical proof and
could, with suitable semantic and syntactic specification, provide
the basis for very interesting verification studies.
But the Marxist conception of man led to the interpretation of individual
rights and freedoms as derivatives, and consequently posited a
postulate in favor of the interests of the community as an example of the
truest or most profound freedom of the individual.
Contemporary Soviet Marxists have drawn various conclusions from this
procedural presupposition: "Learning to live in a collectivity means
considering oneself an integral part of it and always remaining faithful to the guiding princip
collectivism: one for all and all for one. Anyone who assumes this attitude
as their rule of conduct harmoniously blends personal interests with those
of the community... The building of a new society, therefore, implies that
personal interests coincide with those of the community [...] the creative
effort illustrates the community and its components and is no longer the
expression of the subordination of personal interests to the common ones,
but the expression of their confluence [...] Anyone who violates the rules
of the community, abandons or even just humiliates their companions
deserves the heaviest criticism [...] Private life is the sphere in which a person lives
when he is not engaged in productive or public activities, that is to say, it

is the part of his life that he keeps for himself. Is it a personal matter
for each one? No, a person's private life is inextricably linked to other public
affairs… ». 38
And again: "When social interest is raised to the level of the principal
interest of the personality, then there is no renunciation of personal
interests, as the enemies of Marxism maintain, but rather personal interest
receives its maximum realization from this [. ..] The new, communist
ethic proclaims: think above all of social interests, 'conceive them as your
most important interests and in this way you will strengthen,
together with the collective one, your personal well-being ». 39
All these points of view can be made compatible with the

arguments that interpret collective and individual interests as substantially
compatible with each other, while admitting the distinction between the two.
And it is also true that some Marxists think this way. 40 But the most
worrying point of view is that according to which we obtain, in a rather
obscure sense, an identity of interests between social and personal
interests. And it is precisely this point of view that gives moral priority
and the privilege of control to the community and its autocratic
representatives, as opposed to the individual. Lenin, in the tradition of
classical Marxism and under the influence of Hegel, seems to support
such an identification with the justification that "the individual is the universal
[...] Consequently, the opposites (the individual is the opposite to the
universal ) are identical [...] Each individual (in some way ) is a universal
». 41
Precisely this kind of persuasive definition allows Leninists to speak of a

collective unified will, which finds expression in the will of the party, in the
interest of all classes, strata and individuals of the population. 42 If the
"individual is a set of determined social relations", it is possible to
argue that he is also only a "part of a wider and more comprehensive
social whole", which, due to the unique model of social relations that
regulates of all, reveals a unique and coherent will. 43 Such a single will
represents the will of all and finds expression in the will of the single
party.
This type of reasoning provides the rational foundation for the logic of
substitutions which makes the will of the party the will of the proletariat, the
will of the proletariat the will of the Soviet people and the will of the Soviet
people the substantial will of mankind. To complete the legitimacy
of the totalitarian dictatorship is
it is only necessary to admit that the will of one man is in some way identical
with the will of the party. Under the iron laws of such a system of
identifications, any activity that is incompatible with the collective will as
expressed in the periodic programmatic statements of the
party, its leaders, and the laws of the state, is, prima facie, the product of
ignorance. or wickedness. Anyone who indulges in deviations of any sort
must either be educated (hence the growing emphasis still placed in the
Soviet Union today on the tutoring and pedagogical responsibilities of
party ideological bodies) or punished (the "builders of communism" are
admonished to be tireless in their fight against the "enemies of the people").
If it is perhaps an exaggeration to state that "in the ideal totalitarian state

'everything that is not obligatory is prohibited'", 44 there is nevertheless
an evident tendency of any totalitarian system to proceed exactly in this
direction. The development of the Soviet legal system is characterized by a
conscious extension of the law, to ensure that it also intervenes in the
most intimate and personal relationships. 45 Precisely the logic of identities,
a legacy of classical Marxism, is at the basis of this development in the
totalitarian state. It is precisely the logic of identities that allows a man, or a
select group of men, to speak of everyone's interests. The unitary and
harmonious will, exemplifying the identity of all with all, institutionalizes
anxiety, since on any occasion, the individual who deviates from the
collective rules (which find varied and changing expression in the
determinations of the single party) can only expect to be accused as insane
or as a criminal. Thanks to the identification of public and private
interests, the individual who pursues purely personal goals can expect to be
judged as a person who does not know how to evaluate his own true
interests, he is therefore insane, or as a person who prefers to be
antisocial, i.e. a criminal . It is interesting to note that the relationship
of identity between the individual and his community allows passage in only one direction.
they are the true interests of the individual. But if the individual tries to argue that,
since there is an identity of interests between the individual and his community,
everything the individual does must be in the collective interest, he is
immediately accused of being a "petty bourgeois », defender of «outdated and
moribund ideas which are incompatible with the essence of the socialist order». 4S
One of the critical arguments of the armory used to defend totalitarian systems is the
logic of substitutions, which allows the identification of the individual with a
particular critical collectivity. Such an identification is central to Marx's
normative system and is clearly a Hegelian inheritance. The same argument,
as we have seen, is fundamental to Gentile's social and political philosophy and found
expression in the representative reasoning of Fascism. Ugo Spirito confirmed
that the rational foundation of Gentile's Fascism was "inspired by the Marxist
dialectic" and had as "its starting point the identification of the individual with the State...".
47
Classical Marxism essentially follows the same logic as hege
lism and provides the same possibility of substitution between leader and party. State.
Nation, class and individual interests of classic Fascism. In both systems, all interests
are conceived as harmonized, as an analytical consequence of the conception of a
"speculative" identity between the individual and his collectivity. The logic of substitutions
legitimizes the government of the single minority party and its leader. The leader and
the party speak in the ultimate interest of all. And since everyone's ultimate interests
are the same, only one representation of these same interests can be true.
The single party and its leader assume all the pedagogical, tutoring and initiative
functions which have by now become characteristics of the totalitarian political
party.
The statutory arguments brought forward in support of the one-party government, of

both the Right and the Left, are substantially the same. Marxist "humanism" and
Fascist "humanism of labour" present characteristics of the same kind, revealed by
the similarity of the arguments adduced in their defense and by the similarity of content
which gives them descriptive substance.
Both originate from Hegelianism. which is their first historical source.
LENINISM AND FASCISM AS TOTALITARIANISM
If a particular set of genotypical political attitudes (the existence of which is

suggested by the results obtained from various test tables) is manifested
in explicit adherence to radical political organizations advocating
totalitarianism, Right or Left, and if an analysis of ideological positions of
these movements reveals a substantial similarity of justifications, all that
remains to be highlighted in order to provide an irrefutable presumptive
justification for the identification of the different variants of contemporary
Marxism as components of the same species which also includes
classical Fascism, are the broad similarities in the institutional structures
of those political systems. Indeed, the institutional characteristics
of the totalitarian systems of the Right and the Left reveal a surprising
similarity, a fact which did not escape the fascist commentators even during
the periods in which the political struggle against the Marxist movements was
most bitter.
Already in 1933, Mussolini himself expressed his awareness of the gradual

convergence between Soviet totalitarianism and the one he himself
created. In 1938, he had no difficulty in suggesting that the process of gradual
involution of the socialist system had produced an involuntary and incoherent
fascism. As early as 1934, fascist theorists could argue that "in the course
of its development, the Russian revolution gradually gave evidence of a total
abandonment of Marxist postulates, and of a gradual, if surreptitious,
acceptance of certain fundamental political principles which
characterize the fascism". 48
These judgments, relatively common among non-Marxist and fascist

commentators, also appear among educated Marxists. Leo Trotsky, ad
example, he argued that « Stalinism and fascism, despite the profound

differences in social institutions, are symmetrical phenomena. In many of their
characteristics it is possible to perceive a terrifying resemblance.' 49 Among
these similarities were: a commitment to the development of the nation, the
reconstruction of the nation itself under the leadership of a highly centralized
and authoritarian party hierarchy, the restoration of state authority, an
effective program of class collaboration and category under a national
economic plan, exclusive education e
systematics of the national youth in accordance with the secular ideology

characterized by a relatively specific set of particular political and social
beliefs and the rule of charismatic or semi-charismatic leaders who
were given enormous responsibilities and prodigious powers. In all cases,
the totalitarian state assumes pedagogical, initiative and tutoring
functions, unknown to traditional parliamentary regimes.
The convergence of Leninist systems towards those of the classical

fascist model was gradual. The fascists were, in fact, well aware
of the involution of Leninism as a political system and saw in this process
the proof that Fascism constituted the ideal type of political system
of the twentieth century. To underline more effectively the process of
involution which has revealed the substantially totalitarian and
incoherently fascist characteristics of contemporary Leninism, it is
sufficient to briefly summarize the history of Marxism as a social and
political ideology.
VINVOLUTION OF
LENINISM
Classical Marxism represents the evolution of a corpus of thought,
articulated for the first time around 1840. Marx and Engels, barely
twenty years old, dedicated themselves to the study of a secular humanism
which could succeed in "overturning all those conditions which make
man a being humiliated, enslaved, dissolute and contemptible... ». 50
They tried to make "self-awareness and freedom shine again in the hearts
of... men. Only this sentiment can transform a society into a community
of men dedicated to their supreme ends... ». 51
The fundamental elements of this humanism persisted in Marx even during

his maturity and are found in the manuscript he was working on when, in
1883, he died; they have great emotional strength, but little gnoseological
significance unless they are joined together by descriptive and defining
theoretical elaborations. But it is precisely to them that we need to pay
attention, since they outline fundamental values of Marxism, any modification
or abandonment of the former necessarily alters the latter which, in fact,
have undergone different and always mixed interpretations.
Marx had at heart the liberation of man, which he defined in his youth as
"the universal emancipation of man." As a profound and critical thinker
that he was, he could not be satisfied with a mere aspire
tion; he therefore tried to specify the programmatic aims and to translate

the desired changes into practice. To implement this design, he had to come
up against the reality of the environment that surrounded him and
therefore responsibly assume all the duties of a social theorist. He was
forced to articulate a social theory that met all the requirements, even
minimal ones, of coherence and scientific validity, that could be verified in
practice and that had the force of prediction. Later, Engels called it
"the materialist conception of history". The fundamental proposition of this
theory, which explains its substance, states that "in every historical period, the system
of production and economic exchange, together with the social

organization which necessarily derives from it, constitutes the foundation on
which the political and intellectual history of the age is built, and which
alone can explain it... ». 52
This means (without going into the merits of a whole variety of

legitimate consequences) that the intellectual, political and social
history of man is a superstructural product or derivative of the activity
of the economic substructure of society. Economic variables are
privileged or primary variables. They are independent variables, while all
others are dependent variables. Therefore, both Marx and Engels argued that,
evidently, "the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class
struggles", while the class struggle "is nothing more than the reflection, in
terms of conflict" of the clash between " new productive forces' and the
'system in which they are used'. 53 To explain the intellectual, social and
political history of each epoch, only the knowledge of the relationships
existing in the economic basis of society is sufficient and necessary. Marx
argued: "We start from real, active men and, on the basis of their real life
process, we demonstrate the development of ideological reflections and
echoes of this life process. The ghosts that form in man's brain are [...]
necessarily the sublimation of his material life process [...] and in this way
no ideology retains the aspect of independence anymore [...] by developing
material production and their material relationships, men modify [...] their own
thought [...] It is not life that is determined by consciousness, but
consciousness by life ». 54 Politics, art, religion, ethics, conscience
itself, are all completely "absorbed" by the economy. 55
Given this theoretical interpretation, since Marx and Engels believed they
had discovered the "laws of social development" in the broadest generality of
the productive processes involving associated men, they also thought
they were able to make predictions about the future behavior of man.
Given that Marx claimed to have discovered the economic laws of society
"operating necessarily towards inevitable results", "immanent laws" which
"produce with the inexorability of the laws of nature" specific and
specifiable consequences, Marx and Engels believed
to be able to predict social changes with the certainty of "a mathematical

or mechanical demonstration." 56
These predictions were made on the basis of the thesis that consciousness
is an "outflow", an "echo" of the material conditions existing in the economic
substrate. Rich in the knowledge of economic circumstances
micas that govern the life of the working classes. Marx and Engels
believed they could easily predict a "spontaneous" revolutionary
consciousness of the proletariat. 57 Marx and Engels conceived the
proletariat as a "mass conscious of its own spiritual and physical misery",
induced to revolution precisely by the conditions prevailing in the productive
substratum of society itself. 58 His revolution could be considered
certain, independently of any party or leader. 59 The lowering of wages
below the minimum subsistence level, a process made inevitable by the
tendencies operating in the productive processes of capitalism, would
have created the conditions sufficient to make the revolution a
foreseeable necessity: 60 "The majority of the proletariat can do
nothing but starve or rebel". 61
Since the necessary and sufficient conditions for revolution can exist
only in countries with advanced capitalism, the revolution affects the
"immense majority" of men who have been reduced to the
proletarian state by mature capitalism. The communist revolution, therefore,
as Marx and Engels conceived it, would be "a self-conscious
and independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of
the immense majority itself".° 2 It would then be a clearly democratic
movement, produced by the same forces of history. Marx and Engels were
convinced that political movements reflected "the particular economic
situation" of each historical epoch. Consequently, they argued that the
proletarian revolution represented the active reaction of the vast majority
of men, proletarianized by the dominant production process in
advanced capitalist countries. The political expression of the
impoverishment of the masses was the revolution. The revolutions of past
times had been undertaken by tiny minorities at the head of passive and
unconscious masses. The proletarian revolution, on the other hand, was
conceived by Marx and Engels as vast, conscious and independent
movement of a conscious majority. The movement is "instinctive,

spontaneous and irrepressible". "The time of surprise attacks", continued
Engels, "of revolutions led by small conscious minorities at the head of
unconscious masses, is past" 63 .
A vast majority of men, brought below the elementary level of sustenance by

dysfunctions in productive relations and by the maldistribution of the enormous
production of capitalist society, would have taken over the productive apparatus
to administer it in the service of the majority itself. The State, which throughout
history has always been the executive arm of the ruling classes, would
disappear and in its place an administration would arise which would be concerned
"exclusively with supervising production". 64 The government of men would be
transformed into a democratic administration of things.
The "dictatorship of the proletariat" would not have been a dictatorship in the
current sense of the word. For both Marx and Engels, the model of this
"dictatorship" was the Paris Commune of 1871. The Commune provided for
universal suffrage and the popular representatives were entrusted with only
limited powers of representation, while they could at any time be subjected to a
referendum and revo
cati. 65 Marx stated that "nothing is more foreign to the spirit of the
Commune than the replacement of universal suffrage by a hierarchical
investiture". 66
This was, therefore, the body of theoretical propositions proposed by

classical Marxism to support its normative directives. Men can overcome
alienation and achieve universal emancipation because the very logic of history
works in their favor. Mature capitalism generates the necessary and
sufficient conditions for a majority and liberating revolution. The vast majority
of thinking men are automatically inclined to take over the productive apparatus
of advanced capitalism to administer it democratically in their own conscious
interest. The theory and practical directives of classical Marxism were thus
perfectly consistent.
However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Marxism went into

crisis. The recurring predictions of imminent revolution in capitalist countries
progressed did not materialize. The proletariat was unable to give itself the
consciousness necessary for the revolution. In 1868, Engels complained that
the English proletariat had only succeeded in forming a "bourgeois consciousness".
87 Marx echoed the same fears in 1870.° 8 The relation of dependence
between revolutionary consciousness and "objective conditions" could already no
longer be proposed with the certainty required by the theory.
It is clear that, although the theoretical propositions of Marx and Engels were
formulated in vague and ambiguous language, Marxism was firmly convinced
that revolutionary consciousness derives from a deeper process in society.
The development of revolutionary consciousness was inevitable and would
have interested the great majority of men who worked in conditions of advanced
capitalism. This great majority would have rebelled and seized the
technical apparatus and factories produced by capitalism itself to erect the social
structure of socialism. A developed productive base, coupled with socialist
consciousness, both products of capitalism itself, would give birth to the
socialist society which was the conscious aspiration of the vast majority of men;
and this result would have satisfied the normative aspirations of classical
Marxism.
But, unfortunately for classical Marxism, the proletarian majority, which should
have assumed responsibility for this historic mission, failed to develop the
consciousness necessary for the task assigned to it. Revolutionary sentiment
developed in areas of the world whose objective conditions did not meet the
requirements of theory. Lenin found himself in a situation in which restless
revolutionary sentiment was organizing itself outside the countries
with advanced capitalism and found himself in the painful condition of
having to choose between the need to put a brake on revolutionary ardor while
awaiting further development of capitalism, in the hope that the latter,
according to Marx's predictions, would develop the necessary consciousness in
the working classes, and the need to modify classical Marxism and try to
generate the driving consciousness among the elementary masses
independently of, and if necessary against, the objective situation of society.
Lenin chose
the second solution, arguing that conscience had to be given to the

working masses, who were no longer just the proletarian majority
of which classical Marxism spoke, but the whole of the peasant
masses and the proletarian minority of Tsarist Russia. Lenin rejected
the thesis of spontaneous revolutionary consciousness. He
denied that the revolution could wait until the great majority of men
had achieved the "spontaneous" and "instinctive" awareness of their own
interests. In 1901, Lenin argued that « ... the '* ideologue' is worthy of
the name only when he precedes the spontaneous movement, points
the way, and is, before anyone else, capable of resolving all theoretical,
political, tactical questions and organizational aspects faced by the
'material elements' of the movement... ». 39
He maintained that "the spontaneous awakening of the masses"

must be guided by "ideologists" sufficiently "theoretically savvy to be
able to resist any hesitation...". The revolution requires "a
strong and centralized organization of revolutionaries" which
supplies the minority "conscious element" necessary to direct
the "spontaneous element". 70 Lenin essentially proposed a minority
"vanguard apparatus" composed of professional revolutionaries,
whose will would counterbalance the deficiencies of world history.
In Italy, almost simultaneously, Mussolini was supporting more

or less the same thesis. Socialism, Mussolini claimed, had failed
because it had failed to realize the critical role played in revolutions
by an efficient political and insurrectionary aristocracy. In 1904 Mussolini
repudiated the deterministic thesis according to which the revolution
was the necessary and spontaneous product of the economic
conditions of capitalism. Instead, he preferred a thesis that could have
brought back into history "the creative will of determined and decisive
men" who leave the imprint of their influence on things and institutions
and who direct historical and political events in a certain direction.
These men would constitute a minority "socialist vanguard" and supply
the elementary energy of the majority with an awareness of
historical goals.
In two different places, therefore, and almost simultaneously, both Lenin and
Mussolini, socialist theorists and political leaders, introduced fundamental
changes in the weak theoretical structure of classical Marxism. These
changes were basically the same. They were both aristocratic and voluntaristic.
Lenin and Mussolini conceived of the majority as the instrument, rather than
the conscious agent, of social revolution.
This was the essence of the transformed socialism which animated their political
activity. Both conceived the socialist party as a centralized and hierarchically
ordered aristocracy of professional revolutionaries, burdened with the
historical responsibilities that classical Marxism had instead attributed to the
great majority of the conscious proletariat. Both Mussolini and Lenin led
revolutionary movements in economically backward countries. Both gained large
amounts of support from the non-proletarian masses, which Marx
always had
deemed essentially reactionary, i.e. without historical significance.
Already in 1902, Lenin understood the revolutionary consciousness of the

masses no longer as a product of the economic processes characteristic of
capitalism, but as a result of the active work of declassed bourgeois intellectuals.
These men, among whom he numbered Marx, Engels and himself, had to take
responsibility for making the masses aware of their real interests and not
just their immediate ones. Without the intervention of these men, Lenin
argued, the masses can come to have only a "trade union mentality"; little more,
that is, than the perception of one's own primordial and immediate
interests. Only the aristocracy of thought can guess what the true
and ultimate interests of the masses are and therefore act in the name of history.
The revolution must take place as an automatic process implemented
by the great majority of men who are aware of themselves and of things, but it
must be the work of an aggressive aristocracy which mobilizes the
elementary masses in the name of man's ultimate interests. This was the
basic logic of both the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and the fascist
revolution of 1922. In both cases, a minority of men, at the head of paramilitary
squads, took over the state apparatus in the name of their vision of society.
Both revolutions were revolutions of hierarchically organized minorities.

Both mobilized the latent energies of the masses al
service of a revolution guided by the intuition of one man, or a small assembly

of men, who had taken upon themselves the responsibility of elevating the
consciousness of the masses to the level of their own vision of social and
political truth. The political organizations directed by Lenin and Mussolini were
not political parties in the orthodox sense, but movements whose task was to
educate the masses in a fideistic way. Both movements jealously defended
the purity of their doctrine. Both assumed pedagogical and tutoring
responsibilities which until then had been the exclusive competence of
religious orders.
In 1918, Mussolini abandoned the term "socialist", because he no longer

considered it suitable to define his own social and political conceptions,
arguing that such and so many modifications had occurred in classical
Marxism, as to deprive the term of all its conceptual meanings. Lenin, on
the other hand, insisted on affirming his own Marxist orthodoxy, arguing that
he had made Marxism undergo an "evolution" such as to adapt it to the new
epoch, that of the final stage of capitalism. This "new stage" saw the
inversion of several critical Marxist theses. Marx and Engels had foreseen
the socialist revolution in countries with advanced capitalism, where the
objective conditions would have produced that economic basis and
fostered that consciousness, which are the necessary conditions for the
establishment of a socialist democracy. Engels had systematically
argued that a limited production base could produce only those class
divisions to which Communism was immutably opposed.
« The division of society into an exploiting class and an exploited class, a

ruling class and an oppressed class, is a necessary consequence of the
deficient and limited development of production [...] As long as all the
social forces of labor produce just enough barely exceed what is necessary
for the existence of all [...] society is divided into classes ». 71
The division of society is based "on the insufficiency of production", which can
be overcome only in countries with advanced capitalism. Socialism, therefore,
can only arise from the productive base inherited from advanced capitalism.
Lenin, on the other hand, having devoted himself to the mobilization of
elementary revolutionary potential in a backward country, argued that

the revolution could also first break out in societies where
industrial production is deficient and limited, that is, in
essentially agricultural nations. However, it was also clear that Lenin
conceived these revolutions as a first step towards the world
revolution of the proletariat, a revolution which would restore to the
socialist movement the economic basis necessary for the building of a classless socie
Mussolini, for his part, had abandoned classical Marxism and

had embraced a form of national socialism, recognizing that the Italian
revolution would inherit a backward economy. Its political and
economic program was therefore based on this recognition.
The imperative that dominated the tactical and strategic program
of the first fascist organization was the increase in national
production. Italy was a "proletarian nation". Its main problem
was not overproduction, or maldistribution, central concepts of classical
Marxism, but underproduction and lack of political and economic
discipline. Mussolini argued that the increase in production was a
function of the nation's discipline and entrusted the fascist cohorts with
the responsibility of instilling this sense of national purpose in the
passive majority, imposing the controls necessary given the
general conditions.
Lenin, for his part, in State and Revolution, written on the eve of
the Bolshevik revolution, spoke as if Russia were already a
capitalistically mature nation. Only after the first six months of
Bolshevik rule did he admit that the first pressing problem facing his
minority government was that of increasing national production.
Since then, his orders were increasingly aimed at implementing this
goal: the expansion of production. Russia did not have the
problems that were studied by Marx and Engels. It was not a
country afflicted by the "absurdity of overproduction". The Russian
economy was largely agricultural and underproductive. Russia was
an underdeveloped nation. In April 1918, almost at the same
time that Mussolini was developing his own productivist
conceptions in Italy, Lenin announced that it would be necessary to
impose on revolutionary Russia "the organization of a very strict control [...] of
all national production" and "the increase in the productivity of workers

on a national scale". 72 For Lenin it was natural that they should have been
used
"imposition", the "iron hand", "iron rules", if these orders were to be

implemented. 73 .
But only after Lenin's death in 1924 did Bolshevism transform from international
socialism into national socialism. Lenin had foreseen a world upheaval
which would provide nascent socialism with the economic basis necessary for
socialist society. He waited for her in vain. Even after Lenin's death in 1924,
Stalin wrote that "the main task of socialism, that is, the organization of
socialist production, still has to be achieved. Can this aim be achieved, can
the victory of socialism be achieved in a single country, without the joint efforts
of the proletarians of several advanced countries? No, it's not possible ". 74
Only many months later, Stalin returned to his ideas and organized Russia
according to a broad program of rapid and demanding national
industrialization. Such a vast program required the organization of all
resources according to a highly centralized development plan. Bolshevism
became, like Fascism, a dictatorship for the development of the nation. The
development itself was being directed by a minority of men who held a
monopoly on the means of communication and information. A
program of accelerated industrialization was undertaken which required
dedication, discipline and sacrifice.
The single revolutionary party was entrusted with the task of imposing them on
the whole of society. This development of the Russian situation allowed Leo
Trotsky to argue that Stalinism and Fascism were "symmetrical phenomena". 75
The main product of the Stalinist era was a national, artificial but
efficient socialism, or if you prefer a Bolshevism. Its programmatic aims were
no different from those of revolutionary nationalism. All classes
and categories of the Soviet Union, although their status and salaries were
very different from one another, were urged to identify themselves with the
Soviet "fatherland". And so, during World War II, Russians of all classes were
called upon to
defend the homeland in a « Great Patriotic War ». Object of loyalty

became the nation. After 1955, the internationalism of world
communism suffered another blow at the hands of those centrifugal
forces which are now generically called "national communisms".
7e Soviet internationalism remains only as a residual doctrinal element
of Marxism-Leninism. The "world socialist system" is no longer
understood as an international association of the proletarian classes,
but as a "brotherhood of proletarian nations", organized
polycentrically in a consortium of sovereign states, in which those
with less capacity and less economic potential gravitate around to the
largest and most powerful socialist states. What
remains today of the internationalism of classical Marxism is the Soviet
conviction that "patriotism is one of the best human feelings" and that
"in the future, all the nations of the world will belong to a single communist family."
In this way, patriotism and internationalism will unite in one great love for
all humanity ». 77
LENINIST AND FASCIST INTERNATIONALISM
The trajectory followed by these latest developments follows,

with remarkable precision, that of classical Fascism. As early as
1930, fascist theorists had begun to speak of a fascist International, of
a pan-fascist union of poor, proletarian, like-minded nations. In 1935,
the Fascists argued that Fascism recognized that the upheavals of war
and depression in Europe could only be overcome with an "anti-
plutocratic" international reconstruction and, consequently, they
claimed that Fascism was "simultaneously patriotic and international"
78 A pan-European federation of fascist nations was envisaged, operating
through a "polyarchic directory" to give Europe that minimum of
political unity that Mussolini, as early as 1933, considered necessary
for the survival of the Continent. 79 By 1942, this concept of a
European consortium of fascist nations, united in what was called a
"European regime of federal union," had become a commonplace in
fascist literature. 80 In 1943, one of the fundamental postulates of
the program of the Republican Fascist Party was « the
creation of a European community, with a federation of all nations"

which had as its aim "the abolition of the capitalist system; the
fight against world plutocracies and the development, for the benefit of
European and indigenous peoples, of the natural resources of
Africa, with absolute respect for those populations [...] which [...] have
already achieved a civil organization and national". 81 Shortly after before his death.
Mussolini spoke of a world "New Order", founded on the "axis" of
proletarian nations in which patriotism would finally unite with
internationalism. 82
Nationalism, which classical Marxism had condemned as

anachronistic, has instead proved to be one of the most powerful
political forces in socialist nations. Socialist nations have in the past
pursued, and still continue to pursue, national interests with as much,
if not greater, dedication than non-socialist nations. Very little, essentially,
distinguishes the nationalism and internationalism of current
Socialism from those of classic Fascism. The internationalism of both
ideologies has always been, in fact, rather evanescent. Only their
nationalism is real.
THE LENINIST AND FASCIST CONCEPT OF THE STATE
A similar parallel is found in almost every aspect of the Leninist and

Fascist regimes. The political programme, for example, of the Unity
Party, Leninist or Fascist, implied a development program which
required the extensive use of coercion and refined institutions of control.
Mussolini, who had soon abandoned classical Marxism, stated
explicitly that it was necessary for him to set up a suitable apparatus to
implement his own policies. For Fascism,
that is, the existence of a strong and centralized state was required. The
concept of the strong state, whose will was identified with the substantial
interests of every citizen of any class, became fundamental to fascist
ideology. Leninism, for its part, still entangled in the theoretical hesitations
inherited from classical Marxism, proceeded in the same direction, but
the rational justification of its action was presented with
vague, confused and contradictory arguments.
Lenin had initially clarified that Marxism, as he understood it, conceived

of the state as nothing more than "an organ for class domination, an
organ for the oppression of one class by another" and that " as long as
the state exists there is no freedom" . The task of the
revolution of the proletariat was to overthrow the bourgeois state, thus
reducing the proletarian state to its simplest, most rudimentary form,
to make it something that was no longer a state. Instead, in 1925, the
Soviet state had taken on so many entrepreneurial, tutoring and
pedagogical functions that Stalin could no longer argue for the need
for its "disappearance", for its reduction to elementary institutions, any
more than Mussolini could. In his report to the Sixteenth Party Congress
in 1930, Stalin argued, in all seriousness: 'We aim at the
disappearance of the state. But at the same time we aim at strengthening
the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents the most powerful and
strongest state power that has ever existed. The maximum
development of state power with the aim of preparing the disappearance
of state power: this is the Marxist formula. Is it a contradictory formula?
Yes, it is contradictory. But the contradiction is inherent in life and
totally reflects the Marxist dialectic ». 84
It is necessary to make a prima facie doctrinal distinction between the

"right" and "left" revolutionary movements on the basis of their attitude
towards the state. Fascism clearly and unequivocally affirmed
the need for a state that would place itself above class and category
interests and represent "the true and definitive will of the entire
people". 85 The Fascists supported the commonality of substantial
interests of all classes and productive categories of the nation.
Consequently, a unitary party in a totalitarian state could implement
the harmonization of the national and popular will.
These theses were at the time derided by socialist theorists. The

state, according to the Marxist definition, was the instrument of class
exploitation. This conviction was exemplified by the identification,
in the Soviet Union, throughout the Stalinist period, of the state with the
dictatorship of the proletariat. However, at the Twenty-Second Party
Congress in 1961, it was announced that Marxist-Leninist thought had
reached a new level of theoretical maturity. Soviet Marxists announced a
new political conception: "The state of all the people". Nikita Khrushchev announced
that the Soviet Union had produced a new political phenomenon, hitherto
unknown to history: that of a state which embodied the will not of one class or
some classes, but of the entire people. 86 And he let us know that « the Soviet state
of the dictatorship of
proletariat has become the state of all the people, expressing the will of all the people,
while the Communist Party has transformed itself from a party of the working class
into a party of all the people.' 87
Contemporary Marxists argue that "the substance of the state changes

radically under the pressure of the socialist revolution." 88 The state no longer
represents class interests; it is no longer considered an instrument of class
struggle. The state is the legal expression of the collective popular will. While this
thesis is touted as "a new stage in the practical implementation of the revolutionary
theory of Marx, Engels and Lenin", it is also candidly admitted that "it is impossible
to find any direct reference to a state of the whole people in any writing or
speech by Lenin" 89 (nor, it should be added, in any writing or speech by Marx or
Engels). However, we are assured that this conception of the state is irrefutably
Marxist. The fact is that the conception of the "state of the whole people" is
Khrushchev's personal contribution to the transformation of Marxism, which
makes the rational justifications proposed in support of Soviet totalitarianism
absolutely indistinguishable from those proposed by the fascists in support
of theirs.
LENINISM AS IMPERFECT FASCISM
The contribution made by Lenin to this involution of classical Marxism must be sought
in his concept of minority revolution and in the implicit voluntarism on which this is
based. 90 Stalin, in turn, transformed Marxism into a rationale for a national
socialism.
Finally, Khrushchev put forward the concept of the "state of the whole people."
It is impossible to let all these transformations go unnoticed. When Lenin began to

spread his idea of raising consciousness out of "nothing" through an
aristocracy of professional revolutionaries, socialist theorists such as
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky
they immediately stated that he thereby threatened the whole

construction of classical Marxism and the values it upheld. Even Leo
Trotsky immediately condemned the thesis of the affirmation of
socialism in a single country, which further eroded classical
Marxism. The Chinese Communists were no less eager to
immediately take sides on the question of the "state of the whole people."
The fact is that Soviet Leninism, through a process of gradual

involution, increasingly assumed the characteristics of classical fascism.
It cannot be considered true Fascism just because its claims, given its
Marxist heritage, fail to provide sufficient justification for the most
significant aspects of the regime. Contemporary revolutionary regimes
based on mass movements (one of which is that of the Soviet
Union) all seem to have a tendency to increasingly assume the
characteristics of totalitarianisms in the service of rapid national
industrialization. In order to achieve this modernization, it requires
centralized control over material and human resources, "nationalism",

which practically means a general disposition on the part of each
citizen to sacrifice himself for the benefit of the community, becomes
fundamental to the system. Classical Marxism and its current
variants can hardly legitimize nationalism which is now recognized
by all as fundamental to strategies of rapid industrialization.
Furthermore, these strategies require the use of those tools that
can only be provided by a central, administratively
authoritarian and entrepreneurial body: the state. Currently all mass
revolutionary regimes use a powerful state apparatus.
Classical Marxism and Leninism (at least up to their more recent
"progressive developments") fail to provide any legitimate justification
for the prolonged existence of the state and still less for its
continued growth and ever-increasing guardianship and
directive functions. Finally, in all mass revolutionary movements the
voluntary aristocracies, characteristically composed of
declassed intellectuals, have had a supremacy and
organizational importance that can in no way be justified in the
context of classical Marxism. Only Leninism, as a variant of the
Marxism of Marx and Engels, attempted to legitimize the function of these aristocrac
and even this only at the expense of some of the fundamental precepts
of Marxism.
Only totalitarianism, that is, the identification of the individual with his
collectivity, finds its indisputable rational foundation in the classical Marxism
of the nineteenth century. Again, the totalitarianism of classical Marxism,
compared with that of Leninism, was somewhat harmless. Marx
conceived the "communist consciousness", the intimate identification
of the individual with his society, as a determined product of a particular
stage of capitalist economic development, the spontaneous and
unrestrained "outflow" of the material conditions of life of the "vast majority of
men ". For Leninism, this awareness is the product of the pedagogical,
tutoring and sometimes terrorist control of the leading party.
The fact is that Soviet society, like many of the societies that were built
under the auspices of mass revolutionary regimes, has taken on
characteristics that are manifestly fascist. In 1957, about a decade after
Mussolini's death, Ugo Spirito, who was the leading proponent of
"integral corporatism" at the 1932 Fascist Congress in Ferrara, and Gentile's
most eminent philosophical heir, published his reflections on the Soviet
Union. The essay reveals the author's essential and critical continuity
observed between classical Fascism and the "State of all the people", as
manifested in a society that was once committed to "making the State
disappear".
Spirito saw in the Soviet Union a transcendence of the dualistic world

of the bourgeoisie, a transcendence of the "liberal" social order, the "order"
divided into the two camps of public and private, which is the
characteristic product of the bourgeoisie. Soviet society, Spirito argued,
has transcended the bourgeois distinction between public and private; in the
Soviet Union "the particular and the universal are intrinsically united in a
single expression of life [...] Russian communism has its roots in the reality of
a people who conceive the values of the community as the constituent
elements of their true life. Communion and faith are its main
characteristics... », and the myth is its sustaining force. 91 This is clearly the
same language in which Spirito expressed himself in his
communication to the Fascist Congress of Ferrara. Soviet society

has partially fulfilled the fascist dream of its youth.
TOTALITARY MOVEMENTS E
MASS REVOLUTIONARIES
Contemporary national totalitarianism, its statism, voluntarism and elitism
find the most valid logical justifications in the arguments of classic
Fascism. With increasing frequency and ever more explicitly; the
fascist theses, expressed in the jargon of "socialism" and "democracy",
find their place in the ideological and doctrinal literature of contemporary
radical mass movements. This fact demonstrates the insufficiency
of the "theories on Fascism" proposed so far, particularly those of Marxist
origin.
First of all, there is an ideology of totalitarianism, that is, a set of

reasoned theses in support of a type of society that has the common
denominator of a solidarity mass movement animated by a
Weltanschauung, directed by a single party hierarchically organized under
the leadership charismatic or pseudo-charismatic of a leader in an
institutional system that provides for the state monopoly of
communications, imposition and economic control. This ideology has
been produced by declassed intellectuals, and however it originally
presented itself (for example, primitive Bolshevik claims of fervent
internationalism), it ultimately proves to be a declared nationalism
committed to explicit national ends. Its stated intention is to win a
place for the national community in the arena of international competition.
One of the fundamental doctrinal elements of its mythology is the constant
reference to ancient real or imagined glories: the exploits of ancient
Rome, the superiority of Russian culture and the "priority" of Russian
inventions, the national traditions of Chinese culture which "are lost
in the mists of time », the Akana ideal society, the « communal »
brotherhood of the Baluba, the Germanic creative genius. In essence,
it is always a question of a total mobilization of the material and
human energies of a given society to make them find or reach their
rightful place in the modern world. The most serious and ideologically
mature ideology capable of justifying these strategies intended to mobilize the nation in
ideologically, it cannot be reduced to a simple rationalization of the

interests of some particular class or stratum of contemporary
society. Regardless of its recruitment base, and whatever class or
stratum interests that historical Fascism has partially satisfied, the
his rational arguments represent typical totalitarian claims.
The "fascisms" of which current scholars speak represent mass

solidarity movements which developed in relatively advanced
economies under the impulse of serious and prolonged crises.
The theme of "class collaboration," which was once regarded as
characteristic of Fascism, was prominent because these relatively
advanced economies had a very diverse and organized
system of classes and groups with which the movement still
had to contend. Instead, totalitarian movements that develop in
situations of primitive economies can afford the luxury of initially
appealing to a presumed class. The first estimates that Mao Tse-tung
made, for example, of China's revolutionary potential, were
based on his assessment of the exploitation that his movement could
make of China's demographic resources. Regardless of the
Marxist theses concerning the function of classes, he maintained
that even if the classes of "large and medium landlords" had agreed
to oppose the revolution of national awakening, there still remained
a base of three hundred and ninety-five million peasants and elements
of second order that could be placed at the service of the movement.
In such situations, initially there is little disposition to appeal to
all classes and categories. However, Mao's definitive appeal,
which has grown ever more urgent as the Sino-Soviet rivalry has
progressed, is to the Chinese people, rather than to any particular
class or stratum of the population. The current appeal is to the
"national bloc" which includes "workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals,
traders and other patriots...", and the Communist Party is currently
believed to "share the fate and lifeblood of the Chinese people" . 92
In essence, the tendency to appeal to the people prevails in the mass
revolutionary movements of our time; that is, to the category to which nationalism mus
Totalitarian movements such as Fascism and National Socialism,

which develop in environments where complex class relations exist, must
make such an appeal from the outset of their enterprise if they are
serious about having the masses with them. Given their clear
intentions, they cannot present themselves as class movements. For this reason, GD II.
Cole rightly calls them "non-fundamentally class movements," while
"orthodox" Marxist scholars fail at all to grasp this fact. From the outset,
such movements appeal to what they consider to be the fundamental
layers of consciousness, namely the overwhelmingly ethnocentric feelings
that underlie calculated interests, those feelings that make man a social
animal. 93 Given that these feelings are not rational products, they do not
derive from calculation, the reference to them is more effective if done
through emotion, collective suggestion, mimicry. It was these
systems which gave pre-war fascisms their "irrational"
characteristics.
Even more important, from the point of view of reasoned study, is
the belief that the "masses" are
motivated by prelogical feelings; this belief has given rise, among the
fascists, to a set of recurring and interconnected attitudes.
On the one hand, the influences to which the masses are
exposed must be carefully controlled; the masses harbor a great variety
of sentiments, some of which, under the influence of politically
dissident stimuli, may be directed to ends which only have the effect of
threatening what the regime deems to be "the national interest".
As a result of these considerations, the totalitarianism that develops
in relatively industrialized societies tends to adopt extensive censorship
controls, to disdain the masses, to be pessimistic, in essence, about the
capacities of its subjects towards constancy and virtue. Mussolini's
judgments concerning the endemic limitations of the masses are too well
known to be repeated again, and no less well known are Hitler's.
Class movements, on the other hand, which originally harbor the belief
that society is composed of various groups of men, each well aware of
his particular and specific interests, tend to be optimistic, at least as
regards the malleability of human nature. . Classist movements, whatever
their practical action, rarely express with
sincerity their reservations about the intelligence capacities of the

masses, although it has become increasingly common in revolutionary
classist movements to seek "virgin intellects", i.e. peasants rather than
relatively shrewd urban workers, into whom to instill their radical ideologies;
and this is irrefutable evidence of their reservations about the wisdom of
the masses. Furthermore, the rigorous censorship that is imposed
by these movements and the importance that is given to the
pedagogical function of the single party clearly proves that, as
classist movements increasingly assume the characteristics of national
totalitarianism, fascist attitudes, even if not the fascist logic, they
tend to direct its practical activity.
In addition to the totalitarianism that develops in relatively

industrialized environments and the classist revolutionary movements
that grow in underdeveloped nations, there is a third type of mass
revolutionary movement which, although limited to underdeveloped
areas, is not classist even during the initial insurrectionary phase. These
movements, whose typical expressions are currently defined as «
African socialisms », arise literally presenting all the characteristic aspects
of classic Fascism: they originate as movements of national
solidarity; they turn to the "people", to collaboration between classes
(with the explicit rejection of the "class struggle"), to the service of national
ends under the organizational guidance of the single party and the
charismatic or pseudo-charismatic leader who personifies it. In Ghana,
this process resulted in a caricature of a fascist regime in which
VOsagyefo, the Saviour, Nkrumah was seen as the modern-day
Messiah and his party as the representative of the will of the Ghanaian people.
FASCISM. TOTALITARIANISM AND « THIRD WORLD »
A broad outline of the situations leading to such results can be

drawn. The national insurrection and the anti-colonial movements in
Africa and Asia have enjoyed particular advantages.
These "movements of national liberation" have had well-defined
enemies, generally characterized by well-defined racial aspects; and this
gave rise to a sense of reaction on the basis of group identity by the
colonial subjects. Almost all classes and social strata of the colonies have
endured economic losses, or personal dignity, or civil status, by the

European colonizers. There was therefore no need, either tactically
or strategically, to appeal to real or presumed class interests among the
populations of the colonies, to induce them to revolution: national
solidarity was the predictable reaction to colonialism. Populations
without civil rights, made up of various classes, social strata and
productive categories aspired to shorten the distances that separated
them from their old rulers. Under similar circumstances, classist
appeals could only definitively sever the already tenuous ties that
united these populations.
In the case of African countries, therefore, not only classical Marxism,

but not even Marx-Leninism, have a determining value. Marx's analysis
was limited above all to the economic situation existing in the last century
in the countries of Western Europe. 94 He was mainly concerned
with the redistribution of "surplus value", with the modification of existing
productive relations, with the ownership of the means of production, with
crises of overproduction (or rather with under-consumption), with the
division of the profits of industries operating with large capital
investments and of the problems of technical unemployment. None of
these reasons concern the revolutionary movements of the former
colonial possessions or the productivist dictatorships of our day.
Mussolini maintained that they had no interest in Italy either, an essentially
agricultural country which was only at the beginning of a process of
effective economic development. Against the distributionist theses of
classical Marxism. Mussolini proposed the clearly productivist
intentions of Fascism. The declared purpose of Fascism was to
increase the industrial production of the Italian peninsula, in an attempt
to reduce the gap that separated it from the richest nations of Europe.
Lenin, and even more so Stalin, were forced to admit that the problems
of socialist Russia were not problems of redistribution of the surplus or
of transfer of ownership into new hands, but problems of mobilizing
collective energies at the service of the nation's industrial development.
The "class struggle", the destruction of the upper industrial
hierarchies, the initial massive loss of the "bourgeois" intelligences,
were all accepted as a price for having misunderstood the historical
function of the revolution. The radical movements of the second half of the twentieth cent
first stage of the Leninist programme. Therefore, the various types of socialism
that have recently appeared in Africa.
they have all clearly and profusely stated that no form of classical Marxism is suited to the
African situation.
Prior to the military coup that deposed Nkrumah, JH Mensah, chairman of Ghana's
National Economic Planning Commission, explained that it was impossible to apply
"traditional Marxist theory" to Ghana, which "aims at the reorganization of existing
property ownership," because "in all senses, the means of production [in Ghana] do not
exist". The real problem to which the "socialists" should have devoted themselves "is
not the restructuring of the ownership of the means of production. The primary
concern must be the building up of a reserve of the nation's productive resources.' 95
Leopold Senghór essentially advocated the same thesis. Private capitalism

has not been suppressed in Senegal, nor has there been any nationalisation. 98 The
primary and almost exclusive concern of African socialism is national industrial
development. The mobilization of the national community in the service of this
development is expressed in various but recurrent ways in the affirmations of the
theoreticians and executors of African socialism. Neither class appeals nor
adherence to Marxist economic and political theory are allowed to hinder the
nationalist development programs of African socialism, because "... development
requires", according to Mamadu Dia (former prime minister of Senegai) « a total and
conscious sharing of all the people. Above all, it is a question of a collective desire for
development... ». 97
Since the appeal is addressed to the people, distinct from any component class,
stratum or productive category, the appeal itself, as we have already said, must be
primitive, general and more emotional than gnoseological. Thus we discover
that Senghór speaks of political "myths" that inspire the masses to serve the national
purpose and Quaison-Sackey, of Ghana, refers to the "faith" of the "people", by
virtue of which they are "induced to action... ". 98
It is clear that class, as such, has ceased to be a serious critical,

theoretical or organizational element for the ideologues of African socialism.
The revolutionary protagonists of the African socialist "class struggle" are
the "proletarian" nations, whose respective citizens, inspired by "myths" and
"faiths" do not recognize any class distinction and merge into a category
that includes all the people. Senghór, for example, explicitly states that his
attempt to define an "African road to socialism" involves "national values and
proceeds from national reality"." African socialism seeks to create a
nation, a people with which "every individual will identify with the
collective Unity and vice versa". 100 Sékou Touré, the most para-Marxist of
the African socialists, never affirms that the proletariat of Guinea is the main
architect of the revolution and of national reconstruction, but rather
alludes to the historical and national function of the people of Guinea. The
entire people is conceived as the main architect of historical development;
it is simultaneously the object and subject of historical development.
Senghór argues, in particular, that it is necessary "to subordinate the
revolution
proletarian to the national revolution", while Nkrumah enjoined the entire

people of Ghana of "any [...] profession or social condition [...] farmers,
fishermen, masons, lawyers, doctors and workers, tradesmen,
engineers, architects, businessmen, teachers, and students" to
devote themselves to building "a larger and fuller life for our nation."
101 The axis of conflict has clearly been transferred from the class to
the nation. What was once considered a typical feature of Fascism is now
a feature of a whole variety of similar doctrines called African socialism. In
1927, the fascist syndicalists identified the "main characteristic feature of
fascism" in its "nationalist character", to distinguish it from the
various expressions of internationalist socialism. Fascist theorists
argued: «There exists, among the various classes [...] an impelling need
for solidarity which transcends category contrasts: the solidarity of a
proletarian nation which has to fight for its existence against rich and
economically powerful and privileged nations ». 102
The distinction that the fascists made between themselves and socialists of
any kind was based mainly on the adoption of the formula "solidarity among
classes and national struggle" instead of the Marxist "international solidarity

and class struggle", since fundamental among the elements of fascist
social theory was the conviction that "the struggle between nations is more
serious and critical than the class struggle... »; 103 and this belief is
now openly echoed by the ideological statements of Senghór and
Nkrumah.
Whatever socialism African socialists propose, it is very clear that the

analytical, theoretical and charismatic entity on which they focus their
attention is the nation and its people, rather than a class or classes, however
defined. Both in Senegal and in Ghana, for example, there are quite well
articulated social and economic classes, which enjoy either particular
entrepreneurial functions or a particular state or census, but both of these
states reject the Marxist conception of the class struggle and categorically
emphasis on class collaboration in the service of national development.
The socialism of African socialists is national and nationalist rather than

international and internationalist. Its recruitment base is the people, and its
appeals are directed towards the people, rather than towards any particular
class. Since his appeal is addressed to the people as a whole rather than to
any group interest, his language tends to be exhortatory and his
admonitions are aimed at "will", "sacrifice", "dedication" and " tolerance" of the
people, rather than their immediate material interests. At the Dakar
Conference on African Socialism, for example, Seydou Kouyate, Minister of
Development of Mali, expressed himself in the following way: "We can affirm
that the road to socialism that we have taken is based on two basic concepts:
1) a socialism implemented by a movement led by elements that are not
substantially proletarian; and 2) a socialism which recognizes the spirit as an
integral part of man's personality [...] We believe that the political
organization of the people, considered as
the driving force of the people themselves, can lead the country to the
building of socialism... ». 104
The "socialism" of which Kouyate speaks is indistinguishable from

economic development; its necessary condition is the mobilization of the whole
people. Mobilization requires a collective will that finds concrete

expression in the state. Senghór, in fact, states that «if the nation is
a conscious will to rebuild, the state is its fundamental instrument
[...] The state fulfills the will of the nation and guarantees its continuity [...]
The state is the expression of the nation: it is above all a means of
reaching the nation". 105
Since the state is conceived in this way, theorists of African

socialism have always been ill-disposed towards any Marxist proposal for
the "abolition" of the state. 103 All the supporters of African socialism
have always insisted on the need for a strong and centralized state
authority. 107 The State is conceived as the most effective entity for
the implementation of the will of the nation, a will that can become
aware only through an explicit and exclusive political ideology. And
therefore Amidou Kane, general commissioner for the Development
Plan of Senegal, affirmed that « the socialist revolution is above
all structural change inspired by an ideology... ». 108 The classical
Marxist conception of an economic basis supporting an ideological
superstructure is turned upside down and ideology acquires causal and
explanatory properties completely alien to any form of Marxist
socialism. Social awareness and organized will are conceived as
creating a particular economic basis. Senghór stated that « the problem
is to reawaken the 'dormant energies' [...] In a word, we have to
reawaken the national conscience [...] Realizing this, the Senegalese
government has decided to reawaken the conscience of the masses [ ...]
But the government cannot and must not do everything. It must be guided
and helped by the party [...] Our party must be the conscience of
the masses, who lack education and culture, still remain confused, lost in
the fog of animal needs. They do not rise to the level of 'political
consciousness, a higher form of consciousness'. This can only come to
the masses from outside, from the intellectuals.' 109
This is African socialism: it is analogous to the elitism which was at the

center of Mussolini's thought from his first formulations of the theory of
"revolutionary socialism". Lenin essentially developed the same
conception of relations between the masses and the elite. But Senghór's
appeal to political myths, to the "will" and to the "faith" give a more fascist than
Leninist to his conceptions. «The Nation», Senghór reaffirms, «must instill

in all its components, in all individuals, the faith in nationality...». To
implement its purpose, the State "shapes individuals according to the
model of the archetype [...] because only this action can make a people out of
our various populations, that is to say a Community, in which each individual
will identify with the whole community and vice versa".
110 It is clearly a matter of a responsibility of the State of the fascist type, of
the pedagogical and tutoring task of a totalitarian and ethical State of the
Gentile type.
The parallel can be continued at the doctrinal level, in order to understand

Senghór's "anti-racist racism" and his myth of "negritude" as an African
analogue of the dynamic concept of race of fascism. Pan-Africanism
finds its analogue in the conception of pan-fascism, which assumed increasing
prominence in fascist thought during the years immediately preceding the
Second World War. The fact is that the prevailing tendencies which
characterize African socialism are totalitarian and the details of its ideology
reveal that it is, in a substantial sense, a variant of classical
Fascism. 111
But African socialism is neither fully totalitarian nor fully fascist. Some
of the structural and organizational characteristics typical of totalitarian and
fascist society are technically conditioned.
Effective totalitarian control over communications, security and defense
institutions, and the economy, for example, require as a necessary
condition elaborate infrastructures that do not exist at all in Africa south of the
Sahara and north of Limpopo. Furthermore, the militarism, expansionism and
aggressiveness, which were important characteristics of Fascism in the
developed countries of Europe, are currently impossible in the
underdeveloped countries of Africa. This indicates that with the development
of an adequate industrial base, precisely these characteristics will manifest
themselves in African countries. If the attitudes assumed by Nkrumah's
Ghana indicate anything, they exactly indicate that such an eventuality is not
improbable. Furthermore, given an adequate industrial and military base, the
effort of black Africa to solve the problem of a white southern Africa could well
take on the character of a military adventure. To all this, one can
add the potential for violence
that creeps among the non-Black minorities of Africa, given the

Africanist attitudes of some indigenous nationalist movements.
The fact that these minorities enjoy privileged positions in the economic
field only increases the potential danger and the real possibility of a
baleful African socialist racism.
REGIMES OF MOVEMENTS OF
REVOLUTIONARY MASS
TOTALITARIANS
Totalitarianism is a form of authoritarianism that develops in a period of
nationalism and rapid industrial development. It is a reaction to some
critical and pervasive problems of the twentieth century. The
mass revolutionary movements propose, starting from various historical
and cultural traditions and from areas with different levels of
industrial organization, ideologies that show many affinities with each
other. These ideologies share one or other of several characteristics
and represent different species of the same political race. They all
include some form of guiding principle which makes one man
responsible for functions ordinarily devolved to various bodies in
parliamentary regimes; they are all essentially elitist, with a strategic organization
and functional framed in a single party that does not allow any
organized opposition. The single party becomes the fundamental
institution for the reorganization of society. Effective control of the
media, the instruments of security and coercion, and the direction of
the economy pass into the hands of a political aristocracy. Entire societies
are politicized. The arguments used by the mass movement to proselytize
and support a certain policy take the form of a particular
revolutionary ideology which subsequently becomes the statutory
myth of the regime. The constitution of . such a society has, as a
predictable byproduct, a society with a high degree of conformity, ritual
compliance, and institutional anxiety. 112
What we have been talking about are totalitarian mass regimes led by
a single party. But there is also a type of one-party-led mass
revolutionary regimes that do not have totalitarian aspirations. Such
regimes, such as Kemal Ataturk's and Sun Yat-sen's Chinese
regimes, may meet all the requirements of mass revolutionary regimes and yet not
take, for example, bureaucratic control of the economy. In a one-

party revolutionary environment there is, of course, a tendency to move in
this direction, but there is an indeterminate set of opposing influences
which makes too much generalization about the future policy of mass
revolutionary regimes risky. In the case of Italian Fascism, totalitarian
aspirations were already implicit in its ideological commitments and
knowledge of these commitments should have suggested to observers of
the time that the regime would have moved in the direction of total control
of the economy. Since, however, a finite, if indeterminate, set of factors exerts
an influence on the maturation of such a trend, such a prediction
could have been made with only a minimum degree of certainty. The Franco
regime of present Spain, for example, is a regime in which totalitarian
tendencies have been dying out. The mass revolutionary movement led
by José Antonio had a clear totalitarian orientation, 113 but the assassination
of José Antonio and the rise to power of Francò reduced the Falangist
movement to a mere partial support of a basic conservative system.
114
In mass totalitarian regimes, their development appears to be governed by

the circumstances accompanying their initial organization and by the
conditions in which they assume political power. In 1921, for example, Italian
Fascism had already articulated its totalitarian aspirations. However,
developing, as it did, in a situation in which the disposition of forces had
led various positions to extreme consequences and exacerbated particular
group interests, the movement found itself allied in its struggle against
orthodox socialism with essentially conservative forces. . Fascism,
originally the adversary of orthodox socialism because of the latter's anti-
interventionism and internationalist attitudes, suddenly found itself at the
head of a reactionary coalition of viscerally anti-socialist elements. In
1921, Mussolini found himself in an unenviable position
of having to choose between throwing off conservative support in order to

implement Fascism's radical ends, and thereby politically isolating
the nascent movement (since at that time it was impossible to make
common cause with orthodox socialists, although Mussolini had accomplished
a few steps in that direction), 115 or temper the radical demands

of the totalitarian movement.
He preferred to temper the demands of Fascism, at least until he found

himself in possession of an ever greater possibility of political intervention.
This fact constitutes the proof on which Marxists, or para-Marxists,
base their interpretation of Fascism as an "armed defense of the
bourgeoisie" and as a "reactionary mass movement which blocks the
road to revolution". 116 It is clear that a large part of the industrial
bourgeoisie and the landed classes interpreted Fascism in the same
way. But such an analysis is grossly flawed and such an
interpretation substantially flawed. The more refined Marxists rejected it
even before it was accepted as the official "definition" of Fascism
by the Comintern. Clara Zetkin, Antonio Gramsci and Angelo Tasca
rejected this definition considering it too schematic, in one way
or another. Clara Zetkin argued that « the errors of the communist party
[...] consist above all in considering Fascism only as a terrorist
military movement and not as a mass movement with deep social
roots. In particular, it is necessary to emphasize the fact that Fascism,
before obtaining the military victory, had already won
politically and psychologically... ». 117
Equally, Gramsci, in 1927, wrote that Fascism was not only "a bodyguard
of the bourgeoisie", but also a "social movement".
110 Gramsci admitted that the definition of Fascism as a simple
"armed reaction" led to erroneous conclusions. He also recognized that
Fascism's sources of recruitment were essentially the urban petty
bourgeoisie and the new agrarian bourgeoisie, but argued
nevertheless that various circumstances had provided Fascism with
an "ideological unity" which allowed the movement to oppose the
traditional political leaders with a essentially anti-liberal and
potentially totalitarian ideological system. 119 Angelo Tasca also
understood Fascism as a movement which, for its own political ends,
had imposed strategic and functional political controls on all the
classes represented in Italian social and economic life. 120
Non-Marxist commentators have generally proved even more

perceptive. In 1922, Arturo Labriola proposed an analysis of Fascism
remarkable for its precision. He believed that the development of
Fascism had gone through three stages up to then: I) that of a
spontaneous movement in defense of the nation's intervention in war and
of the sacrifices made; 2) the subsequent attraction of conservative
elements due to its opposition to orthodox socialism; 3) that of a
political movement of . mass composed substantially of elements of
the rural and urban petty bourgeoisie with socialist (if not socialist)
predispositions. Furthermore, he affirmed that Fascism had attracted
to itself a significant part of the proletariat (a phenomenon mentioned by numerous obser
Marxists). 121 Labriola saw Fascism as a mass revolutionary movement

supported largely by petty-bourgeois elements, which aspired to a new
form of national socialism. This opposition to the orthodox socialists
and communists had attracted under its banners the representatives
and the help of the preconceived interests, threatened by the
revolution organized on a classist basis. It was this alliance with threatened
class interests (in reaction to the classist politics of orthodox
socialism) that gave Fascism the appearance of an "armed militia
in the service of the old order", while, in essence, its intentions were
clearly revolutionary. 122
Marxists have long admitted that Fascism's doctrinal and ideological

commitments were essentially revolutionary. However, to bring Fascism
back into their conceptual schemes, they preferred to consider
Fascism's ideology of little importance. The "essence" of Fascism is its
defense of capitalism. Its ideology is calculated to deceive citizens or
foreign public opinion. Such an interpretation has little theoretical
basis and can hardly be defended. The fact is that Fascism gradually
extended, in accordance with its doctrinaire commitments, its control
over the entire Italian social and economic life. The landed and propertied
classes who had given him active or passive help (and the help was by
no means general; the nucleus of the bourgeoisie was against
Fascism),123 had evaluated the dynamics of the movement in an
absolutely wrong way. According to Carsten, 'hardly anyone noticed that
the fascists represented a completely new force and
revolutionary which could not have been 'framed' or subjected to checks,

but would have continued to develop its own dynamism and would
have finally canceled the old order". 124
The current interpretation of Fascism has consequently focused its

attention on the rational foundation of the ideologies of mass revolutionary
movements, as an indicator of their intentions. Eugen «Weber proposed to
seek the « essence » of such movements in « doctrines to which they
have not yet 'arrived' ». 125 The struggle to achieve and maintain power
requires all the necessary compromises and adjustments when the
revolution has to bend to the demands of traditional strategy and
tactics. But the ideology remains as proof of a substantial
predisposition, a predisposition which, in the case of Fascism, was already
evident from the very first formulations.
Throughout its history, Fascism revealed itself as a mass

revolutionary movement composed of various social and class strata
supporting a revolutionary counter-aristocracy towards a position of
power in which the entire state apparatus was, in the words of GDH
Cole, "dedicated to issuing positive orders, in the name of the
awakened nation, to the capitalists themselves as well as to the defeated
workers and middle classes [...] In the ensuing struggle, victory went
to neither large nor small capitalists." He didn't go to any classes;
fascism, in fact, although it had fought the working class and used the
other classes as its tools, is not essentially a class movement
if [...] Instead of [...] controlling fascism, the big capitalists were controlled
by it and were forced to subordinate their impulses to profit to the
demands of the fascist state as organizer of national aggression
». 123
This analysis is essentially the same as that of Iring Fetscher.

Fascism was a revolutionary movement led by a declassed minority counter-
aristocracy, which, while it exploited whatever help it could get from
the interest groups it found in its path, represented no particular
interest. 11 Fascism posed a threat both to the immediate special
interests of the industrial bourgeoisie and to those of working-class
movements. The
main particular aim of Fascism, explicit in its formulations since 1921,

was "the destruction of political and social pluralism and the
establishment of the absolute government of a new * aristocracy ...", 127
at the service of what was considered the rebirth national.
Fascism was a minority movement of national insurrection, a national

totalitarianism which thought it could give birth to a social and political
order in which all classes, strata and categories would be united under
the leadership of a single party to restore greatness of Italy. The
circumstances in which the movement matured influenced its political
tactics and historical expression. In a partially industrialized society, the
movement found itself having to contend with a particular set of forces
which gave it its local and contingent character. One of his earliest
concerns, as Franz Borkenau has pointed out, was the rapid expansion
of the nation's industrial potential, a prerequisite for competition in the
modern world. To expand this potential both social peace and a rapid
accumulation of investment capital were needed. 128 Such concerns
explain, at least in part, tactics and strategy with respect to
employment relations issues. In order to create an industrial basis for a
modern society, systems as diverse as Soviet Communism and
African socialism also suppressed workers' traditional right to
strike, regulated trade unions and favored capital accumulation, at
least initially, in the hands of a particular class of entrepreneurs.
The period of the New Economic Program (NEP) in the Soviet
Union represents this phase; the current position of trade unions
as state entities and the creation of attractive investment
opportunities for foreign capital in African socialist states highlight
similar trends.
Fascism, however, arose in a partially industrialized society, in which

there were pre-established and very complex vital interests
(represented in particular by a traditional aristocracy, a military class
and an historic church) which constituted as many centers of social,
economic and independent politics. Fascism was forced, due to its
particular history as a heretical socialist movement, to ally itself with the
available forces, which were essentially conservative. The
movement, in itself, was not conservative. It was revolutionary. His clear

intention was to destroy all
social, economic and political artifices of classical liberalism. To

implement this purpose, once orthodox socialism and communism were
no longer adversaries for power or valid opponents, Fascism
undertook the long and continuous struggle against the aristocracy,
the Church and the bourgeois representatives of big industry.
The totalitarian movements that developed in substantially different

societies had different and sometimes unique characteristics. Bolshevism's
battles against its opponents were more direct and consequently more
violent. The aristocracy and the Church in Russia had been greatly
discredited by military defeat in the war. Soviet Russia was able, in 1924,
to embark with fewer qualms on a totalitarian program of much
greater breadth and intensity.
African socialism, in turn, has totalitarian and solidarity aspirations. The

unique conditions accompanying the anti-colonialist struggle have
provided him with at least a temporary consensus with which to attempt
the creation of some form of national socialism. Its ideological attitudes
and apparent intentions are totalitarian and national, its rationale
singularly fascist. The evident lack of aggressiveness probably
depends on the profound underdevelopment of the countries on
which it acts. The incapacity of African socialism to implement totalitarian
controls within the one-party state can be interpreted in the same way.
Totalitarian political practice is the consequence of the union of
totalitarian intentions with the right infrastructure, capable of sustaining
the monopoly of information and weapons, and with an industrial base that
makes planning and bureaucratic control a real possibility. Finally,
totalitarian control requires a sufficiently literate population to make
political propaganda effective.
TOTALITARIAN IDEOLOGY
Totalitarian political movements express their intentions in a set of related

propositions that have both emotional force and gnoseological
value: in an ideology, that is. Italian Fascism, the
Fascism, that is, which has been the subject of the study of this volume,
provides its most coherent and solid expression. All the other
totalitarian movements have either wholly or predominantly adopted the
ideology of Fascism, or they have been forced, by the logic of the social
and political situation, of proselytism, mobilization and control, to create its analogue.
Mussolini's Fascism represents the best example of a national and

totalitarian mass revolutionary movement, inasmuch as the fascist ideology
constitutes the only valid and coherent rational foundation for a society in
which the "people" identify themselves, with nothing left behind. outside,
with the « State », in which a single minority party holds (or aspires to
obtain) absolute power. Leninism constitutes an insubstantial and
inconsistent rationale for the society created by the Leninists.
National Socialism turned out to be ultimately devoted not so much to

the nation as a charismatic object of allegiance as to a vaguely
defined racial community. African Socialism has proved to be more
coherent, and its ideology, in fact, is closer to that of Fascism.
Eugen Weber has recently pointed out that the rational foundation of
Fascisms which develop in substantially agricultural,
underdeveloped and underindustrialised environments, whose base is
generally peasants, and which are led by declassed intellectuals, assume
the characteristics of African "slave" cults. The functional and
organizational myths used are myths of community union by functional
analogy with the fascist myths. 129 Romanians, for example, in a largely
agricultural nation, saw themselves as a colony population governed
by a small clique of foreign capitalists. In 1938, the Romanian Encyclopedia
stated that "all the manufactured articles sold in our provinces come
from Austria and Prussia [...] our goods are bought at very low prices, like
those of any other colony...". Foreign capital and control created a
situation of constant danger for Romania, that is, the danger "of
remaining forever, openly or covertly, a colony of foreigners.
This not only keeps national life in a state of poverty, exploitation and
slavery, but also slowly leads to political servitude and the suffocation
of any attempt to conquer in the world the place to which Romania has a
right". 130
The Romanian fascists exploited this situation and their language

was absolutely identical to that of the Corridonian nationalists of pre-
fascist Italy and that of anti-colonialist Africa. Labriola and his trade
unionists had also defined Italy as a colony of "plutocratic Europe", while
Edmondo Rossoni, head of the Fascist trade unions, had maintained
that the Italians were the "niggers" of European capitalism. 131
Senghór and Nkrumah took the same positions. The fascists have
regularly and systematically made use of the language of moral offense
against the "interventionism" and "imperialism" of the "plutocratic and
capitalist powers", a language which finds its natural echo in the
declamations of contemporary national socialisms of underdeveloped countries . 132
In societies where there is no valid class-based mass movement, fascist

and proto-fascist movements can unequivocally define themselves as
"socialist", with the constant reservation, however, that their
socialism is nationalist, elitist, authoritarian and productionist, i.e. say fascist.
What have traditionally been termed "fascist" regimes can more

reasonably be regarded as revolutionary and totalitarian mass
movements that came to power in partially advanced industrial societies;
societies in which there are already strong owning classes with many
social connections and peripheral elements threatened by
deprivation. Fascist movements therefore come to power in situations in
which it is necessary for them to accept, at least initially, some compromise with
existing interests if they do not want the revolution to be smothered in

bloodshed or the productionist aspirations of the movement totally
frustrated. Thus, regimes founded on mass revolutionary movements
termed "fascists" in political essays are essentially extremist
mass movements supported by traditional, conservative landowning
aristocracies. Historically, this support has been the conservative
reaction to the existence of a massive and endogenous classist mass
movement, which not only threatened the propertied aristocracies with
dispossession and curbed social mobility, but also threatened national
solidarity. The existence of such adversaries, however, is neither
neither necessary nor sufficient for the emergence or for the political
success of fascist movements, recognized as such even in the ambit
of traditional interpretations. The success of Peronism in Argentina and that of
Codreanu in Romania did not require the simultaneous presence of a strong
classist opposition movement. The existence of this opposition
obviously facilitates the proselytism of the fascist mass movements in
situations where there are well-articulated classes and productive
categories. The price that the fascist movements have to pay for this
proselytism is an attenuation and even a possible failure of their revolutionary
goals. Fascist movements in Europe have historically only come to power
with the help of clearly non-fascist allies.
In the case of Italian Fascism, the struggle between conservative and
revolutionary elements behind the facade of the monolithic regime continued
throughout the twenty years and during the war years, years in which there
was a massive betrayal of the regime by conservative elements who found
themselves in key positions of the state, economy and military high commands.
Only with the catastrophe of the military defeat did the fascist movement
manage to separate itself from the conservative elements that had helped it to
come to power. Freed from the weight of these "allies", Fascism
clearly revealed itself as a radical revolutionary movement. The circumstances
which accompanied National Socialism in Germany were similar in many
important respects. National Socialism came to power with the connivance
of the landed and strategic aristocracies of the old regime.
Some commentators have deliberately misinterpreted this fact, to imply that
National Socialism was a movement dedicated to the protection of vested
interests. 133 The conservative forces that had allied themselves with
National Socialism, on the other hand, soon had to capitulate in the face of its
evident power. National Socialism, like Italian Fascism, was intrinsically neither
pro-capitalist nor anti-worker,134 but attempted to build a society in which
classes, categories and denominations merged into a general
charismatic community.
Fascisms of this type develop in industrial communities where the classes are
sufficiently articulated and vital and where there is a traditional aristocracy
under the threat of being overthrown or downgraded. These forces lend their aid
to the fascist movements and either absorb them, as in the Spanish case, or
hold them back, as in the case, for a period of
quite a long time, Italian, or they submit, as in the case of National

Socialist Germany.
Much of Barrington Moore's study of fascism focuses on the

presence of traditional aristocratic and landed elements in fascist
regimes. 135 But fascist regimes, according to the common sense of
the term, have always represented the union of the fascist movement
with non-fascist allies. 135 Whether the fascist movement managed to
win over its original allies, in a direct situation, after the conquest of the
state by the fascists, depends on the circumstances present in
each individual milieu. In any environment, the movement has radical
and totalitarian aspirations. Circumstances may force him to
abandon the revolutionary program or to specify it
abundantly. The movement, however, retains its totalitarian and
revolutionary aspirations and if there is a change in the
disposition of forces these aspirations govern the renewed dynamics of
the movement itself. In situations where conservative allies do not
exist or are not needed, the totalitarian and national development goals
of the movement are termed "socialist." That such socialism has very
little to do with the internationalist, distributionist, Jjbertarian,
democratic and classist socialism of the last century is more than
obvious. In a sense, it can be said that the contemporary radical
mass revolutionary movements, animated by nationalist and
developmental intentions and by totalitarian aspirations, are variants of classical Fasc
/ CONTEMPORARY FASCISM
Such fascist or semi-fascist movements are found at one end of the

continuum occupied by contemporary mass revolutionary movements.
They constitute an extreme type: their aim is the rapid attainment of a
high position for positionless national communities. To this end,
all energies are mobilized and directed, under the hegemony of the
single party, in a community regime of a totalitarian nature.
The circumstances accompanying rapid industrialization in the

modern world appear to favor resource mobilisation, resource
allocation and centralized economic direction. Development today
requires larger programs, more central control and more intense
capital investment than it has ever required before in the history of national
industrialization. Furthermore, it tends to require substantial changes in the
traditional structure of society, a structure which generally prevents
rapid technological change. 137 It seems that for rapid development revolutionary
ideologies are needed that are designed to destroy traditional loyalties and
conventions: ideologies that favor the revolutionary change of the current
pattern of rights and duties and also favor the political centralization of the
processes of deliberation, decision and direction. Such ideologies, in order
to implement their historic mandate, must, strictly speaking, attempt to
reduce individual anxiety
go
during times of great moral tension and long sacrifice, by increasing collective
self-confidence through the use of collective ritual, exhortation and self-
censorship. Such attempts involve, to be minimally successful, the control of
information and the systematic suspension of dissidence. Furthermore,
these ideologies are asked to provide the basis for common sentiments, to
indicate goals shared by all and to communicate a sense of identity and
collective solidarity which is the basis of spontaneous discipline and habitual
conformity. Consequently, it is to be expected that such ideologies make less
and less reference to the existence of internal class enemies, instead trying to
shift the hostilities that discipline and sacrifice tend to generate against real or
imaginary external adversaries. They tend to explicitly reject all forms of political
liberalism, individualism and pluralism, which are the natural products of liberalism,
and to give ever greater importance to the organic and natural character of the
national society. 138 In essence, these ideologies tend to assume ever
more clearly the typical characteristics of classic Fascism, that is, of the first
fully articulated ideology born in the twentieth century in defense of a national
and socialist totalitarianism.
NOTE
Warning - The following abbreviations have been used in the notes:
CF - G. Gentile, What is fascism?, Vallecchi, Florence, 1925.

EPM - K. Marx, Economie and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Mosca s.d.
FD - G. Gentile, Foundations of the philosophy of law. Sansoni, Florence,

1955. GG - Giovanni Gentile: life and thought. Sansoni, Florence, 1948-61, 9
flights.
GS - G. Gentile, Genesis and structure of society. Sansoni, Florence, 1946.
1F - G. Gentile, Introduction to philosophy, Treves, Rome, 1933.
OD - G. Gentile, Origins and doctrine of fascism. Libreria del Littorio,

Rome, 1929. Work - B. Mussolini, Opera omnia. La Fenice, Florence, 1951-61,
36 flights.
PF - G. Gentile, Preliminaries to the study of the child. Sansoni, Florence,

1958.
RE - G. Gentile, Reform of education. Sansoni, Florence, 1955.
NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE
1 See PA Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, New York 1962,

passim, but above all III, 486 et seq.; see also PA Sorokin, The Crisis of our
Age, New York 1941.
2 D. Bell, he End of Ideology, New York 1962, p. 333; P. Corbett,

Ideologies, New York 1965, pp. 12 e segg.; H. D. Aiken, « Moralily and
Ideology», in Ethics and Society, a cura di R. T. De George, Garden City,
N.Y., 1966, p. 161; C. B. Macpherson, « Revolution and Ideology in thè
Late Twentieth Century », in Revolution, a cura di C. J. Friedrich, New
York 1966, p. 140.
3 C. Johnson, Revolution and thè Social System, Stanford 1964.
4 This characteristics syndrome is an abbreviation of the one proposed

by CJ Friedrich and ZK Brzezinski, in Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy,
New York 1962, pp. 9 et seq. This was necessary to try to reduce the number
of assumptions that otherwise would have been
required by the quoted text. See also CJ Friedrich, "The Unique Character of
Totalitarian Society", in Totalitarianism, edited by CJ Friedrich, New York 1964,
pp. 52 and following, and R. Aron, Democratie et totalilarisme, Saint Amand
1965, pp. 287 et seq.
5 cfr. F. Engels, "Principles of Communism", in Marx-Engels Werke, Berlin

1959, IV, 372; H. Kelsen, "On the essence and value of democracy", in
Archive for Social Science and Social Policy, XLVII (1920), 82, 56.
6 B. Russell, Roads lo Freedom, New York 1966, p. 21.
7 VI Lenin, "Revolution and the State", in Selected Works. Moscow, 1964, XXV,
456.
8 A. Meyer, Leninismi New York 1962, p. 58.
9 In 1905 Lenin argued that the democratic "elective principle" can govern the
organization of the Party only in "situations of political freedom"; this would
suggest that in a political democracy a Leninist party would have to abandon
the characteristics of hierarchical "democratic centralism" needed in an
autocratic political environment.
See Lenin, « General Plan of the Decisions of the Third Congress », in
Selected Works, VIII, 186, See A. Meyer, op. cit., chap. 5.
10 Cfr. R. Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution and Leninism and Marxism Ann
,Arbor 1962.
11 FV Konstantinov, Foundations of Marxist Philosophy, Berlino 1964. pp. 567

e segg.
12 V. 1. Lenin, « Rivoluzione e Stato », op. cit., p. 387; N. S. Kruscev,

Report on thè Program of thè Communist Party of thè Soviet Union, New York
1961, p. 107.
13 VI Lenin, "Revolution and the State", op. cit., p. 468.
14 NS Khrushchev, op. cit., pp. 108-109.

15 The controversy on the General Line of the International

Communist Movement (Beijing. 1965), p. 445.
16 cfr. AF Schischkin, Foundations of Marxist Ethics, Berlino 1964, pp.

532 e segg.; The Foundations of Communist Education.
Soviet Academy of Pedagogical Science. Berlin 1964, p. 147.
17 G. L. Mosse, « Introduction: The Genesis of Fascism », in Journal of

Conlemporary History, I, 1 (1966), 14; H. Seton-Watson, « Fascism. Right
and Left ». Ibid., p. 183.
18 S. W. Halperin, Mussolini and Italian Fascism, New York 1964, p. 71; J.

Comas, « Racial Myths », in Race and Science, New York 1961, p. 34.
19 E. Nolte, The Three Faces of Fascism, New York 1966, p. 240. (ir.:it.: The
three faces of fascism, Mondadori, Milan 1971).
20 E. Weber, Varielies of Fascism, New York 1964, p. 9. Even a

serious scholar like Barrington Moore Jr. makes this mistake. See b.
Moore. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Boston 1966.
21 H. S. Harris, The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile, Urbana 1960.
22 M. Rosental and P. Iudin, Diccionario philosophical abreviado,

Montevideo 1959, p. 182. This interpretation is taken up uncritically in the
majority of studies from Leninist sources. See M. Bohr and A. Kosing,
Kleines Woerterbuch der marxislischleninistischen Philosophie, Berlin 1966, p. 56.
23 L. Trotsky, Fascism: What It Is; How to Fighi II, New York 1944, p. 11.
Cfr. R. De Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, New York 1934, p.
80.
24 CJ Friedrich and ZK Brzezinski, op. cit., chap. The; A. Acquarone,

The organization of the totalitarian state, Einaudi, Turin 1965, cap. v.
5 Cfr. E. Weber, « The Men of thè Arcangel », in Journal of Contemporary

History, I, 1 (1966), pp. 101-26; S. M. Lipset, Politicai Man, New York
1963, chap. V; WG Runciman, Social Science and Politicai Theory , New York
1965, pp. 150 per segg.
28 R. De Felice, Mussolini the revolutionary, 1883-1920, Einaudi, Turin, 1965,

chap. IX; G. Pini and D. Susmel, Mussolini: the man and the work, La
Fenice. Florence 1953, I, chap. Cowardly.
27 R. De Felice, History of Italian Jews under Fascism. Einaudi, Turin 1962, p. 286.
28 B. Moore, op. cit., p. 447.
29 “We must keep in mind that human life is sacred. Why? Because man is
spirit and as such possesses absolute value. Things are the means, men are the
ends.' CF, p. 35.
30 A. Hitler, Mein Kampf, Cambridge, Mass., 1943, pp. 291-300.
31 Cf. WG Runciman, op. cit., chap. Vile; I. Berlin, "Does Political Theory
Styles Exist?" », in Philosophy, Politics and Society, Second Series, edited by P.
Laslett and WG Runciman, Oxford 1964, pp. 1-33.
32 cfr. T. Pirker, Comintern and Fascism: Documentary on the history and theory
of fascism, Stoccarda 1966; IM Cammett, «Communist Theories. of Fascism,
1920-1935 », in Science and Society, XXXI, (Primavera 1967), pp. 149-63;
L. Fetscher, "On the Critique of the Western Marxist Concept of Fascism," in Karl
Marx and Marxism, Monaco 1967, pp. 219-37.
33 R. De Palme Dutt, op. cit., pp. 177, 178, 81.
34 Washington Post editorial, February 15, 1944.
35 D. Katz e H. Cantril, « An Analysis of Attitudes Toward Fascism and

Communism », in Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, XXXV (1940),
p. 362.
36 R. Stagner, « Fascist Attitudes: An Exploratory Study », in Journal of

Social Psychology, VII (1936), 310, 318; A. L. Edvvards, « Unlabeled
Fascist Attitudes », in Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, XXXVI
(1941), p. 575.
37 R. De Palme Dutt, op. cit., p. 190.
38 J. F. Brown, Psychology and thè Social Order, New York 1936, pp. 337-
338.
39 T. W. Adorno, E. Freclel-Brunswik, D. J. Levinson, R. N. Sanford, The

Authoritarian Personalily, New York 1950, p. 1.
40 R. Brown, Social Psychology, New York 1965, p. 478; cfr. p. 485.
41 Only subtle tests have been attempted, at best, to validate instruments

such as California's "Fascist Scale". TS extension
Cohn and H. Carsh subjected the workers of a cosmetics factory in
Germany to the F Scale test (TS Cohn and H. Carsh, «
Administration of the F Scale to a Sample of Germans », in Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology, XLIX, [1954]). It turned out that the
average response score given by their sample was the highest recorded up
to that time. But since it was not indicated how many of the German
workers had been, if any, state, or were National Socialists, the results
can hardly be understood as expressing any proven validation even for the
less fascist of National Socialist attitudes. Such validation procedures, as
long as they use population samples composed of National Socialists, cannot
confirm the claim that Scale F measures fascist attitudes, unless one makes
the auxiliary assumption that the same attitudes underlie both National
Socialism and of Fascism; assumption for which there is, if any, very little
factual evidence.
Another attempt at validating Scale F was made by Thelma Coulter,

who tested some members of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union Movement:
a group defined as "declared fascists" (cf. H.
Eysenck, The Psychology of Politics, [London 1954]). The average score was
one of the highest recorded. Brown believed these results were "
a valid confirmation of the fact that Scale F measures fascist tendencies »

(T. Brown, Social Psychology, p. 528). However, numerous legitimate
reservations can be made against this statement.
First of all, the fact that the British Union Movement had attracted, for all
purposes and purposes, only National Socialist sympathizers since its
pre-war incubation period. A study of the content of its doctrinaire and
propaganda literature clearly shows the predominance of National
Socialist themes. From the end of the war on, Mosley's movement
exploited racial tensions in Britain. Indeed, the sample represents, if it
represents anything, National Socialist beliefs as they were understood
by Englishmen.
Furthermore, very few, if any, of the national leaders and members of

Mosley's group, either before or after the war, could read Italian.
Whatever conception they had of Fascism, however, it was exclusively
the by-product of the English-language material available. Since the prevailing
stereotype fostered by this material defined Fascism as superconservative,
anti-radical, and anti-Semitic, British Union members were mostly, if not
exclusively, those who responded positively to the English-language
stereotype. Testing on British Union members to validate an instrument
such as the F Scale exploits some of the elements found in self-fulfilling
prophecies. Intellectuals in Britain "understood" Fascism as an extreme
conservatism of the middle classes. As a result, some particularly hard-line
conservatives from the middle classes (or from any other class) called
themselves fascists. They were tested on the F Scale and found to be
middle-class extremist conservatives. See also II. II. Hyman and PB Sheatsley,
« The Authoritarian Personality - A Methodological Critique », in Studies in
the Scope and Method of « The Authoritarian Personality », edited
by R.
Christie by M. Jahoda. Glencoe 1954, pp. 50-122.
42 G. D. H. Cole, The Meaning of Marxim, Ann Arbor 1964, p. 149 e

segg.. 147.
43 Cfr. H. S. Hughes, Consciousness and Society, New York 1958 (tr. it. :
Coscienza e società, Torino 1967 - N.d.R.), p. 272; R. Michels, First
Lectures in Politicai Sociology, New York 1965, pp. 113-15, 119, 126, 128, 131, 137,
153; C. Gini, « The Scientific Basis of Fascism », in Politicai Science Quarterly,
XLII (marzo 1927).
44 See R. Melis, Italian Syndicalists, Rome 1964, p. 144.
45 G. Bottai, Twenty years and a day, Cernusco sul Naviglio 1949.
46 R. De Felice, Mussolini, p. 86; G. Roux, Life of Mussolini, Rome 1961, p. 33.
NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO
1 N. Colajanni, Latins and Anglo-Saxons, Rome 1906, pp. 370 and following.
2 R. Michels, Elements of the History of the Emergence of Imperialism in Italy,
Berlin 1912, p. 58.
3 cfr. LM Hartmann, One Hundred Years of Italian History 1815-1915, Monaco,
1916, p. 190.
4 G. Giolitti, Memoirs of my life, Stoccolma, 1923, p. 85
5 V. Pareto, The Mind and Society, New York 1935, II, par. 855.
6 Cfr. J. Meisel, The Myth of thè Ruling Class: Gaetano Mosca and thè « Elite »,
Ann Arbor 1958, p. 169-183 © introduced by A. Livingston a G. .

Mosca, The Ruling Class, New York, 1939, pp. 36-3 Cfr. also G.
Prezzoline « Il 'reazionezionario 1 Pareto », in la Destra, February 1972, with an
unpublished letter from Pareto on the problem of priority.
7 See Pareto, Course of political economy, Turin 1949, II, par. 624, 659-662.
8 Mosca and Gumplowicz date the publication of Der Rassenkampf to al

1881 (Moscow,
The Ruling Class, p. 331; L. Gumplowicz, Die sociologische Staatsidee, Innsbruck

1902, p. 111). The only edition I could find is dated 1883 (Innsbruck). In the
preface to The Outlines of Sociology, Philadelphia 1899, Gumplowick dates the
publication of Der Rassenkampf to 1883. While not touching all of this on the question
of priority, given that Rechtstaat und Socialismus was published in 1881,
nevertheless some confusion seems to exist. All references to Der Rassenkampf in this
book are to the 1883 edition.
9 Cfr. J. Burnham, The Machiavellians, Chicago 1943. (tr. it.: / difensori della
freedom, Milan 1947). j
10 See G. Lundberg, Can Science Save Us?, New York 1961, for a typical
formulation of contemporary sociological positivism. See P.
Sorokin, Contemporary Sociological Theories, New York 1928, p. 40 e sec.
11 G. Mosca, Theory of Governments and Parliamentary Government, Turin 1925, p.

16.
12 G. Mosca, Elements of political science, Bari, 1939, Vol. I, p. 83.
13 In this exhibition we refer to Systems because the work appears during the
period we are dealing with. The Treaty was only published in 1916 after Mussolini
had already formulated his own fundamental political and social concepts.
14 See Pareto, Socialist Systems, Turin, 1954, p. 19.
15 See Pareto, Course II, par. 667, 993.
16 This conclusion is already implicit in the Corso, li, par. 624.
17 V. Pareto, Systems, pp. 24-31.

18 L. Gumplowicz, Rechtsstaat und Socialismus, Innsbruck, 1881, p. 503
19 L. Gumplowicz, Race Struggle, pp. 193, 206, 218.
20 L. Gumplowicz, Outlines of Sociology, p. 117 and sec.,
21 L. Gumplowicz, Race Struggle, p. 207. Cfr. outlines, p. 207; The

Sociological State Idea, Innsbruck 1902, pp. 3 e seg.
22 Ibid., p. 219.
23 ibid., p. 234
24 See Pareto, Corso, II, par. 624.
25 Ibid., par. 661 et seq.
26 L. Gumplowicz, Race Struggle, pp. 231-240.
27 Cfr. Preface by G. Salomon and L. Gumplowicz, Geschichte der

Slaalstheorien, Innsbruck 1926, p. 7; and H. Becker and HE Barnes, Social
Thought from Boredom to Science, New York 1961, III, p. 1005.
28 See the comments by M. Delle Piane, Gaetano Mosca, class politics

and liberalism, Naples 1952, p. 55, no. 10.
29 G. Mosca, Elements..., p. 239 et seq.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., p. 115.
32 Cf. Ibid., pp. 116, 152 et seq.
33 Ibid., pp. 105 and following, 211 and following.
34 Ibid., p. 116.
35 V. Pareto, Systems, p. 80.

36 Ibid., p. 45.
37 Cf. Ibid., p. 28 and sec.
38 V. Pareto, The Mind and Society, II, par. 868, III, par. 1397.
39 V. Pareto, Systems, p. 41.
40 Ibid., p. 85.
41 L. Gumplowicz, Righteousness and Socialism, pp. 111-14. 86, 100; V. Pareto,

System, pp. 27, 530 seg.; G. Mosca, Ruling Class, p. 190.
42 L. Gumplowicz, Outlines of Sociology, p. 121, 126.
43 L. Gumplowicz, Rechtsstaal und Socialismus, p. 133
44 See Pareto, Systems, p. 25; G. Mosca, Ruling Class, p. 51, see 154 et seq., 184,
187. Gumplowicz proposes these conceptions in all his works, but we find them
expressed in Soziaiphilosophie im Umriss, Innsbruck 1910, pp. 123-127 in a particularly
explicit way. See L. Gumplowicz, Rechtsstaat und Socialismus, p. 500.
45 G. Mosca, Elements..., p. 85, 87 and following.
46 L. Gumplowicz, Outlines of Sociology, pp. 143, 146.
47 L. Gumplowicz, The State of Right and Socialism, pp. 111-14. 503-505; V. Pareto,
System, pp. 24-36; G. Fly, Elements..., p. 105 and segg.
48 Cfr. L. Gumplowicz, Rassenkampf, p. 228, Outlines of Sociology, p.

112. We cite only elements of this type found in the works of Gumplowicz: their existence
in the works of Mosca and Pareto is too well known to need to be explicitly mentioned.
49 G. Mosca enunciates these theses in a particularly clear way in Elementi..., p.

255 et seq.
50 D. T. Campbell e R. A. Levine, « A proposai for cooperative cross cultural

research on ethnocentrism », in Journal of Conflict Resolution, V, marzo 1961, 83.
51 Cfr. J. Gould e W. L. Kolb, A Dictionary of thè Social Sciences, New York;

1964, p. 245.
52 W. G. Summer, Folkways, New York 1960, pp. 541, n. 75; 543, n. 69; 547, nn.
3 e 5; 574.
53 L. Gumplowicz, Rechtsstaat and Socialismus, pp. 70-73.
54 L. Gumplowicz, Crusades, pp. 236-239; Outlines of Sociology, p.

123; Rule of law and socialism, p. 74
55 L. Gumplowicz, Rassenkampf, p. 248; Outlines of Sociology, pp. 10-11. 139 ,

141 - 143 .
56 L. Gumplowicz, Outlines of Sociology, pp. 157-177. In 1902 these ideas were

fully articulated in Die sociologische Staatsidee, pp. 205-214.
57 L. Gumplowicz, The Sociological State Idea, pp. 94 th seg., n. 1, 209.
58 See M. Delle Piane, op. cit., Meisel, op. cit. Passim.
59 R. Michels, Politicai Parlies, New York 1959, p. 379.
60 Ibid., p. 390 et seq.
61 K. Marx and F. Engels, « The Communist Manifesto », in Selected Works in two

volumes, Moscow 1955, I, pp. 36, 44.
62 All commentators of Sore! speak of this deficiency, of which Sorel himself was
aware. See G. Sorel, Reflections on Violence, Glencoe 1950, pp. 31-34.
63 H. Barth, Mass and Myth: The Theory of Dewalt: Georges Sorel, Amburgo
1959, pp. 10 e seg., 18 c seg.; E. von Beckerath, Essence and
Were the Fascist States, Berlin 1927, p. 26; J. Variot, Proposals of Georges Sorel, Parigi 1935, pp.
31, 261; Cfr. commonplace Fr Andreu, Sorel, Our Master, Rome, 1966. p. 256.
84 Cfr. J. Meisel, The Genesis of Georges Sorel. Ann Arbor 1951. p. 41, n.
91: G. Sorel, op. cit., p. 73. n. 11.
65 G. Sorel, op. cit.. pp. 101-1 142 e seg.
68 G. Sorel, « The Decomposition of Marxisni ». in I. Horowitz, Radicalism and thè

Revolt against Reason: The Social Theories of Georges Sorel, New York 1961, pp. 226-228,
245-247: a Apology for Violenee » in Reflections, p. 301.
67 G. Sorel, Reflections. pp. 87, 133, 269.
68 See Introduction by V. Racca to G. Sorel, Critical essays on Marxism, Milan 1903, p. 12. ,
69 G. Sorel, Essays, p. 163 and following.
70 G. Sorel, Reflections. pp. 100-1 189. 194. Cfr. G. Sorel, Saggi, pp. 101-1 38-40: I.
Horowitz, op. cit., pp. 100-1 60 e sec.
71 G. Sorel, Reflections, p. 189.
72 Cfr. G. Sorel, « Unity and Multiplicity », in Reflections. pp. 279-300. e anche p. 247.
74 G. Sorel quotes Nietzsche, Reflections, p. 257
75 K. Marx e F. Engels, op. cit., p. 48.

78 AO Olivetti, Contemporary Questions, Naples 1913, pp. 24, 104. This is a

reprint of the 1906 edition.
77 Ibid., p. 154.
78 G. Sorel, Sage, p. 39; Reflections, p. 194.
79 V. Pareto, Systems, p. 27; Mind and Society, IV, par. 2182, 2184 e seg.,
2189 e seg.
80 Cf. Meisel, Genesis, pp. 89 et seq., 292.
81 cfr. L. Gumplowicz, The Rule of Law and Socialism, p. 26
82 L. Gumplowicz, Outlines, pp. 178, 136, 133.
83 Cf. F. Engels, "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", in K.
Marx and F. Engels, op. cit., II, 317-321; SW Moore, The Critique of Capitalist
Democracy, New York 1957, chap. 1; J. Bahlon, Hegel und die Marxistische
Staatslehre, Bonn 1963, pp. 132-141.
84 F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, Mosca, 1962, pp. 219-254.
85 G. Sorel, « Necessity and fatalism in Marxism », in Essays, pp. 59-94.
88 G. Sorel, Essays, p. 270.
87 G. Sorel, Reflections, p. 142. Sorel refers in particular to « Marx's errors »

which are « numerous and sometimes egregious ».
88 I. Horowitz, op. cit., p. 127.
89 G. Sorel, a Socialist future of trade unions”, Materials of a theory of the

pròletarial, Paris 1929, p. 127
90 R. Humphrev, Georges Sorel: Prophet Wilhout Honor, Cambridge,

Mass., 1951, p. 69.
91 G. Sorel, Reflections, p. 55 e sec.
92 Ibid., p. 57.
93 The literature on the relationships between Sorel, Bergson, James and

Nietzsche is abundant; see R. Humphrey, op. cit., chap. II; I. Horowitz, op. cit., pp.
39-56; G. La Ferla, Portrait of Georges Sorel, Milan 1933, pp. 58 and following;
Barth, op. cit., pp. 72 and following.
94 G. Sorel, De l'utilité du pragmatisme, Paris 1928, pp. 46 et seq.
96 Ibid., p. 48
97 G. Sorel, Reflections. p. 140.
98 Ibid., pp. 136 et seq.
99 Ibid., p. 144.
100 G. Sorel, « Multiplicity and Unity », in Ibid., p. 300.
101 Ibid., p. 52.
102 Ibid., p. 142.
103 Ibid., p. 140.
104 V. Pareto, "Georges Sorel," in The Round (1922), p. 542.
107 Ibid., p. 68.
108 Cfr. I. Horowitz, op. cit., pp. 36-39.

109 G. Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of thè Popular Mind, Londra 1952, p.
41. Le Bon speaks of « crowds » instead of a social elements »; however, the term "crazy"
for Le Bon indicates variously composed and structured social groups. In the generic term
"crazy" he includes sects, parties, castes, classes and nations. To simplify the exposition, we
will call these various types of social groups by the generic term of "social elements". See Book
III, chap. THE.
110 Ibid., p. 70; Cf. p. 116.
111 Ibid., p. 21.
112 Ibid., pp. 80 and sec.
113 G. Sorel, Saggi, pp. 97 and seg., Reflections, p. 240.
115 Ibid., p. 167.
118 G. Sorel, « Multiplicity and Unity », Ibid., p. 298.
117 Ibid., p. 300.
118 E. Shil, Introduction to Ibid., p. 17.
119 Ibid., p. 158.
12° Ibid.
121 Ibid., p. 53.
122 G. Sorel, « Apology for Violence », Ibid.. p. 302.
123 G. Sorel, Essays, pp. 99 and following.
124 E. Shill, in Sorel, Reflections, p. 18.
125 Ibid., p. 277.

128 According to the quote by J. Meisel, Genesis, p. 219.
127 See E. Corradini. Political speeches, Florence, 1923. pp. 85-87, 128-130,
132-134; The will of Italy, Naples, 1911, pp. 116-120 199-201; Tripoli time. Milan,
1911. p. 227-241.
128 Cf. J. Meisel, Genesis, pp. 218 ff.
129 E. Corradini, Political speeches, pp. 36 and following; The unity and power of
nations, Florence, 1922, p. 61, 89-91; Italian nationalism, Milan. 1914, p. 5.
130 E. Corradini, The shadow of life, p. 287.
131 Ibid., p. 286; Italian nationalism, p. 11.
132 E. Corradini, The unity and power of nations, pp. 208 et seq.
133 Ibid., pp. 61 et seq., 221 et seq.
134 Ibid. 256-259.
135 E. Corradini, Italian nationalism, p. 234.
136 E. Corradini, Political speeches, pp. 173 et seq.
137 E. Corradini, The national life, pp. 37 et seq.
138 E. Corradini, The will of Italy, pp. 174 and following.
139 E. Corradini, Political speeches, p. 58.
140 Ibid., p. 60.
141 E. Corradini, The unity and power of nations, pp. 117-123.
142 For a synthetic exposition of Corradini's ideas cf. J. Mannhardt, Der Faschismus,
Munich 1925, pp. 113-134.
143 Against parliamentarianism was written in 1895 and reprinted in the subsequent
editions of S. Sighele's Intelligence of the Crowd (Turin, 1922).
All references to Sighele's work are made to the aforementioned edition.
144 H. Barnes and II.E. Becker, op. cit.. III, 1008 et seq. date the publication
de The delinquent crowd of Sighele to 1903. It was published, however, in 1891.

Cfr. A.
Stratico, Collective psychology (Milan sd, but perhaps from 1905), p. 26.
145 Cfr. H. Spencer, The Study of Sociologv, Ann Arbor. •61, pp. 44 e seg.
148 A. Stratico, op. cit., pp. 26 et seq.
147 L. Gumplowicz, Die sociologica Staatsidee, p. 211. See G. Le Bon, op. cit., 27.
148 S. Sighele, The intelligence of the crowd, pp. 97 and following.
149 Ibid., pp. 111-119.
150 G. Le Bon, op. cit., p. 187. Cf. S. Sighele, op. cit.. p. 99.
151 S. Sighele, op. cit.. p. 125.
152 Ibid., p. 128.
153 Ibid., p. 132.
154 V. Pareto, Sistemi, pp. 58, 83, 521, 523.
155 L. Gumplowicz, Die sociologica Staatsidee, pp. 205-224. When Gumplowicz
wrote the Sozialphilosophie in Vmriss in 1910, Sighele's ideas were already an integral part
of his cultural heritage. lo6 See Pareto, Corso, II,
about. 1036.
157 E. Corradini, Pages of the sacred years, Milan, 1920, pp. 134-137.
158 E. Corradini, Political speeches, p. 38; see The will of Italy, pp. 161-165.
159 E. Corradini, Political speeches, pp. 56-58.
160 Ibid., pp. 54-61.
161 Ibid., p. 59.
162 E. Corradini, The will of Italy, pp. 177 et seq.
163 E. Corradini, Political speeches, p. 116.
164 "Manifesto of Futurism", in FT Marinetti. Futurism and fascism, Foligno, 1924, p. 21.
ifio « pri nio futurist political manifesto, 1909 », in FT Marinetti, op. cit., p. 22; and E.
Corradini, Political speeches, p. 196.
166 FT Marinetti, op. cit., pp. 58 sec.
168 Ibid., pp. 61, 66 et seq., 207-210.
169 Cfr. R. T. Clough, Futurismi The Story of a Modern Art Movement, New York 1961, p.
30.
170 R. Michels, op. cit., p. Cheap
171 Ibid., pp. 24 et seq., 25, nos. 5 and 6.
172 See R. Michels, First Lectures in Politics and Sociology, p. 63. Michels cites Moscow
Elements and Pareto Systems in this general sense; see
Political Parties, p. 16, no. 7; see also Fr. 379.
173 R. Michels, Politicai Parties, p. 86.
175 Ibid., p. 353.
176 Ibid., p. 390.
177 Ibid., p. 393.
178 R. Michels, First Lectures in Politicai Sociology, p. 160.
179 R. Albrecht-Carrik, Italy from Napoleon lo Mussolini, New York 1960, p.

147.
180 P. Alatri, The origins of fascism. Rome 1963.
181 B. Croce in La Stampa, 15 May 1924.
182 R. MacGregor-Hastie, The Day of thè Lion: The Rise and Fall of
Fascisi Italy (1922-1945), New York 1963, p. 29.
183 G. Megaro, .Mussolini in the Making, London 1938, p. 327.
184 Considering the difficulties encountered when dealing with a

contemporary and highly controversial character, one is forced, even if
sometimes reluctantly, to admit that perhaps such categorical and definitive
judgments require some clarifications, even if not extensive. The possible
sources of error are many, even when the research is objective and
conducted with the best intentions.
McGregor-Haslie. for example, to establish that Alessandro Mussolini, Benito's

father, had blue eyes, he cites a police report from 1876, which mentions
Alessandro. The quotation is very exact and confirmed by another police
report from 1882, dated 24 July, in which, among the
characteristics of the then twenty-eight-year-old Alessandro, mention is made of blue eyes.
But in 1902, when he was 48 years old, Alessandro Mussolini was
interrogated by the police following some electoral scuffles, and the related
report informs us that he had brown eyes. Many authors
they asserted, ready to swear by it, that Benito Mussolini's eyes were
definitely blue. Now, if it is possible to argue about such elementary
empirical facts, one cannot but wonder how much caution should be
exercised in making summary judgments concerning mental states,
moral predispositions, and psychological characteristics.
These considerations are particularly important when the study focuses on a

character who is normally spoken ill of, such as Mussolini. In this case
there is a tendency, more or less unconscious, to represent him in the
worst possible way. And this is the most generous interpretation of the
strange way in which the facts of Mussolini's private life have been treated
by MacGregor-Hastie. He informs us that "it is supposed" that in 1907, in
Tolmezzo, "Mussolini contracted syphilis, from which he did not recover for
the rest of his life". And what's more, a "student of law" who had known
Mussolini at that time. « died under mysterious circumstances in 1928;
there was talk of suicide but it could have been a way in which Mussolini
suppressed evidence and eliminated a witness ».
This passage, which begins with the "presumed" Luetic infection and ends
with a phrase that suggests that Mussolini "could" have had people
assassinated who might have diminished his figure, is instructive.
The proof of the alleged infection is taken from a book by Paolo Monelli that
saw the light in 1950. In 1953 Giorgio Pini and Duilio Susmel published the
first volume of a four-volume biography of the Duce, Mussolini: the man
and the work. In this volume they examined all the existing evidence regarding
the illness Mussolini contracted in 1907. Arnaldo Pozzi told them that
Mussolini's medical records and the painstaking autopsy to which his
body was subjected failed to reveal even the slightest trace of luetic
infection. . Mussolini's ailment was diagnosed in September 1907 as "acute
gonorrhea" by a specialist in Bologna.
MacGregor-Hastie refers to the work of Pini and Susmel in his notes and in his
biography, and yet prefers to ignore the results of their investigation. The
fact that the proofs adduced by Pini and Susmel are irrefutable is indicated
by the fact that Renzo De Felice in Mussolini the Revolutionary
(1965), certainly not an apologist for Mussolini himself,
just accept them without comment. For some strange reason,

MacGregor-Hastie prefers to follow Monelli's assumption instead. And without
this assumption, the insinuation that Mussolini may have murdered a
probable witness would hardly fit into the context we have quoted.
Similar deficiencies are found in many other passages in MacGregor

Hastie's book. He tells us, for example, that Mussolini had "a violent
love affair with a teacher, Ida Daiser (sic)" in Trento in the summer of
1909, "with whom he had a son towards the end of the same year. The child
always remained sickly, and both, mother and son, later died in an asylum
from, it is said, progressive paralysis resulting from the syphilis transmitted
to them by Mussolini ».
Even for those unfamiliar with historical facts, this story is strange. If Mussolini
had had no difficulty in assassinating a witness who might have defamed
him, why would he have allowed one of his former mistresses, whom he
infected with syphilis, to languish until her natural death in 1935? Or, while
we're at it, would he allow his illegitimate son, Benito Albano, legally
recognized by him, to continue to live until 1942, a flesh-and-blood testimony
of his venereal disease? If Mussolini had no difficulty getting rid of
witnesses, logically the first candidates for violent death should have been
they.
The only fact is that MacGregor-Hastie's version is terribly

confused. Mussolini's particularly unhappy relationship with Ida Irene Daiser
took place in Milan (although, apparently, they had met in Trento) and his son
was born PII November 1915 (not 1909). This puts the whole in a completely
different light
affair. By that time, Mussolini had solidified his relationship with Rachele
Guidi, who, with a civil ceremony, would become Rachele Mussolini in 1915,
and who had already given him two children, Edda, born in 1910 and Vittorio, born
in September 1915. Neither Rachele, nor Edda, nor Vittorio had contracted syphilis.
From which it would be deduced that Mussolini's illness was endowed

with an extraordinary capacity for choice and free will.
If these versions concerning the exposition and interpretation of concrete facts

leave much to be desired, it is more than obvious that all those judgments
concerning Mussolini's thought must be analyzed with extreme caution and
reservedly accepted. Even Megaro, a scholar in other respects very
conscientious and whose acute judgment we have already mentioned, fell into
a marked error in reading a passage from Mussolini's Life of Arnaldo and attributed
the book published under the name of Mussolini to Richard Washburn Child
with the title My aulobiography. Megaro accused Mussolini of "shameless literary
forgery".
If Megaro were right, not only could Mussolini be accused of "literary fraud", but
also Child, the American ambassador in Rome between 1921 and 1924, of
conspiracy and gross lying. In the introduction to the book in question, Child
says he received the manuscript from Mussolini's hands. The explanation is not
difficult. Megaro has misinterpreted a passage from the Life of Arnaldo. In it
Mussolini says he asked Arnaldo (and not Child) to write a book on mate
rial that he. Mussolini, he would have provided. Today we know that Mussolini
decided not to personally undertake the task of writing his own biography
because he was too absorbed in government responsibilities. But, in any case,
he had an interest in having the volume published in translation and with favorable
commentary in English-speaking countries. He therefore resolved to provide
Arnaldo with the documents necessary for a biography he himself wrote when he
was 28 years old and asked him to draw up a minute which would then be read by
himself and changed or approved. Arnaldo completed the work of editing
the volume under the constant supervision of his brother Benito. One would
therefore say that it was not 1) a "literary fraud" as "shameless" as Megaro would
like us to believe, 2) that Child was not the author of the work in any sense
of the word and, 3) , that all the confusion arose from Megaro's misinterpretation of
a passage in Italian.
Examples of this kind are very numerous in the literature dedicated to

Mussolini. We have reported some of them only to show how generic
judgments regarding Mussolini's thought must be well tested before they can
be accepted.
NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE
1 For information on Alessandro Mussolini, see Y. De Begnac. Life of Benito

Mussolini. Milan, 1930, I, chap. IV.
2 R. De Felice, Mussolini the Revolutionary , p. 7.
3 « My father », Opera. III, 276.
4 R. De Felice, Mussolini, p. 13; See S. Bedeschi and R. Alkssi, Mussolini's

Youth Years, Milan 1939, p. 21.
3 « The Russian novel », Opera, I, 3 et seq.
6 G. Megaro, op. cit., p. 318.
7 The novel was translated into English after a few years and published under the
title of Benito Mussolini. The Cardinal's Mistress, translated by H. Mothervvell, New
York 1928.
8 Letter to Torquato Nanni, December 1909, Opera, il, 269.
9 B. Mussolini, Writings and speeches, Milan 1933-40, flights. 1-13.
10 Cf. "Preface", Opera, I, VII f.
11 For a discussion of the development of Marx's and Lenin's thought, see

A. J. Gregor. A Survey of Marxism, New York, 1965.
12 see A. Mever, Leninism, New York, 1957, pp. 195-197. I. Lapenna, Stale
and Law: Soviet and Yugoslav Theory, New Haven 1964. adequately discusses
the developments of Lenin's theory of the state.
13 S. Bedeschi and R. Alessi, op. cit., p. 26; M. Sarfatti, Dux, Milan, 1929, p. 51;
P. Alatri, op. cit.. p. 256
14 Works, I, 92; II. 31, 123. 366; III, 47. 67. 197, 314, 365, 366, 367: IV, 153;
V, 96, 327; 6, 9, 78.
15 Opera, II, 30 e segg.; III. 5, 86. 366: V. 94.
16 Works, III, 315; IV. 154
17 Opera, V, 96, 110, 204, 327; VI, 431. 9.
18 Opera. I. 143: V, 206; VI, 73. 78.
19 R. Michels, Socialism in Italy: Intellectual Currents, Monaco, 1925, p. 365
20 A. Labriola, Essays on the Materialist Conception of History, Chicago 1904,

Socialism and Philosophy, Chicago 1934, originally published under the title,
Discreciating socialism and philosophy. Letters to G. Sorel. Rome 1898.
21 E. Susmel, Mussolini and his time, Cernusco sul Naviglio 1950, p. 34.
22 G. Megaro, op. cit., p. 11; R. De Felice, Mussolini , p. 23 and segg.
23 « The man and the divinity », Opera, XXXIII, 6 et seq. This thesis reappears in
"Edmondo De Amicis", Opera, I, 106.
24 F. Engels, Anti-Duehring.
25 « The man and the divinity », Opera, XXXIII, 22 et seq. In 1908. the same
thesis was" expressed in the following ... Marx places in the material interest
way: "the main driving force of human actions and considers all the ideological
superslrullure of society (art, religion, morals) as the reflection and portal of
the economic conditions and more precisely of the way of economic
production', 'Karl Marx'. Opera. I, 103.
26 « The philosophy of strength ». Opera. I, 175.

27 « Men and ideas: 'L'individuel et le social* », Opera. I, 73 et seq.
28 K. Marx. « Contribution to thè Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Righi ».

Early W'ritings. tradotto da T. B. Boltomore. New York 1964, p. 43: e «
Theses on Feuerbach », in: K. Marx e F. Engels, The German Ideologv,
New York 1947. p. 198.
29 K. Marx. Economie and Philosophic Manuscripts, Mosca, 5 d., p. 104 e

segg.
30 K. Marx, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy (rough

draft). Berlino 1953. p. 6.
31 « Darwinian Centenary ». Opera. II. 9.
32 a Between books and magazines ». Opera. II. 248 et seq.
33 « Men and ideas: 'L'individuel et le social* », Opera. 1.74
34 « Socialism and social movement in the 19th century », Opera. I. 43. Cf. F.
Engels. « The Origin of thè Family, Private Property and thè State ». in: K.
Marx e F. Engels, Selected Works. II. 317 f.
33 « Socialism and socialists », Opera. I, 142.
36 “Karl Marx”. Opera. I. 103. Cf. "Socialism and social movement in the
nineteenth century". Opera. I.44.
37 "The man and the divinity", Opera, XXXIII, 18, cf. pp. 22 et seq.
38 F. Engels, Anli-Duehrin, Mosca 1962, pp. 130-1
39 « Revolutionary pages: 'The words of a rebel*', Opera, I. 51.
40 Mussolini's "human morality" was based on the "principle of universal

fraternity..." ("L'uomo e la divinity", Opera XXXIII, 23); "Socialism", Mussolini
maintained, "knows no nationality..." (Opera, I, 24). He also maintained that
"The religious ideal means coercion, slavery, renunciation..." and warned
that one must abandon the Church and
work for the triumph of human reason and the destruction of dogmas.
Because only with the death of all the gods, will the life of all men be fertilized!
» (Ibid., pp. 27, 36). He maintained that « science has already destroyed God...
» (« Sport dei coronati », Opera, I, 32). He wanted to "free the brains from
the religious absurdity" and advocated the substitution of the "pagan concept of
life" for the Christian one ("The horrors of the cloister", Opera, I, 38).
"We are definitely anti-Christians and we consider Christianity as the Immortal
stigmata of opprobrium...". (« Black freedom », Opera, I, 111).
The aim of the movement was, for him, the "collectivization of property". ("Of Swiss
socialism in Switzerland", Opera, I. 23).
41 "Ne l'attesa", Opera, I, 41.
42 F. Engels, 1890 Preface to the Communist Manifesto in: K. Marx and F.

Engels. Selected W orks. I, 31.
43 Cf. A. Gregor, op. cit., pp. 178 et seq.
44 « Revolutionary pages: 'The words of a rebel*', Opera. 1.51.
43 « Around the night of August 4 », Opera, I, 61.
46 "Men and ideas: 'L'individuel et le social*", Opera, I, 73.
47 H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society, New York, 1958. p. 271: G.

Megaro, op. cit., pp. 100-1 112 and segg.
48 R. De Felice, Mussolini, p. 38.
49 « My life from 29 July 1883 to 23 November 1911 », Opera, XXXIII, 257; My life,
p. 27; G. Pini and D. Susmel, op. cit., I, 72 et seq.; 82 and following.
50 « Polemical intermezzo », Opera, I, 128, 129.
51 « The hooligan », Opera. I, 92; "Karl Marx", Opera. 1, 103 and following. See V.
Pareto, Systems, pp. 26 et seq.
52 «Opinions and documents: The resolution crisis». Opera, I, 70.

53 "The syndicalist theory", Opera, II, 128.
34 A. Oriani, The Ideal Revolt, Bologna 1943, pp. 29 et seq., 36.
35 K. Marx, « Contribution... », Early Writings, p. 59. See S. Muore, Three Tactis: The
Background in Marx, New York, 1963, pp. 14-16. See Mussolini's comments
in « The program of the Socialist Party », Opera, V. 327.
56 See B. D Wolfe, Marxism: 100 Years in the Life of a Doctrine, New York. 1965,
chap. 9, (tr. it.: One Hundred Years of Marxism, Milan 1970, Editor's note).
57 F. Engels, « The Origin of the Family... ». on cil., II, 320 et segg.
58 Ibid., p. 325.
59 R. Michels, Socialism in Italy. pp. 368 and segg.
60 For a typical statement of these ideas. see AO Olivetti, Problems of contemporary

socialism, Lugano 1906. published in a subsequent edition with the title.
Contemporary issues, Naples 1913; G. Prezzoline The syndicalist theory, Naples
1909; E. Leone, Syndicalism, Palermo 1905.
61 F. Encels, "On Authority," in K. Marx and F. Engels, op. cit., I, 635 and segg.
62 A. Olivetti, « Syndicalists and the élite », in Italian Syndicalists, edited by R.

Melis, Rome 1964, pp. 191-193.
63 S. Panunzio, « The persistence of law », in R. Melis, op. cit., p. 226.
64 H. Stuart Hughes, op. cit., p. 272.
65 "Between books and magazines", Opera, II, 248 and following; R. Michels,
The economic man and cooperation, Turin 1909.
66 S. Panunzio, op. cit., p. 231, from n. 1.

67 B. Mussolini, My life, pp. 25, 36.
68 "Atheists", Opera, I, 49.
69 G. Pini and D. Susmel, op. cit., I, 72; R. De Felice, Mussolini, p. 40, no. 4.
70 "The general strike and violence", Opera, li, 163-168.
71 G. Megaro, op. cit., p. 233.
72 "The need for socialist politics in Italy", Opera, I. 17.
73 "Tomorrow's democracy", Opera, VI, 121.
74 Y. De Begnac, Palazzo Venezia, p. 118.
75 «The historical value of socialism», Opera, VI, 80, 81; see « The reasons for the so-
called 'Pacifism*', Opera, V, 134.
76 "The desperate enterprise", Opera, VI, 51; see « The development of the party »,
Opera, V, 122.
77 « The development of the party », Opera, V, 122 and following; « From Guicciardini to...
Sorel », Opera, IV, 171-174; « Socialism and syndicalism », Opera, IV, 207 et seq.
78 «The Congress of Modena», Opera, IV, 237; «From Guicciardini to... Sorel», Opera, IV,
174.
79 « From Guicciardini to... Sorel », Opera, IV, 173.
80 Cf. Mussolini's acceptance of Bourchet's judgments in « After the general strike of

Milan and... of Italy », Opera, V, 256 et seq.
81 « The program of the Partilo Socialista », Opera, V, 325.
82 « Pio Battistini », Opera, III, 172.
83 "Old age", Opera, III, 131.

84 "The syndicalist theory", Opera, II, 124.
85 « Socialismo e socialisti », Opera, 137, 138. Mussolini underlined the

distinction between a theory of motivation and a technique which uses the
theoretical results thus obtained. Mussolini noted that the Sorelian myth was in
itself a theoretical product. "The historical value of socialism". Opera, VI, 77.
86 "The desperate enterprise", Opera, VI, 48.
87 « For socialism in Romagna », Opera, IV, 147.
88 "The crisis of inaction", Opera, IV, 124.
89 E. Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini, Milan 1950, pp. 119 et seq.
91 Ibid., p. 186.
92 "We have no formulas"; "The need for socialist politics in Italy", Opera, I, 17.
93 «Socialism, and social movement in the 19th century»; Opera, I, 43.
94 « Men and ideas: 'L'individuel et le social* », Opera, I, 73.
95 « Karl Marx », Opera, I, 103.
96 Cf., for example, "Socialism and socialists", Opera, I, 142; "Edmondo De

Amicis", Ibid., 105; «Karl Marx», Ibid., 103; «Opinions and documents: the
resolving crisis», Ibid., 69-70; « Socialism and social movement in the nineteenth
century », Ibid.. 43 et seq.
97 « Socialism and socialists », Opera, I, 143.
98 "Social evolution and class struggle", Opera, li, 30.
99 Quoted in Y. De: Begnac, Palazzo Venezia, p. 118.

100 "The Voice", Opera, II, 53.
101 « The syndicalist theory », Opera, II, 125.
102 « Socialist studies: attempts at revisionism », Opera, V, 205 et seq.; see

"How the gods of Rome perished", Opera, V, 280.
103 « The development of the party », Opera, V, 123.
104 E. Leone, Syndicalism, in R. Melis, op. cil., p. 122.
105 « Preface to 'Revolutionary Socialism*', Opera, V, 175.
106 "The Congress of Brest", Opera, V, 94; "The current value of socialism",
Opera, VI, 182.
107 K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, sd, p. 196; « Social evolution and
class struggle », Opera, II, 31.
108 « Polemic intermezzo: prelude bars », Opera, VI, 273.
110 « The syndicalist theory », Opera, II, 127.
112 RB Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, Cambridge, Mass., 1948,
pp. 313-316. See Mussolini's references to Leonardo in "La Voce", Opera, II, 53; and G.
Papini, Pragmatism, Florence 1943, p. 7.
113 Letter to T. Nanni, 2 July 1913, Opera, V, 358.
114 W. James, Pragmatism, New York 1955, pp. 47, 61, 107, 167.
115 S. Panunzio, The persistence of law, in R. Melis, op. cit., p. 223; g.

Prezzoline The syndicalist theory, pp. 247 et seq.
116 Y. De Begnac, Palazzo Venezia, p. 118. Perry says he took this reference from an
interview in 1926. (RB Perry, op. cit., p. 317).
117 W. James, op. cit., p. 47.
118 G. Papini, op. cit., pp. 100-1 98 ,
119 "Notes and readings", Opera, IV, 46. This constitutes the "pragmatism" of syndicalism;
see "City Chronicle: Tancredi Conference", Opera, IV, 79.
120 « The general strike and violence », Opera, II, 163.
121 G. Papini, op. cit., pp. 100-1 183 and segg.
122 Ibid., p. 120.
123 « The man and the divinity », Opera, XXXIII, 17.
124 "At work", Opera, III, 5 and following, "The historical value of socialism", Opera, VE 82.
125 (( j] historical value of socialism". Opera, VI, 81.
128 "The syndicalist theory", Opera, II, 125; see "At work", Opera, III, 7; « The general strike
and violence », Opera, II, 163-168; « Declaration », Work, II, 5; "The Paris
Commune", Opera, II, 41.
127 "The 'sinistri* to the rescue'", Opera, V, 91.
128 "Only with collectivism is individualism conceivable and achievable",

in "Socialism today and tomorrow", Opera, VI, 41; « The philosophy of strength », Opera, I,
175 et seq.
129 « Skirmishes », Opera, I, 136.
130 "In the dead season", Opera, II, 256; « The 'sinisters* to the rescue', Opera, V, 91; «
'I Canti di Faunus* by Antonio Bellramelli », Opera, I. 196.
131 "Reply to Graziadei", Opera, VI, 249 f.
132 "'L'ABC syndicale*", Opera, III, 40.
133 "What is dead and alive in Marxism", Opera, III, 367.
134 "At work", Opera, III, 5. In "Al largo" (Opera, VI, 5) Mussolini deals with some
empirical propositions held to be true by Marxists. He himself considers valid the affirmations
according to which poverty increases and the concentration of capital is continuous
in a capitalist regime. However, one can swear by their validity and still not be an orthodox
Marxist.
The distinction arises from the different interpretations of these propositions in the context
of an entire theoretical system. Mussolini did not accept the 'positivist* interpretation,
to which he preferred a 'pragmatist* or 'idealist' interpretation, which can allow
the will and the conscience of ends to act as determinants in any judgment on
political possibilities.
135 <{ the historical value of Socialism », Opera, VI, 75.
136 « Prophets and prophecies », Opera, III, 313.
137 Ibid., 314.
138 « Polemical intermezzo: political struggle and class struggle », Opera, VI, 279.
139 « The nationalist 'delirium tremens*', Opera. VI, 343.
140 « On the subject of Italian 'neutrality*'. Opera. VI, 318.
141 "A fall", Opera. i. 10; « The strike of the roadmen; Zivio », Opera. II.
196.
142 Cf. « The contradictory of Voltre ». Opera. III. 137.

143 « Around a formula », Opera. V, 232.
144 "From absolute neutrality to active and operative neutrality". Opera.

VI, 402.
145 N. Colajanni, op. cit.. p. 433
146 "The desperate enterprise", Opera. VI, 48.
147 G. Barni, « Tripoli and syndicalism », in Free Panine. V. n. 23-24. 1-15 December
1911.
148 "Notes of war", Opera, VI, 321-323.
149 « The international situation », Opera , VI, 363.
150 AO Olivetti, "The War of Tripoli", in R. Melis. op. cit., p. 201.
151 "Notes of war", Opera, VI, 321.
152 « The current political situation and political parties in Italy », Opera, III, 288.
153 « The contradictory of Voltre », Opera, III, 137.
154 "Nationalism", Opera, III, 281.
lo5 « The concentration of wealth and the 'failed prophet*', Opera, III, 308.
156 "From absolute neutrality to active and operative neutrality", Opera, VI, 400 et seq.
157 «The Mussolini-Tancredi controversy: between straw and bronze », Opera, VI, 391.
158 « The resignation as director of 'Avanti!' », Work VI, 404-408; see AND.
Nolte, op. cit., pp. 170 and following.
159 « The international situation and the attitude of the party », Opera.
VI, 427.
160 ibid., p. 428
161 "Mussolini reconfirms his aversion to neutrality", Opera, VI. 431.
162 R. Michels, Politicai Parties, p. 393.
163 B. Mussolini, My life. p. 46.
NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR
1 R. M. MacIver, The Web of Government, New York 1965, p. 183.
2 « Doctrine of fascism », Opera, XXXIV, 122.
3 "For expulsion from the Party", Opera, VI, 40.
4 "'If they think they have gagged me they are wrong*", Opera, VII, 46.
5 "The need for intervention", Opera, VII, 67.
6 "Fronde...", Opera, VII, 127.
7 "The duty of Italy", Opera, VII, 98.
8 "The need for intervention", Opera, VII, 66, "For the freedom of peoples,
for the future of Italy", lbid.., 78.
9 « People and bourgeoisie », Opera, VIII, 71 and following.
10 «The duty of Italy», Opera, VII, 101; see «The inevitable trial», lbid.,
p. 189.
11 « An appeal to the workers of Italy of the Revolutionary Action Fasci »,

Opera. VII, 117.
12 "The international situation", Opera, VII, 148.
13 « Dopo l'adunata », Opera, VII, 152 et seq.
14 « ... And war it is. » Opera, VII, 419.
15 "Il sangue è sangue!" », Opera, Vili, 32; cf. "'Until the end*", ibid., p. 84
16 "For the freedom of peoples, for the future of Italy", Opera, VII, 77.
17 « If he were alive », Opera, VIII, 105, « Intermezzo », Opera, IX, 293.
18 « Divagations for the centenary », Opera, XI, 46 et seq.
19 "War of peoples", Opera. VII, 73, 72; cf. "Ombres e penumbres", Opera. VII, 341-343.
20 « Blood is blood! » Opera, VIII, 31 and following.
2 VCfr. "'The new army*", Opera. XI, 118-127.
22 "For the freedom of peoples, for the future of Italy". Opera. VII. 79.
23 « The Herveists of Wales », Opera, VIII. 90 and following.
24 "The fleeting moment...", Opera, IX. 150 and following.
25 "Malaise", Opera, X, 143.
26 « Down with Parliament! », Opera, VII, 376.
27 "L'adunata", Opera, VII, 139 et seq.
28 a The living dead... », Opera, VII, 120.
29 "The fleeting moment...", Opera. IX, 150.
30 "Trincerocracy", Opera, XI, 140-142.

31 « Divagation », Opera, XI, 270 et seq.
32 « Divagations for the centenary », Opera, XI, 47.
33 "The rifle and the spade", Opera, XI, 35.
34 "'You too* Jouhaux? », Opera, XI, 357 e seg.
35 «National syndicalism: to be reborn!» Opera, XII, 11-14.
36 « In the Italian trade union world; shooting adjustments », Opera, XII, 250.
37 "National politics: first ring", Opera, XII, 223.
38 "Conquests and programs", Opera, XII, 245.
39 See R. Farinacci, History of the Fascist Revolution, Cremona 1937, I. 121 et

seq.; G. Pini and D. Susmel, op. cit., I, 387 et seq.
40 « Dalmine's Speech », Opera, XII, 314.
41 "Act of birth of fascism", Opera, XII, 325.
42 See Pareto, Transformation of democracy. Rocca San Casciano 1964, p. 33.
43 "Birth certificate of fascism", Opera, XII, 326 et seq.
44 ibid., p. 325
45 lbid., p. 323. Mussolini had already previously used the expression

"proletarian nation" in connection with Italy (cf. "Un Altro Passo", Opera, XII, 229),
in particular he blamed the League of Nations for having become an instrument
of the "plutocratic nations" » for the defense of their privileged positions, (cf. «
Fascism and the problems of Italian foreign policy ».
Work, XVI, 158; « The programmatic lines of the Fascist Party », Opera, XVII,
177 et seq).
46 "Discourse of Trieste", Opera, X, 216; « Babel and the rest », Opera, XVIII.
235 et seq. The same conviction was reaffirmed in 1924; see « We need
light of thought, of culture, of ideality », Opera, XXI, 160 et seq.
47 "Forces and programs", Opera, XVII, 282.
48 «In the wake of the great philosophies: relativism and fascism», Opera, XVII,
269.
49 « Fascism and syndicalism », Opera, XVIII, 226; « Program », Work,
XVII, 321; "To the people of Ferrara", Opera, XVI, 248.
50 « The programmatic lines of the Fascist Party », Opera, XVII, 174 et seq.
51 « 'I remain the head of fascism* » Opera, XIX. 63; "The Fascist Programme".
Opera, XVII, 221.
52 "Speech in Piazza Beigioioso", Opera, XIV, 124.
53 "The speech of Naples", Opera, XVIII, 457.
34 "Short prelude", Opera, XVIII, 19.
55 "Fascist action and doctrine in the face of the historical needs of the
nation", Opera, XVIII, 419.
36 See "State, anti-state and fascism", Opera, XVIII, 258-263.
57 "The right of victory", Opera, XIV, 53.
58 « The fascist program », Opera, XVII, 220.
59 Y. De Begnac. Palazzo Venezia, p. 133.
60 « The philosophy of strength », Opera, I, 175.
61 ibid.
62 « Socialism today and tomorrow », Opera, VI, 41.
63 « Per Ferdinando Lassalle », Opera, I, 65 et seq.
64 "Old customs", Opera, XIV, 194.
65 « Between the old and the new: 'Navigare necesse*', Opera, XIV, 231 et seq.
66 « Digression; the time and clocks », Opera, XIV, 397.
67 « The march of fascism », Opera, XV, 299.
88 « The programmatic lines of the Partilo Fascista », Opera, XVII, 174.
89 Y. De Begnac, Palazzo Venezia, p. 133; see pp. 178 and following, 212 and following.
70 « The fascist program », Opera, XVII, 221, 219.
71 « Inaugural speech at the second Congress of the Fasci », Opera, XIV, 468.
72 « Fascism in 1921 », Opera, XVII, 101 et seq.
73 "The first speech to the Chamber of Deputies", Opera, XVI, 445.
74 « Program and statutes of the National Fascist Party », Opera, XVII, 335.
75 "Forces and programs", Opera, XVII, 282.
. 76 «Which way is the world going? », Opera, XVIII, 71.
77 "Fascist action and doctrine in the face of the historical needs of the nation".
Opera, XVIII, 414.
78 « The fascist program », Opera, XVII, 220.
79 « Our postulates: for the history of a week », Opera, X, 87.

81 "Adagio", Opera, XVIII, 410.
82 « Fair of 'Demos* », Opera, XVIII, 360.
83 «In the wake of the great philosophies: relativism and fascism», Opera, XVII,
268.
84 "Speech at Monza", Opera, XVI, 128; « Speech in Piazza Beigioioso

», Ibid., p. 124; see "Illusions and Mystifications: Lenin's Paradise", Ibid., p.
117. On the relationship between fascism and intellectuals in this period, cf. C.
Quarantotto, Intellectuals and the March on Rome, Rome 1972; and C.
Quarantotto, "Vittorini, 'integral' fascist", in la Destra, July 1972.
85 See Pareto, Corso, II, par. 1036.
86 See "To the Fascists of Lombardy", Opera, XVI, 174; « After two years »,
Ibid., p. 212; « Speech in Piazza Beigioioso », Ibid., p. 300; « Preface
to the program », Opera, XVII, 352.
87 "Birth certificate of fascism", Opera, XII, 325.
88 « In the Italian trade union world: shooting adjustments », Opera, XII, 250.
89 « Syndicalism », Opera, XVIII, 386.
90 "Speech in Piazza Beigioioso", Opera, XVI, 300; see "Salandra", Ibid., 320;
«Discourse of Verona», Ibid., 335; «Discoveries», Opera, XVII, 186.
91 «Discourse in Piazza Beigioioso», Opera, XVI, 301, «Discourse in Piazza

Borromeo», Ibid., p. 347; « The speech of Naples », Opera, XVIII, 459.
92 «The White Book», Opera, XVII, 278 et seq.
93 "Where Lenin reigns", Opera, XVII, 78; see « French syndicalism: a declaration-
programme », Opera, XIV, 247
95 This conception is by Jean Jaures, but it was accepted, and sustained

throughout his life, by Mussolini as a representation of the ideal structure
of the nation. A similar conception of the organization of social forces was
also evident in him during the socialist period. (« 'The new army* »
Opera, VIII, 121).
96 H. Finer, Mussolini’s Italy, New York 1965, p. 146.
97 Quoted by Meisel, in Genesis..., p. 230 and by G. Pini, The Officiai Life of

Benito Mussolini, London 1939, p. 104.
98 P. Gorgolini, Fascism in Italian life, Turin 1923, p. 3, (first edition 1921).

All references are made to the second edition.
99 Ibid., p. 43.
100 Ibid., pp. 33, 35, 131.
101 Ibid., pp. 42-44.
102 Ibid., pp. 48, 73 et seq.
103 This is what De Marsanich maintains and it proves substantially correct.

See De Marsanich, The state in the Fascist period, Rome sd, p. 7.
104 G. Pini and D. Susmel, op. cit.. Il,
105 « The first presidential speech to the Chamber of Deputies », Opera,

XIX, 15-24; and « Reply to the Deputies », Ibid., pp. 25-28.
106 K. Marx, Das Kapital, W'erke, Berlin 1962, XXIII, 346. It is translated into
"man... is a social animal" in Capital, Moscow 1954, I, 326.
107 K. Marx, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy, Berlino 1953, p.

6.
108 L. Gumplowicz, Outlines..., p. 39.
109 L. Gumplowicz, Die sodala fische Slaalsidee, p. 211.
110 AO Olivetti, Syndicalism as philosophy and as politics, Milan 1924. p. 28.

See G. Pighetti, Fascist Syndicalism, Milan 1924, pp. 88, 143.
111 AO Olivetti, Syndicalism as a philosophy and as a policy, pp. 28, 30 and

following, 92. See I. Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Berlin
1869,
pp. 260-262.
112 B. Giuliano, The political experience of Italy, Florence 1924, pp. 198-204.
113 Ibid., p. 200.
114 S. Panunzio, The Fascist State, Bologna, 1925, p. 51. See S. Panunzio,
What is fascism?, Milan 1924, p. 77.
115 S. Panunzio, « Principle and right of nationality », in Popolo, nation,

state, Florence 1933, p. 80 (the Essay was written in 1917). See Panunzio's
objections to the "atomistic and contractual" concession of society and the
State: S. Panunziq, Stato Nazionale e Sindacati, Milan 1924, p. 93.
116 S. Panunzio, What is fascism? p. 79; The Fascist State, p. 21-30.

See M. Rocca, Il primo fascismo, Rome 1964, p. 53.
117 « The establishment of the fascist state », Opera, XIX, 82.
118 G. Pighetti, op. cit., p. 18. The passage refers to the first formulation
>8and the doctrinal postulates of Fascist Syndicalism, enunciated on 24
January 1922 by Michele Bianchi.
119 Ibid., p. 222; S. Panunzio, National State..., p. 38.

120 St. Panunzio conceived the jurisdictio and the imperium as one thing, not two. See
S. Panunzio, Lo stato fascista, pp. 92, 134; see "The electoral reform", Opera, XIX,
316.
121 S. Panunzio, What is fascism?, p. 16.
122 See R. Farinacci, History of the Fascist Revolution, III, 230-262, in particular
256.
123 Ibid., pp. 265, 238.
124 Ibid., p. 265.
125 S. Panunzio, The Fascist State, p. 169; G. Pighetti, op. cit., pp. 149, 155 and
following.
126 "Force and consensus", Opera, XIX, 195; « Electoral reform », Ibid., p. 310.
127 S. Panunzio, The Fascist State, pp. 145 and following.
128 E. Susmel, Mussolini and his time, Cernusco sul Naviglio 1950, p. 179; see C.
Quaglio, Guidelines of the Fascist Revolution, Lucca 1937, p. 69.
129 M. Rocca, op. cit., pp. 191, 31 and following. See "Reply to the Senators",
Opera, XIX, 47.
130 There are many valid versions of historical events during this period. I have found
the most useful ones to be those by H. Finer, Mussolini's Italy and by HW Schneider,
Making the Fascist State, New York, 1928.
131 «On the reply address to the speech from the Crown», Opera, XX, 317; see pp.
320, 324.
132 See A. Rocco, The transformation of the state, Rome 1927, pp. 8 et seq.
^ 133 G. Bottai, Corporative Experience (1929-1935), Florence sd, p. 22.

Cfr. S.
Panunzio, The feeling of the state, Rome 1929, part II.
S^ 4 See G. Bottai, La Carta del Lavoro, Rome, 1928, pp. 6 and following; EM
Olivetti, National Syndicalism, Milan 1927, pp. 157-161; A. Turati, «The Labor
Charter», in A Survey of Fascism, International Center of Fascist Studies, London
1928, pp. 136140. The current neo-fascists, such as for example A. De Marsanich,
op. cit., pp. 9 and following, give the Carla the same meaning and doctrinal importance.
We reproduce here, as documentation for the reader, the complete text of « Carla del
lavoro »:
Of the corporate state and its organization
I - The Italian nation is an organism whose ends, life, and means of action are
superior in power and duration to those of the divided or grouped individuals who
compose it. It is a moral, political and economic unity which is fully realized in the
Fascist State.
II - Work in all its intellectual, technical and manual organizational and executive forms
is a social duty. In this capacity, and only in this capacity, it is protected by the
State.
The whole of production is unitary from the national point of view; his
objectives are unitary and can be summed up in the well-being of individuals and
in the development of national power.
Ill - Trade union or professional organization is free. But only the union legally
recognized and subject to state control has the right to legally represent the whole
category of employers or workers for which it is constituted; to protect their interests
before the State and other professional associations; to enter into collective labor
agreements that are mandatory for all members of the category, to impose them
contributions and to exercise with respect to them delegated functions of

public interest.
IV - Solidarity between the various factors of production finds its concrete

expression in the collective labor agreement, through the reconciliation of the
opposing interests of employers and workers and their subordination
to the superior interests of production.
V - The Judiciary of Labor is the body with which the State intervenes to
regulate labor disputes with whether they concern the observance of the
,
agreements and other existing rules, whether they concern the determination of
new working conditions.
VI - Legally recognized professional associations ensure legal equality

between employers and workers, maintain the discipline of production and work
and promote its improvement.
Corporations constitute the unitary organization of the forces of production and

integrally represent their interests.
By virtue of this integral representation, the interests of production being

national interests, the corporations are recognized by law as organs of the State.
As representatives of the unitary interests of production, the guilds can dictate

mandatory rules on the discipline of labor relations and also on the coordination of
production, whenever they have been given the necessary powers by the
connected associations.
VII - The corporative state considers private initiative in the field of production as
the most effective and most useful instrument in the interest of the nation.
The private organization of production being a function of national interest, the

organization of the company is responsible for directing production vis-à-vis the
state. From the collaboration of the productive forces derives reciprocity of rights
and duties between them. the worker,
technician, clerk or worker, is an active collaborator of the economic enterprise,

the direction of which belongs to the employer who is responsible for it.
VIII - The professional associations of employers have the obligation to promote,

in all ways, the increase, the improvement of production and the reduction of costs.
The representatives of those who exercise a free profession or an art and the
associations of public employees contribute to the protection of the interests
of art, science and literature, to the improvement of production and the achievement
of the moral ends of the corporate system.
IX - State intervention in economic production takes place only when private initiative
is lacking or insufficient or when political interests of the State are at stake. This
intervention can take the form of supervision, encouragement or direct management.
X - In collective labor disputes, judicial action cannot be brought if the corporate

body has not first made the attempt at conciliation.
In individual disputes relating to collective labor agreements, professional

associations have the right to interpose their offices for conciliation.
The jurisdiction for such disputes is devolved to the ordinary Judiciary with the
addition of assessors designated by the professional associations concerned.
Of the collective labor agreement and labor guarantees
XI - Professional associations have the obligation to regulate labor relations

between the categories of employers and workers through collective agreements
,representing.
The collective labor agreement is stipulated between first level associations under
the guidance and control of the central organisations, without prejudice to the right to
replacement by the higher level association, in the cases provided for by the law
and by the statutes.
Each collective labor agreement, under penalty of nullity, must contain

norms
precise on disciplinary reports, probationary period, the amount and payment of

salary, working hours.
XII - The action of the union, the conciliatory work of the corporate bodies and the
sentence of the Magistrate of Labor guarantee the correspondence of the salary
to the normal needs of life, to the possibilities of production and to the yield of work.
The determination of wages is removed from any general rule and entrusted
to the agreement of the parties in the collective agreements.
XIII - The data collected by the public administrations, by the Central Institute of
Statistics and by the legally recognized professional associations regarding the
conditions of production and work and the situation of the money market and
the variations in the standard of living of the workers, coordinated and drawn up by
the Ministry of Corporations, will provide the criterion for reconciling the
interests of the various categories and classes among themselves and of these with
the superior interest of production.
XIV - Remuneration must be paid in the form most consonant with the needs of the
worker and the company.
When the remuneration is established on a piecework basis, and the payment of

the piecework is done for periods longer than a fortnight, adequate fortnightly or
weekly advances are due.
Night work, not included in regular periodic shifts, is paid with a percentage higher
than daytime work.
When work is paid on a piecework basis, the piecework rates must be

determined in such a way that the industrious worker of normal ability
work, is allowed to earn a minimum earnings beyond the basic wage.
XV - The employee has the right to weekly rest coinciding with Sundays.
The collective agreements will apply the principle taking into account the existing
laws, the technical needs of the companies and, within the limits of these
needs, they will also ensure that civil and religious holidays are
respected according to local traditions. The working hours must be
scrupulously observed by the employee.
XVI - After one year of uninterrupted service, the employee in companies

with continuous work has the right to an annual period of paid holiday rest.
XVII - In companies with continuous work, the worker has the right, in the
event of termination of employment relationships due to dismissal without his
fault, to an indemnity proportionate to the years of service. This indemnity is
also due in the event of the worker's death.
XVIII - In companies with continuous work, the transfer of the company

does not terminate the contract and the staff assigned to it retains its rights
towards the new owner. Likewise, the worker's illness which does not exceed a
certain duration does not terminate the employment contract. Recall to arms is
not cause for dismissal.
XIX - Violations of the discipline and acts that disturb the normal running
of the company, committed by the employers, are punished, according to
the seriousness of the offence, with a fine, suspension from work and, in
the most serious cases, with dismissal immediately without compensation.
XX - The newly hired employee is subject to a probationary period, during

which the right to terminate the contract with the sole payment of the salary for
the time in which the work was actually performed is reciprocal.
XXI - The collective labor agreement extends its benefits and regulations
to home workers as well. Special rules will be dictated by the State to ensure
the cleanliness and hygiene of homework.
Of the employment offices
XXII - The State ascertains and controls the phenomenon of employment and
unemployment of workers, an overall index of the conditions of production
and work.
XXIII - Employment offices are established on an equal basis under the control
of the corporate bodies of the State. Employers are obliged to hire workers
through specific offices. They are given the right to choose among those
registered in the lists.
XXIV - The professional associations of workers have the obligation to

exercise a selective action among the workers, aimed at increasing their
technical capacity and moral value more and more.
XXV - The corporate bodies supervise that the laws on the prevention of
accidents and on the labor police are observed by the single subjects of
the connected associations.
Of social security, assistance, education and training
XXVI - Retirement is a high manifestation of the principle of

collaboration. The employer and the service provider must contribute proportionally
to the costs of it. The State, through corporate bodies and professional
associations, will try to coordinate and unify, as far as possible, the system
and institutions of social security.
XXVII - The Fascist State intends:
1) completion of accident insurance;
2) the improvement and extension of maternity insurance;
3) the insurance of occupational diseases and tuberculosis as an

introduction to general insurance against all diseases;
4) the completion of insurance against involuntary unemployment;
5) the adoption of special forms of endowment insurance for young workers.
XXVIII - It is the duty of the workers' associations to protect their

representatives in the administrative and judicial procedures relating
to accident insurance and social insurance.
Collective labor agreements will establish, when it is technically possible,

the establishment of sickness funds with the contribution of employers and
service providers, to be administered by representatives of both, under the
supervision of the corporate bodies.
XXIX - The assistance to its representatives, members and non-members, is a

right and a duty of professional associations. These must directly exercise
their assistance functions, nor can they delegate them to other bodies or institutes
except for objectives of a general nature, exceeding the interests of the individual
categories.
XXX - Education and instruction, especially the professional instruction of

their representatives, members and non-members, is one of the main
duties of professional associations. They must support the action of the
national works relating to after-work and other education initiatives .
This text was signed by the Head of Government, by the Ministers

and Undersecretaries of State who attended, by the members of the Party
Direction, by the members of the Grand Council and by the presidents of
the professional confederations of employers and workers.
Official Gazette of April 30, 1927.
135 The second part of the Doctrine, the one written personally by
Mussolini, became the preamble to the Statute of the National Fascist Party in
1938.
The complete text of the « Doctrine of Fascism » is as follows:

I - Ideas' MENTAL FOUNDATIONS
Like any solid political conception, fascism is praxis and it is thought, an action to which a
doctrine is immanent, and a doctrine which, arising from a given system of historical forces,
remains inserted in it and operates from within. It therefore has a correlative form to the
contingencies of place and time, but at the same time it has an ideal content which elevates it
to a formula of truth in the superior history of thought. One does not act spiritually in the
world as a human will dominating will without a concept of the transient and particular reality
on which one must act, and of the permanent and universal reality in which the
former has its being and its life. To know men one must know man, and to know man one
must know reality and its laws. There is no concept of the state that is not a fundamental
concept of life: philosophy or intuition, a system of ideas that takes place in a logical
construction or is gathered in a vision or in a faith, but is always, at least virtually, an organic
conception of the world.
Thus fascism would not be understood in many of its practical attitudes, as a party organization,
as a system of education, as a discipline, if one did not look at it in the light of its
general way of conceiving life. Spiritualistic way. The world for fascism is not this material world
that appears on the surface, in
whereby man is an individual separate from all others and standing by himself, and is
governmental
by a natural law, which instinctively draws him to live a life of selfish and momentary pleasure.
The man of fascism is an individual who is nation and country, law
morality that unites individuals and generations in a tradition and a mission, which
suppresses the instinct of life closed in the brief circle of pleasure to establish in duty a
superior life free from the limits of time and space: a life in which the through self-abnegation,
the sacrifice of his particular interests, and death itself, the individual realizes that wholly
spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies.
Therefore, a spiritualistic conception, which also arose from the general reaction of the
century against the feeble and* materialistic positivism of the nineteenth century.
Antipositivistic, but positive: not skeptical, nor agnostic, nor pessimistic, nor passively
optimistic, as are generally the doctrines (all negative) which place the center of life
outside man who with his free will can and must create his own world. Fascism
wants man to be active and committed to action with all his energies: it wants him
virilely aware of the difficulties that exist, and ready to face them. He
conceives life as a struggle thinking that it is hard for man to conquer what is truly
worthy of him, first of all creating in himself the instrument (physical, moral,
intellectual) to build it. So for the single individual, so for the nation, so for humanity.
Hence the high value of culture in all its forms - art, religion, science - and the
enormous importance of education. Hence also the essential value of work, with
which man overcomes nature and creates the human world (economic, political,
moral, intellectual).
This positive conception of life is evidently an ethical conception.

And it invests all of reality, as well as the human activity that dominates it. No action
subtracted from moral judgment; nothing in the world that can be stripped of the
value that belongs to everything in order to moral ends. Life, therefore, as the Fascist
conceives it, is serious, austere, religious: all free in a world supported by the moral
and responsible forces of the spirit. The fascist disdains the "comfortable" life.
Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his immanent

relationship with a higher law, with an objective Will that transcends the particular
individual and elevates him to a conscious member of a spiritual society. Anyone
who has stopped at considerations of mere opportunity in the religious policy
of the fascist regime has not understood that fascism, in addition to being a system of
government, is also, and above all, a system of thought.
Fascism is a historical conception, in which man is only what he is in function of the

spiritual process in which he contributes, in the family and social group, in the
nation and in history, in which all nations collaborate. Hence the great value
of tradition in memoirs, in
language, in customs, in the norms of social life. Outside of history man is

nothing. Therefore fascism is against all individualistic abstractions,
materialistic based, type sec. XVIII; and he is against Jacobin utopias and innovations. It
does not believe that "happiness" on earth is possible, as was the desire of the
economistic literature of the 18th century, and therefore rejects all theological
conceptions according to which there would be a definitive settlement of the human
race at a certain period of history.
This means putting oneself out of history and of life which is a continuous flux and
becoming. Politically, fascism aspires to solve only the problems that historically arise
by themselves and which find or suggest their own solution by themselves. To act among
men, as in nature, one must enter the process of reality and take possession of the
forces in action.
Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception is for the Stalo; and it is for the
individual inasmuch as it coincides with the State, conscience and universal will
of man in his historical existence. It is against classical liberalism, which arose out
of the need to react against absolutism and has exhausted its historical function since the
state has been transformed into the popular consciousness and will. Liberalism denied
the state in the interest of the particular individual; fascism reaffirms the state as the true
reality of the individual.
And if freedom must be the attribute of the real man, and not of that abstract puppet of
which individualistic liberalism thought, fascism is for freedom. It is for the only freedom
that can be a serious thing, the freedom of the State and of the individual in the State.
Since, for the fascist, everything is in the state, and nothing human or spiritual
exists, much less has value, outside the state. In this sense, fascism is totalitarian,
and the fascist state, synthesis and unity of all values, interprets, develops and
strengthens the entire life of the people.
Neither individuals outside the State, nor groups (political parties, associations,
trade unions.
classes). Therefore fascism is against socialism which stiffens the historical

movement in the class struggle and ignores the state unity which the classes fuse into
a single economic and moral reality; and similarly, it is against classist trade unionism.
But in the orbit of the ordering State, the real needs from which the socialist and
trade unionist movement originated. The
fascism wants them recognized and enforces them in the corporate system of
conciliatory interests in the unity of the state.
Individuals are classes according to the categories of interests; they are unions
according to the different economic activities involved; but they are first and
foremost the State. Which is not number, as the sum of individuals forming the
majority of a people. And therefore fascism is against democracy which
equalizes the people to the greatest number, lowering them to the level of the
majority; but it is the most sincere form of democracy if the people is
conceived, as it should be, qualitatively and not quantitatively, as the most
powerful idea because it is more moral, more coherent, more true, which is
implemented in the people as conscience and will to few, indeed of One,
and as an ideal it tends to be implemented in the conscience and will of all. Of
all those who from nature and history, ethnically, draw reason to form a
nation, started on the same line of development and spiritual formation, as
one conscience and one will. Not a race, nor a geographically
identified reason, but a historically perpetuating lineage, a multitude
unified by an idea, which is the will to exist and to power: self-awareness,
personality.
This superior personality is indeed nation, insofar as it is state. It is not the

nation that generates the state, according to the forbidden naturalistic concept
which served as the basis for the publicity of nation states in the century. XIX.
Indeed, the nation is created by the State, which gives the people, aware
of their own moral unity, a will, and therefore an effective existence. The right of
a nation to independence derives not from a literary and ideal consciousness of
its own being, and even less from a more or less unconscious and inert factual
situation, but from an active consciousness, from a political will in place and
willing to demonstrate one's right: that is, from a sort of state already in the
making. Indeed, the State, as a universal ethical will, is the creator of law.
The nation as a state is an ethical reality that exists and lives as it

develops. His arrest is his death. Therefore, the State is not only an authority
that governs and gives the form of law and the value of spiritual life to
individual wills, but it is also a power that asserts its will externally, making it
recognized and respected, i.e. demonstrating its universality in
deeds. all the necessary determinations of its development. AND
therefore organization and expansion, at least virtual. Thus it can adapt itself
to the nature of the human will, which in its development knows no barriers, and
which is realized by proving its own infinity.
The fascist state, the highest and most polente form of personality, is
strength, but spiritual. Which summarizes all forms of moral and intellectual life
of man. It cannot therefore be limited to simple functions of order and protection,
as liberalism wanted. It is not a simple mechanism that limits the sphere of
presumed individual freedoms. It is an inner form and norm, and
discipline of the whole person; it penetrates the will as well as the intelligence.
Its principle, the central inspiration of the human personality living in
the civil community, descends deeply and nestles in the heart of the man
of action as well as the thinker, the artist as well as the scientist: soul of
the soul.
In short, fascism is not only the giver of laws and the founder of institutes, but an
educator and promoter of spiritual life. It does not want to redo the forms of
human life, but the content, the man, the character, the faith. And to this end
it requires discipline, and authority that descends into the spirits, and
dominates them unchallenged. Its insignia is therefore the lictorian fasces,
symbol of the unity of force and justice.
II - Political and social doctrine
When, in the now distant March of 1919, from the columns of the Popolo
d'Italia I summoned to Milan the surviving interventionists-interventionists,
who had followed me since the establishment of the Fasci d'azione
revolutionary, which took place in January 1915, there was no it was no specific
doctrinal plan in my spirit. Of only one doctrine I brought the lived experience:
that of socialism from 1903-04 until the winter of 1914: about a decade.
Experience as a follower and leader, but no doctrinal experience. My
doctrine at that time too was the doctrine of action. A univocal, universally
accepted doctrine of socialism no longer existed since 1905, when the
revisionist movement headed by Bernstein began in Germany and on the other
hand
a revolutionary left movement was formed in the ups and downs of

trends, which in Italy never left the field of phrases, while, in the
Russian socialism was the prelude to Bolshevism. Reformism,

revolutionism, centrism, even the echoes of this terminology are
extinguished, while in the river of fascism, you will find the strands that
departed from Sorel, Péguy, Lagardelle of the Mouvemenl Socialiste
and the Cohort of Italian syndicalists, who between 1904 and 1914 brought
a note of novelty to the Italian syndicalist environment, already
emasculated and chloroformed by Giolitti's fornication. with Olivetti's
Free Pages. The she-wolf of Oran, Enrico Leone's Becoming Social.
In 1919, after the war, socialism was already dead as a doctrine: it

existed only as rancor, it still had only one possibility, especially in Italy,
the reprisal against those who had wanted the war, and who had to
"expiate" it. Il Popolo d'Italia bore the subtitle "daily of fighters and
producers". The word "producers" was already the expression of
a mental direction. Fascism was not kept at the mercy of a doctrine
elaborated previously, at the table: it was born from a need for action; it
was not a party, but in the first two years, anti-party and movement. The
name I gave to the organization fixed its characteristics. Yet whoever
rereads, in the now crumpled sheets of the time, the report of the
constitutive meeting of the Italian Combat Fasci, will not find a doctrine, but
a series of ideas, anticipations, hints, which, freed from the inevitable
gangue of contingencies, then, after a few years, they had to develop into a
series of doctrinal positions, which made fascism a political doctrine in its
own right, in comparison with all the others, both past and contemporary.
"If the bourgeoisie," I said then. « he thinks he can find lightning rods
in us, he is deceived. We have to go towards work... We want to
accustom the working classes to managerial capacity, also to convince
them that it is not easy to run an industry or a trade... We will
fight the technical and spiritual rearguardism... ». With the succession of
the regime open, we must not be weaklings. We have to run: if the regime
is overcome, we will have to take its place. The right of succession
comes to us because we drove the country to war and led it to
victory. The current political representation is not enough for us, we
want direct representation of individual interests... One could say
with this program that we are returning to corporations. Don't impose it!...
I would therefore like the assembly to accept the claims of national
syndicalism from an economic point of view... ».
Isn't it strange that from the very first day in Piazza San Sepolcro the word
"corporation" resounded, one of the legislative and social creations at the basis of
the regime?
The years that preceded the march on Rome were years during which the needs
of the action did not tolerate investigations or complete doctrinal elaborations.
They fought in cities and villages. There was discussion, but - what is most
sacred and important - we died. It was known to die. The doctrine - well
formed, with the division of chapters and paragraphs and the outline
of lucubrations - could have been missing! but there was to replace it with
something more decisive: faith. Nevertheless, whoever remembers on the
basis of books, articles, the votes of congresses, major and minor, who knows
how to investigate and choose, will find that the foundations of the doctrine
were laid while the battle raged. It was precisely in those years that fascist
thought also armed itself, refined itself, and proceeded towards its own
organization. The problems of the individual and the State; the problems of
authority and freedom; political and social problems and more specifically national
ones; the struggle against liberal, democratic, socialist, Masonic, popular
doctrines was carried out at the same time as the "punitive expeditions".
But since the "system" was lacking, fascism's bad faith opponents denied
any capacity for doctrine, while doctrine was emerging, albeit tumultuously, first
under the aspect of a violent and dogmatic negation as happens with all ideas that
begin, then under the positive aspect of a construction, which found, successively
in the years 1926, '27 and '28, its realization in the laws and institutions of the
regime.
Fascism is today clearly identified not only as a regime but as a doctrine. This
word must be interpreted in the sense that fascism today, exercising its
criticism of itself and of others, has its own unmistakable point of view, of
reference - and therefore of direction - in the face of all the problems that
distress, in things or in intelligences, the peoples of the world.
First of all, fascism, with regards, in general, the future and the development
of humanity, and apart from any consideration of current politics, does not believe
in the possibility
ability nor to the utility of perpetual peace. He therefore rejects the pacifism
that hides a renunciation of the struggle and a cowardice - in the face of
sacrifice. Only war puts all human energies at their maximum tension and
imprints a seal of nobility on the peoples who have the virtue of facing it. All
other tests are substitutes, which never place man in front of himself, in the
alternative of life and death. A doctrine, therefore, which starts from the
prejudicial postulate of peace, is foreign to fascism as well as foreign to the spirit
of fascism, even if accepted for. whatever usefulness they may have in
certain political situations are all internationalist and corporate constructions
which, as history shows, can be scattered to the wind when sentimental,
ideal and practical elements stir up the hearts of peoples. Fascism also
carries this anti-pacifist spirit into the lives of individuals. The proud
squadron motto "I don't care", written on the bandages of a wound, is an act
of philosophy that is not only Stoic, it is the fruit of a doctrine that is not
only political: it is the education for combat, the acceptance of the risks it
entails; it's a new Italian way of life. Thus the fascist accepts, loves life,
ignores and considers suicide cowardly; he understands life as a duty,
elevation, conquest: lived for himself, but above all for others, near and
far, present and future.
The "demographic" policy of the regime is the consequence of these

premises. In fact, even the Fascist loves his neighbor, but this "neighbor"
is not for him a vague and elusive concept: love of neighbor does not
prevent the necessary educative severity, and even less the differentiations
and distances. Fascism rejects universal embraces and, while living in
the community of civilized peoples, looks them vigilantly and distrustfully in the
eyes, follows them in their states of mind and in the transformation
of their interests, nor does it allow itself to be deceived by changeable
and fallacious appearances.
Such a conception of life leads fascism to be the complete negation of that

doctrine which constituted the basis of so-called scientific or Marxian
socialism: the doctrine of historical materialism, according to which the history
of human civilizations is explained only by the struggle of interests between the
different social groups and with the change of means and instruments of
production. That the vicissitudes of the economy — discoveries of raw materials,
new working methods, scientific inventions — have their

importance, no one denies; but that they suffice to explain human history
by excluding all other factors is absurd: fascism still and always
believes in sanctity and heroism, that is, in acts in which no economic
motive — far or near — acts. Historical materialism is denied, according
to which men are only extras in history, appearing and disappearing on
the surface of the waves, while deep down the real guiding forces
stir and work, class struggle is also denied, immutable and
irreparable, which of this economistic conception of history is the natural
progeny, and above all it is denied that the class struggle is the
predominant agent of social transformations. Having struck socialism in
these two cornerstones of its doctrine, all that remains of it is the
sentimental aspiration - as old as humanity - to a social coexistence in
which the sufferings and pains of the humblest people are alleviated.
But here fascism rejects the concept of economic "happiness", which
would be achieved socialistically and almost automatically at a
given moment in the evolution of the economy, with the assurance
of maximum well-being for all. Fascism denied the materialistic concept of
"happiness" as possible and abandoned it to the economists of the first
half of the 18th century; that is, it denies the equation well-being =
happiness which would convert men into animals thinking of only
one thing: that of being fed and fattened, thus reduced to pure and simple vegetative life
After socialism, fascism breaks through the whole complex of

democratic ideologies and rejects them, both in their theoretical premises
and in their applications or practical instruments. Fascism denies that
numbers, by the simple fact of being numbers, can direct human
societies; denies that this number can govern through periodic
consultation; it affirms the irremediable and fruitful and beneficial inequality
of men who cannot be leveled through a mechanical and extrinsic
fact such as universal suffrage. Democratic regimes can be defined as
those in which, from time to time, the people are given the illusion of
being sovereign, while the real effective sovereignty lies in other
sometimes irresponsible and secret forces. Democracy is a regime
without a king, but with very many kings sometimes more exclusive,
tyrannical and ruinous than a single king who is a tyrant. This explains why fascism.
despite having assumed an attitude of republican tendencies before

1922 - for reasons of contingency - he renounced it before the march on
Roina, convinced that the question of the political forms of a state is not,
today, pre-eminent and that studying in the sampling of the past
monarchies and present, of past and present republics, it appears
that monarchy and republic are not to be judged under the species of
eternity, but represent forms in which the political evolution, history,
tradition, psychology of a specific country is expressed. Now fascism
overcomes the monarchy-republic antithesis on which
democratism lingered, charging the former with all the
insufficiencies, and apologizing the latter as a regime of perfection.
Now we have seen that there are republics that are intimately reactionary
or absolutist, and monarchies that welcome the most daring political and social experienc
"Reason and science," said Renan, who had pre-fascist insights, in

one of his Philosophical Meditations, "are products of humanity, but
wanting reason directly for the people and through the people is a chimera.
It is not necessary for the existence of reason that all the world should
know it. In any case, if this initiation were to take place, it would not be
done through low democracy, which seems to have to lead to the
extinction of any higher discipline. The principle that society exists only
for the well-being and freedom of the individuals who compose it does not
seem to conform to the plans of nature, plans in which only the species is
taken into consideration and the individual seems to be sacrificed. It is to
be greatly feared that the last word of democracy understood in this
way (I hasten to say that it can also be understood differently) is not a
social state in which a degenerate mass would have no other concern
than to enjoy the ignoble pleasures of the vulgar man. »
So far Renan. Fascism rejects in democracy the absurd conventional lie

of political egalitarianism and the habit of collective irresponsibility and
the myth of happiness and indefinite progress. But, if democracy
means not pushing the people to the margins of the state, fascism
could be defined by the writer as an "organised, centralised, authoritarian
democracy".
In the face of liberal doctrines, fascism is in an attitude of absolute

opposition, both in the field of politics and in that of the economy. We
must not exaggerate - simply for purposes of current controversy
- the importance of liberalism in the last century, and make of what was
one of the numerous doctrines that blossomed in that century, a religion
of humanity for all present and future times. Liberalism flourished
for only fifteen years. It was born in 1830 as a reaction to the Holy
Alliance which wanted to push Europe back to pre-'89, and had its
heyday in 1848 when Pius IX too was liberal. Soon after, the decline began.
If 1948 was a year of light and poetry, 1949 was a year of darkness
and tragedy. The republic of Rome was killed by another republic, that
of France. In the same year, Marx launched the gospel of the religion
of socialism, with the famous Communist Manifesto. In 1851 Napoleon III
made his illiberal coup d'état and reigned over France until 1870, when
he was overthrown not by a popular uprising, but following one of the
greatest military defeats in history. The victor is Bismarck, who never
knew where the religion of freedom was at home and which prophets it
used. It is symptomatic that a people of high civilization like the German
people, has completely ignored throughout the century. XIX, the religion
of freedom. There is only one parenthesis. Represented by what has
been called the "ridiculous Frankfurt parliament", which lasted one
season. Germany achieved its national unity outside of liberalism, a
doctrine that seems foreign to the German soul, essentially a
monarchical soul while liberalism is the historical and logical antechamber
of anarchy. The stages of German unity are the three wars of '64, '66,
'70, led by "liberals" such as Moltke and Bismarck. As for Italian unity,
liberalism played an absolutely inferior part in it than the contribution
given by Mazzini and Garibaldi who were not liberals. Without
the intervention of the illiberal Napoleon, we would not have had Lombardy,
and without the help of the illiberal Bismarck at Sadowa and Sédan,
very probably we would not have had Venice in 1966; and in 1870 we
would not have entered Rome. From 1870 to 1915, runs the
period in which the same priests of the new creed feel the
twilight of their religion overrun by decadentism in literature, by activism
in practice. Activism: that is, nationalism, futurism, fascism. The
"liberal" century, after having accumulated an infinity of Gordian knots,
tries to untie them with the hecatomb of the world war. Never has any religion imposed
sacrifice. Were the gods of liberalism thirsty for blood? Now liberalism is
about to close the doors of its deserted temples because the peoples
feel that its agnosticism in the economy, its indifferentism in politics
and in morals would lead, as it has led, states to certain ruin. This
explains why all the political experiences of the contemporary world
are anti-liberal and it is supremely ridiculous to therefore want to classify
them outside history; as if history were a hunting lodge reserved
for liberalism and its professors, as if liberalism were the definitive
and no longer surmountable word of civilization.
The fascist denials of socialism, of democracy, of liberalism, however,

must not lead us to believe that fascism wants to push the world
back to what it was before 1789, which is indicated as the opening
year of the demoliberal century. There's no going back. Fascist doctrine
did not elect De Maistre as its prophet. Monarchical absolutism was,
and so was every ecclesiolary. Thus "were" the feudal privileges and
the division into "impenetrable" and incommunicable castes. The concept
of fascist authority has nothing to do with the police state. A party
that governs a nation totally is a new fact in history. References and
comparisons are not possible. Fascism, from the rubble of liberal,
socialist, democratic doctrines, draws those elements that still have a
life value. It maintains what could be called the established facts
of history, it rejects everything else, that is, the concept of a doctrine
that is good for all times and for all peoples. Granted that the 19th
century was the century of socialism, liberalism and democracy, it does
not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of
socialism, liberalism and democracy. Political doctrines pass,
peoples remain. One can think that this is the century of authority, a
century of the "right", a century of fascism; if the nineteenth
was the century of the individual (liberalism means individualism),
one can think that this is the "collective" century and therefore the
century of the state. It makes perfect sense that a new doctrine could
use the still vital elements of other doctrines. No doctrine was born
entirely new, shiny, never seen before. No doctrine can boast of
absolute "originality". It is linked, if only historically, to the other
doctrines that were, to the other doctrines that will be. Thus
Marx's scientific socialism is linked to the utopian socialism of the Furiers, the Owens,
of the 19th century the Enlightenment movement of the 18th century is reattached in
mourning. Thus democratic doctrines are linked to the Encyclopedia. Every doctrine
tends to direct the activity of men towards a determined objective; but the activity
of men reacts on the doctrine, transforms it, adapts it to new needs or surpasses it.
Doctrine, therefore, must itself be not an exercise of words, but an act of life. In this the
pragmatist veins of fascism, its will to power, its will to be, its position in the
face of the fact of "violence" and its value.
The cornerstone of fascist doctrine is the conception of the state, its essence, its
tasks, its purposes. For fascism, the state is an absolute, ahead
to which individuals and groups are relative. Individuals and groups are "thinkable"
in
how much they are in the state. The liberal State does not direct the game and the material
and spiritual development of the collectivities, but limits itself to registering the results; the
state
fascist has its own awareness, its own will, that's why it's called a state
"ethical". In 1929 at the regime's first five-year assembly, I said: «For Fascism,
the State is not the night watchman who deals only with the personal safety of citizens;
nor is it an organization for purely material purposes, such as that of guaranteeing
a certain well-being and a relative peaceful social coexistence, in which case a board of
directors would suffice to achieve it; nor is it a creation of pure politics, without
adherence to the material and complex reality of the life of individuals and that of peoples.
The Stalo as fascism conceives and implements it is a spiritual and moral fact,
since it concretes the political, juridical, economic organization of the nation, and this
organization is, in its origin and development, a manifestation of the spirit. The
State is the guarantor of internal and external security, but it is also the guardian and
transmitter of the spirit of the people as it has been elaborated over the
centuries in language, customs and faith. The State is not only present, but also past
and above all future. It's the state
which transcending the brief limit of individual lives represents the

immanent consciousness of the nation. The forces in which states express
themselves change, but the need remains. It is
State that educates citizens to civil virtue, makes them aware of their mission,
urges them to unity; harmonize their interests in justice; hands down the
conquests of thought in the sciences, the arts, law, human solidarity; it
takes men from the elementary life of the tribe to the highest human expression
of power which is the empire; he entrusts to the centuries the names of those who
died for his integrity or to obey his laws: he points out as an example and
recommends to the generations to come, the captains who increased his territory
and the geniuses who illuminated him with glory.
When the sense of the State declines and the dissociative and centrifugal
tendencies of individuals or groups prevail, national societies turn towards
sunset ".
From 1929 to today, universal political economic evolution has further

strengthened these doctrinal positions. The state is the giant. Who can resolve
the dramatic contradictions of capitalism is the state. What is called a crisis can
only be resolved by the state, within the state.
Where are the shadows of Jules Simon, who at the dawn of liberalism
proclaimed that "the state must work to make itself useless and prepare for its
resignation"? Of the MacCullochs, who in the second half of the last
century affirmed that the State must refrain from governing too much? And what
would the Englishman Bentham say in the face of the continuous, solicited,
inevitable interventions of the state in economic affairs, according to
which industry should have asked the state only to be left in peace, or the
German Humboldt, according to which Was the "idle" state to be considered
the best? It is true that the second wave of liberal economists was less
extremist than the first and yes
Smith himself opened — albeit cautiously — the door to state intervention in

the economy. If whoever says liberalism says individual, whoever says fascism
says state. But the fascist state is unique and is an original creation. It is
not reactionary, but revolutionary, insofar as it anticipates the solutions to
certain universal problems which are posed elsewhere in the political field by
the division of parties, by the arrogance of the
parliamentarianism, by the irresponsibility of the assemblies, in the

economic field by the ever more numerous and powerful trade union
functions both in the workers' and in the industrial sectors, by their
conflicts and their understandings; in the moral field by the need for
order, discipline, obedience to • those who are the moral dictates of the
country. Fascism wants the state to be strong, organic and at the same
time based on a broad popular base. The fascist state also claimed
the field of the economy for itself and, through the corporative, social and
educational institutions it created, the sense of the state reaches its furthest
reaches, and all the political forces circulate within the state, framed in their
respective organizations. , economic, spiritual of the nation. A state
that rests on millions of individuals who recognize it, feel it, are ready to
serve it, is not the tyrannical state of the medieval Lord. It has nothing in
common with the absolutist states of before or after 1989. The individual in
the fascist state is not annihilated but rather multiplied, just as in a regiment
a soldier is not diminished but multiplied by the number of his comrades.
The fascist state organizes the nation, but then leaves enough
room for individuals; it limited useless or harmful liberties and preserved
the essential ones. Whoever judges on this terrain cannot be the individual,
but only the State.
The fascist state does not remain indifferent to the religious fact in
general and to that particular positive religion which is Italian Catholicism.
The state does not have a theology, but it does have a morality. In the
fascist state religion is considered one of the deepest manifestations of
the spirit; therefore, it is not only respected, but defended and protected.
The fascist state does not create its own "God" as Robespierre wanted
to do at a certain moment, in the extreme delirium of the Convention;
nor does it vainly try to erase it from souls as Bolshevism does;
Fascism respects the God of ascetics, saints, heroes and also the God as
seen and prayed to by the naïve heart of the people.
The fascist state is a desire for power and empire. The Roman
tradition is here an idea of strength. In the doctrine of fascism, the empire
is not only a territorial or military or mercantile expression, but a spiritual
and moral one. One can think of an empire, that is, a nation that directly o
indirectly leads other nations, without needing to conquer a single square

kilometer of territory. For fascism the tendency towards empire, that is
towards the expansion of nations, is a manifestation of vitality; its opposite,
or the foot of the house, is a sign of decadence: the peoples who die are
renouncers. Fascism is the most adequate doctrine to represent
the tendencies, the moods of a people like the Italian who is reborn after many
centuries of abandonment or foreign servitude. But empire demands
discipline, coordination of efforts, duty and sacrifice; this explains many
aspects of the practical action of the regime and the orientation of many forces
of the State and the necessary severity against those who would like to oppose
this spontaneous and fatal movement of Italy in the 20th century, and
oppose by agitating the outdated ideologies of the 19th century , repudiated
wherever great experiments of political and social transformations have been
dared: never before have peoples thirsted for authority, for directives, for
order. If every century has its own doctrine, from a thousand indications it
appears that that of the present century is fascism. That it is a doctrine of life
is demonstrated by the fact that it has aroused a faith: that faith has
conquered souls is demonstrated by the fact that fascism has had its fallen and its martyrs.
Fascism now has the universality of all doctrines in the world which, when
realized, represent a moment in the history of the human spirit.
Benito Mussolini
136 S. Panunzio, Union and corporate law. Perugia 1930, p. 38 et seq., 46

et seq. Vincenzo Zangara speaks of the Charter as an "affirmation of
general principles...". (V. Zangara, Syndicate revolution: the corporative state,
Rome 1927, p. 149).
437 « 'Fascism*', Opera, XIII, 220.
138 « After the events of April 15, 1919 », Opera , XIII, 63; « For a political
action », Ibid., p. 209; «The 'Fascism 1'. Ibid. pp. 218 and following; "The
Rights of Victory", Opera, XIV. 51.
139 « The first fascist gathering », Opera. XIV. 44.

140 "For the understanding and for the action between the interventionists of the
left", Opera, XIII, 252; « Whoever owns, pay! » Ibid.. p. 224.
141 « For the Fasci di Combattimento », Opera. XIII. 113: "The fundamental
postulates of the fascist bloc", Opera, XIV, 111.
142 « For a political action », Opera, XIII, 208: « First victory ». Ibid. pp. 221 and
following; 'Hurry up, gentlemen! », Ibid., p. 265.
143 "For the understanding and for the action between the interventionists of the left",
Opera, XIII, 254.
144 Cf. A. Canepa, System of doctrine of fascism, Rome 1937. I, 10 et seq.
145 In 1926 Puchetti maintained that Fascism and its doctrine could be explained on the
basis of "purely sociological considerations": cf.
A. Puchetti, Scientific Fascism, Turin, 1926, p. 4.
146 «Doctrine of Fascism», Opera, XXXIV, 117.
147 For a contemporary review of the "organicistic" tradition with some references to
the function it had in Fascism, see M. Marotta, Organicism and neo-organicism,
Milan 1959.
148 These concepts are developed, substantially in the same terms, in Corso, Lo stato
fascista, pp. 69-72. See also S. Panunzio, People, nation, state, pp. 13-28.
149 Ibid., p. 70.
150 S. Raguso, Elements of corporate political science, Florence 1935, p. 28
151 C. Gini, Neo-organicism, Catania 1927, pp. 27, 42 and following.
152 C. Gini, « The Scientific Basis of Fascism ». Politicai Science Quarterly,

XLII, n. 1, marzo 1927, 102 e segg.
153 A. Rocco, « The Politicai Doctrine of Fascism », Communism, Fascism and

Democracy, a cura di C. Cohen, New York 1964, pp. 341, 342 e segg., 344.
154 In 1927 Rocco reaffirmed the fascist doctrine of society, the state and
relations with individuals in substantially the same way. See A.
Rocco, The transformation of the state, pp. 16 et seq.
155 G. Bortolotto, Fascism and Nation, Amburgo 1932, pp. 32 e segg.
156 A. Rocco, « The Politicai Doctrine of Fascism », op. cit.. p. 342.
157 C. Gini, Neo-organicism, p. 8.
158 AO Olivetti, Syndicalism as a philosophy and as a policy, pp. 11, 15, 21,
39, 40 and following. See Corso, op. cit., chap. 2.
159 A. Labriola, Contemporary socialism, Naples 1921, p. 303.
160 A. Labriola, « The homeland as a sentiment », Italian Syndicalists, pp. 77 et

seq.
181 It is a reference to Mazzini: cf. G. Mazzini, « Dell'unilà italiana». Published

writings
and unpublished. Rome 1906, II, 125. See PS Mancini, Prolusion to the law
course
constitutional, Rome 1931; C. Costamagna, Doctrine of Fascism, Turin 1940, p.

187. See S. Panunzio, People, nation, state, pp. 14 and following: C.
Costamagna, Elements of fascist corporative constitutional law, Florence 1929,
pp. 23-25.
162 R. Michels, "Patriotism," First Lectures in Politicai Sociology (New York,

1949), p. 157. Cfr. also the patriotism. Prolegomena to his sociological
analysis, Monaco 1929, dello stesso autore.
163 Mussolini in a letter to O Olivetti, dated 22 November 1927.

Works, 23, 301.
164 EM Olivetti, National syndicalism, p. 95.
165 C. Costamagna, Doctrine of Fascism, p. 80.
166 Ibid., p. 149; cf. C. Quaglio, op.cit, p. 161; G. Bortolotto, Masses and
leaders in fascist doctrine, Amburgo 1934, p. 25
167 C. Costamagna, Elements..., p. 19.
168 S. Raguso, op. cit., p. 28.
169 See S. Panunzio, Union and corporate law.
170 C. Costamagna, Doctrine of fascism, pp. 145 f.
171 « For the Meritorious Medal of the Municipality of Milan », Opera, XXI,
425.
172 «The charter of work»; see note no. 134 of this chapter.
173 The organization of the fascist state, edited by the National

Fascist Party, Rome 1936, p. 27.
175 This is a constant and recurring theme in the affirmation of the fascist
doctrine. G. Bortolotto, Massen und Fuehrer in der faschistischen Lehre, p.
13; P. Gorgolini, Fascism explained to the people, Turin 1935, pp. 69 et seq.
176 See Costamagna, Doctrine of fascism, pp. Ill et seq.
177 A. Canepa, op. cit., III, 78 et seq.
178 V. Pareto, The Mind and Society. Ili, par. 1868.
179 Mussolini, in his introduction to R. Korherr, Regresso delle births, morte

dei popolo, Rome 1928, p. 22; "Number as strength", Opera, XXIII,
215.
180 See Pareto's discussion of myths and sentiments in V. Pareto, The

transformation of democracy, pp. 43-48.
181 C. Costamagna, Doctrine of fascism, pp. III, 129; C. Pellizzi,

Fascismoaristocrazia, Milan 1924, p. 192 see A. Canepa, op. cit., III, 79, n. 14.
182 O. di Giamberardino, The individual in Fascist ethics, Florence 1940, p. 5.
183 The best known, if not certainly the only author in this tradition is
Julius Evola. In 1928 he argued that Fascism must "fight profane,
democratic and materialistic science, always relative and uncertain,
slave to phenomena and non-universal laws, mute with respect to the
profound reality of man...". He maintained that the "true" Fascism gives new
vigor to the "sacred, inner and secret science... the science that leads to the
occult forces that regulate our organism...". That is, he referred to the
occultist tradition. J. Evola, Pagan imperialism: fascism before the Euro-
Christian danger, Rome 1928, p. 12. See J. Evola, Revolt against the
modern world, Milan 1934 (see Third ed., Rome 1969 ed.). In general, Fascist
"mysticism" is nothing more than a form of ethical idealism. See E.
Martinoli, Function of the mystic in the fascist revolution, Udine 1940.
184 « Prelude to Machiavelli », Opera, XX, 251-254.
185 These convictions gave rise to a set of theoretical and descriptive

generalizations, expressed by Rocco in the following way: «According to a
fundamental law of social life, called by Maine the law of 'imitation1,
the masses tend to follow the will of some dominating element, of some so-
,
called 'spiritual guides 1 : A. Rocco, «The Transformalion of the

State», What is" Fascism and Why?, edited by T.
Sillani, New York 1931, p. 22. See A. Marpicati, The Fascist Party, Milan
1938, p. 69; Fascist culture, edited by the National Fascist Party, Rome
1936, pag. 9-17.
186 C. Costamagna, Doctrine of fascism, pp. 99-116.
187 R. Michels, First Lectures in Politicai Sociology, p. 126.

188 The National Fascist Party, National Fascist Party, Rome, 1936, p. 50.
190 There is copious and valid documentation on the institutional structure

of the Fascist Corporate Stalo. Among the comments, in my opinion,
more useful we can include: HG Welk Fascisi Economie Policy, Cambridge
1938; GL Field, The
Syndical and Corporate Institutions of Italian Fascism. New York 1938: A.

Pennachio. The Corporate State, New York 1927; C. Haider, Capital and
Labor under Fascism. New York 1930; F. Pitigliani, The Italian
Corporate State. London 1933; H. Goad. The Making of the Corporate
State, London 1934. A good critical commentary is that of C. Schmidt, The
Corporal State in Action : Italy under Fascism., New York 1939. Among
the best comments written by the fascists themselves, we note: N. Jaeger ,
Principles of corporate law, Padua 1939; A. Serpieri, Principles of
corporative political economy, Florence 1944. The largest Italian post-
war exhibition is that of A. Aquarone, The organization of the
totalitarian state, Turin, 1965. A collection of fascist laws concerning
the organization of the Corporative State found in the Corporate and Labor
Code, Milan 1940, 2 flights.
191 Fascism never asks the question of the method, using nella
...
« his political action now liberal systems, now democratic means and
sometimes even socialist expedients. This indifference towards the method
often exposes Fascism to the accusation of inconsistency by superficial
observers, who do not realize that what matters to us is the end and that
therefore even when we use other people's systems we act with a radically
different spiritual attitude from others and we aim for completely
different results. The fascist conception of the nation, of the ends of the
state, of the relations between society and the individuals that compose it,
entirely rejects the doctrine which, as I have already said, proceeds from
the theories on natural law formed during the sixteenth, seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries and which constitutes the foundation of liberal,
democratic and socialist ideologies»: A. Rocco, « The politicai Doctrine of
Fascism », op. cit., p. 341.
NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE
1 Cfr. H. Kohn, Politicai Ideologies of thè Twentieth Cenlury, New York 1966, p. 149.
Cfr. H. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, New York 1954, p. 404 (tr. il.: Ragione e
rivoluzione, Bologna 1966 - N.d.R.).
2 G. Papini, Pragmatism, p. 35. In this sense, Mussolini said that "action" had
"buried" philosophy: "The program of Mussolini", Opera, XVIII, 465
3 G. Prezzoline The syndicalist theory, pp. 240-253.
4 G. Papini, op. cit., pp. 100-1 19 and segg., 95, 98, 110, 151, 199.
5 Ibid., p. 115.
6 H. Schneider, op. cit., p. 7; cf. G. Papini, op. cit., p. 9.
7 Before the March on Rome, Spirito had already carried out a critical investigation
of pragmatism. U. Spirito, Pragmatism in contemporary philosophy, Florence
1921.
8 U. Spirito, Beginning of a new era, Florence 1961, p. 229.
9 "Relativism and fascism", Opera, XVII, 267-269. Mussolini evidently

soon became displeased with the importance he had attributed to relativism in this short
essay, so much so that he forbade its publication in the "definitive" edition of
his works, which appeared during the Fascist period. See E. Susmel, Twenty-five writings
and a speech by Benito Mussolini forbidden by him, Milan 1950, pp. 189, 195.
10 « Not only for us there is no dualism between matter and spirit, but we have
annulled this antithesis in the synthesis of spirit. Spirit alone exists, nothing else exists;
neither you, nor this classroom, nor the things and objects that pass in the fantastic
cinematography of the universe, which exists as I think it and only in my thought,
not independently of my thought. It is the soul, gentlemen, which has returned.' "For
true peacemaking", Opera, XVII, 298.
11 U. Spirito, Beginning of a new era, pag. 229-233. Given that the relationship between
Gentile idealism and pragmatism had been very close, it was necessary,
years later, to highlight the differences between the two conceptions.
See F. Modica-Cannizzo, « Giovanni Gentile's anti-pragmatism and anti-activism »,
GG, II, 121-127.
12 See G. Gentile, Contemporary Italian Philosophy, Florence 1941, pp.

48-51; O.D. pp. 38 et seq., 58; CF, 47. 98; F. Chilanti, "The people and
intelligence", Gerar
chia, XIX, (September 1940), pp. 481-483; O. Valle, "On Fascist Intelligence".
Hierarchy, XIX (October 1939), pp. 702-703.
13 Cfr. la definizione simile proposta da Lasswell e Lerner: H. Lasswell and D. Lerner,

World Revolutionary Eliles: Studies in Coercive Ideological Movements. Londra
1966, p. 17
14 of the civil code Socialism and socialists », Opera, I, 142; see p. 139.
15 « Doctrine of Fascism », Opera, XXXIV, 117.
16 « At the science congress before the fourth attack », Opera, XXII, 251.
17 Cf. "To the Assembly of Corporations", Opera, XXVI, 379; and « Speech of
XIII January for the Corporative State », Ibid., pp. 86-96.
18 « Doctrine of Fascism », Opera, XXXIV, 122.
19 « Which way is the world going? », Opera, XVIII, 70 and following.
20 Applies to his political thinking in general, but an explicit statement in
this meaning can already be found in « The ” PUS ” in Congress », Opera, XVI, 116,
117.
21 or Doctrine of Fascism », Opera, XXXIV, 117.

22 A. Canepa, op. cit.. City, 57, n. 5.
23 Ibid., p. 65.
24 S. Panunzio, The Fascist State, pp. 15 f.
25 L. Volpicelli, Motivi su Mussolini, Rome, 1935, p. 18.
28 L. Volpicelli, « The historical reality of Fascism », Educazione Fascista, VII (1929),

580.
27 « Fascist doctrine is not a philosophy in the current sense of the word [...] Fascism,
in fact, argues against abstract and intellectualist philosophies [.!.] The
fascist, on the other hand, between the legacy of some Marxist inspirations
and sorelian (because many Fascists and the Duce himself received their first
intellectual education at the school of Marx and Sorel) and among the influence of
contemporary Italian idealistic doctrines [...] he understands philosophy as a philosophy
of praxis" (OD, pp. 37, 58).
28 "The philosophy of strength", Opera, I, 174; see to The Syndicalist Theory », Opera,
II. 128; and « At the new seat of the mutilated », Opera, XIX, 168 et seq.
29 GA Chiurco, History of the Fascist Revolution, Florence 1929, I, 201 (now:

Edizioni del Borghese, Milan 1972, II flights. - Ed.).
30 "We must sail", Opera, XIV, 231.
31 «Aspects of drama». Opera, X, 8.
32 « ... one must not believe that Fascism did not have a theory.
It would be a very serious mistake" ("Fascism and nationalism", Opera, XIX, 162).
33 "At the congress of philosophers", Opera, XXIV, 109.
34 Mussolini, letter to M. Bianchi dated 26 August 1921 (Opera, XVII. 415).
35 M. Marchello, The heroic morality of fascism, Turin 1934, p. 14; g.

Gentile, "The Political Formation of National Consciousness", Education
Fascist, VIII (1930). 675.
38 A. Canepa, op. cit., I, 15, n. 1.
37 Ibid., no. 2. See also A. Carlini, Philosophy and religion in Mussolini's

thought, Rome 1934, p. 11.
38 Cf. Works, 34, 6; G. Pini and D. Susmel, op. cit., III, 255; No.
Tripods. Life and ideals of Giovanni Gentile, Rome 1954, p. 16; HS Harris, op.
cit., pp. 188 and following.
39 Cfr. A. Canepa, op. cit., III, 17; And Martinoli, op. cit., p. 13.
40 Some of the most important Fascist theorists, including Panunzio, Costamagna,

Canepa and Tripodi, have attempted to separate the philosophy of Fascism
from that of Gentile.
41 G. Gentile, «Discourse to the Italians». dd. IV, 67; see A. Carlini, "Studi
Gentiliani", GG, VIII, 115.
42 See letter from Gentile to Mussolini, on the occasion of Gentile's formal

enrollment in the National Fascist Party; HS Harris, op. cit., pp. 167 et seq. Other
unpublished letters from Gentile to Mussolini have been published by Duilio
Susmel, in la Destra, June 1972.
44 A. Labriola, Study on Marx, Naples, 1926, p. 42, no. 37. The book was
first published in 1908; the second edition does not present any changes
with respect to the first.
45 G. Pini and D. Susmel, op. cit., I,
46 Mannhardt, op. cit., p. 114: H. Schneider. on. cit., p. 102.
47 Y. De Becnac, Palazzo Venezia, p. 130.
48 Ibid., p. 158.
49 Mussolini, letter to M. Bianchi dated 26 August 1921, Opera, XVII, 414 et seq.
50 B. Croce, History of Italy from 1871 to 1915, Bari 1942, pp. 279 and
following; see A. Carlini, Philosophy and religion in the thought of Mussolini,
Rome 1934, p. 14, « Studi Gentiliani », GG, VIII, 106.
51 « The first speech in the Chamber of Deputies », Opera, XVI, 440.
52 Cf. "At the congress of science before the fourth attack", Opera, XXII, 251;
L. Volpicelli, op. cit., p. 22.
53 Cesare Rossi, Mussolini's intimate at the time, maintains that in 1922

Mussolini knew Gentile, very "vaguely"; C. Rossi, Thirty-three Mussolini
stories, Milan 1958, p. 423. Rossi has strong (and understandable) anti-Mussolini
prejudices which must be taken into account in evaluating his statements.
54 H. S. Harris, op. cit., pp. 160 e segg.
55 Mussolini's speech to the Chamber of 1 December 1921, with which he

showed that he embraced epistemological idealism, contains a paraphrase of
the first two chapters of Gentile's General Theory. See "For true peacemaking",
Opera, XVII, 298; and G. Gentile, General theory of the spirit as a pure act,
Bari 1924, cap. I and II. This edition is not substantially different from
that of 1916.
57 H. S. Harris, op. cit., p. 189, n. 72.
58 See N. Tripodi, Comment on Mussolini: Notes on the « Doctrine of

fascism », Rome 1956, p. 10 (now in: Fascism according to Mussolini,
Edizioni del Borghese, Milan 1971 - Editor's note).
59 « The man and the divinity », Opera, XXXIII, 22.
60 GS, p. 44.
61 Gentile maintained that the conception of the State represented a fundamental point of
Fascism; Mussolini shared this judgment. See
CF, p. 103, O.D. pp. 42 and following; «Doctrine of Fascism», Opera, XXXIV, 129; «To the
five-year assembly of the regime», Opera, XXIV, 15.
62 N. Tripodi, Commentary on Mussolini, p. 20.
63 IF, p. 181.
84 RE, p. 28.
65 cfr. GS, p. 14; FD, pp. 103 e segg.; IF, p. 182; M. Aebischer, The individual and the
state according to Giovanni Gentile, Friburgo 1954, p. 56
66 AD Lindsay, in his criticisms of Mill, maintains: «True freedom is possible, not in a

world in which there is no relationship with other people, but in a world in which these relationships
are an expression of reason.
So long, therefore, as the State substitutes orderly and reasonable interference for
the arbitrary interference of individuals, it increases liberty" (introduction to JS Mill. Utilitarianism,
Liberty and Representation Government, New York 1950, page XXV).
67 See RE, pp. 20 and following; GS, pp. 60, 65 and following, 109 and following, 115.
68 Cfr. PF, p. 53.
69 FD. p. 105; cfr. p. 108.
70 GS, p. 15.
71 GS, pp. 33, 38.
72 GS, p. 44.
73 GS, p. 15.
74 GS, p. 16.
75 Cf. AC Puchetti, op. cit., p. 112.

78 RE, pp. 8-16.
77 Cf. CF, pp. 10 et seq.
78 RE, p. 14.
79 CF, p. 34.
80 FD, p. 67.
81 CF, pp. 34, 47, 51; GS, p. 58.
82 IF, p. 180.
83 See G. Pannese, Ethics in fascism and the philosophy of law and history,
Rome 1942, pp. 149 and following; C. Costamagna, Doctrine of fascism, pp.
337-365; G. Corso, op. cit., pp. 44 et seq.
84 RE, p. 24 et seq.
85 OD, pp. 49, 63. Cf. Preface by S. bonghi to A. Sermonti, Servizio

sindacale italiano, Rome 1929, I, IX.
86 FD, p. 111.
87 See V. Bellezza, The positive existentialism of Giovanni Gentile, Florence

1954, chap. x.
88 See U. Spirito, Capitalism and corporatism, Florence 1933, p. 29; g.

I ran Op. cit., p. 34.
89 FD, pp. 67, 81; see G. Maggiore, "The problem of law in the thought of
Giovanni Gentile", GG, I, 236.
90 FD, p. 80.
91 GS, p. 57.
92 GS, p. 58.
93 CF, pp. 90 f., IF, p. 183.
94 « The conception of the fascist state differs profoundly from the liberal and
democratic one as regards the subjective, political and freedom rights of citizens.
In fact, the Fascist State does not recognize citizens' rights to be asserted against
the State, but considers political rights and freedoms as concessions that the
State makes to citizens so that they can act under its authority in a way that
cooperates in social welfare" ( G. Pannese, op. cit., page 161).
95 See in particular S. Panunzio, Popolo, Nation, State and The Order of the
Fascist State, pp. 19-26.
96 CF, p. 36; cfr. p. 50.
97 OD, p. 63 et seq., « The constitutionalisation of the Grand Council of Fascism

», Educazione fascista, VI (February 1928), 86 et seq.
98 CF, pp. 109 et seq.; GS, pp. 58 et seq.; FD, 117 et seq.
99 G. Pannese, op. cit., p. 158.
100 GS, pp. 32, 34, 39.
101 Cfr. DR, p. 88.
102 GS, p. 48.
103 OD, p. 59.
104 OD, pp. 9 from seg.; cf. Harris, op. cit., p. 219.
105 OD, p. 59; The Order of the Fascist State, pp. 49-51.
106 «Doctrine of fascism», Opera, XXXIV, 117-120.
107 See HS Harris, op. cit.; PA Zacchi, The new Italian idealism by B.
Croce and G. Gentile, Rome 1925; U. Spirito, Italian idealism and its followers
critics, Florence 1930; N. Papafava, Absolute idealism. Milan sd; AND.

Chiocchetti, The Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile, Milan 1922.
108 C. Costamagna, Doctrine of fascism, pp. 9. 31.
109 OD, pp. 22, 38.
110 RE. p. 11.
111 GS, p. 125.
112 CF, p. 51.
113 GS, pp. 59 e segg.
114 RE, p. 34.
115 IF, 177 et seq., 179.
116 RE, p. 26.
117 CF, p. 193.
118 GS, p. 136.
119 See « Fascism in culture », CF, pp. 95-116, in particular, p. 104.
120 GS, pp. 134-136.
121 C. Costamagna, Doctrine of fascism, p. 13. G> Guizzardi maintains that

«man is tired of justifying, explaining, reasoning... Men have forgotten
Reason; they desire the Faith and invoke the Myth ». (G.
Guizzardi, "From ' Reason ' to ' Faith '". Hierarchy, XIX, April 1940, 197-198).
122 C. Costamagna, Doctrine of Fascism, p. 26.
123 J. Evola, Pagan Imperialism, p. 76.

124 See J. Evola, Men and ruins, Rome 1953; « Gentile is not our philosopher »,
Minoranza, II (August-October 1959), 22-27. (See later also: Men and ruins, HI
ed.. Volpe, Rome 1972; "The philosopher Giovanni Gentile", Il Conciliatore,
XX, January 1972, p. 28-29; « On neo-humanism », L'Italiano, XIV, December

1972 January 1973, pp. 788-798 - Editor's note).
125 "Prelude to Machiavelli", Opera, XX, 252; cf. pp. 251-254.
126 Ibid., p. 253. See also Mussolini's considerations in « Soliloquy in 'freedom' on

Trimellone island », Opera, XXXII, 178.
127 « Pontine and Sardinian Thoughts », Opera, XXXIV, 286.
128 Cfr. p. 100.
129 "Fascism is a 'spiritual revolt'", Opera, XX, 149.
130 See Costamagna, Doctrine of fascism, pp. 133 et seq.
131 The only evidence against this assertion is Mussolini's own admission that he
"contaminated" socialism with a "pinch of Bergson". However, since Mussolini
does not indicate exactly which elements of Bergson he introduced, it is difficult to
take this statement into account. On the other hand, as we have already said,
Mussolini rejected the intuitive mysticism of Sorel: cf. "The first speech to the Chamber
of Deputies", Opera, XIV, 440. However, the convenience of such a tactical
position led many Fascists to maintain that "beyond truth or error there is the
myth, the mystical force, because to act you don't have to demonstrate, you have
to believe ». These concepts agree with Mussolini's theory of motivation,
but not necessarily with his conception of truth: F. Forni, "Fascism and Philosophy",
Gerarchia, XVIII (August 1938), 579.
132 "If by mysticism we mean the faculty of understanding the truth without the
aid of the intelligence, I am the first to declare myself opposed to any
mysticism", according to the quote by Y. De Begnac in Palazzo
Venice, p. 186. Thus. Spinetti can define Fascist mysticism as an "intimate and
reasonable" moral discipline which has nothing "transcendental or irrational."
Fascist mysticism "also explains rationally what to others still
appears indemonstrable with reason and relegated among the things that
must be believed on faith, without discussion": GS Spinetti, "Nostra
mystica", Gerarchia, XVII (February 1938), 79 , 80, 81.
133 M. Palmieri, The Philosophy of Fascism, Chicago 1936, pag. 70 and

following. Calza argued, on the contrary, that « following Mussolini, builder of
civilization, is a question of intelligence [...] Following a man of genius is not in
fact a political sentiment... »: G. Calza, « Intelligenza del Fascismo », Hierarchy
XIX (May 1939), 316.
134 M. Palmieri, op. cit., p. 69. Zapponi speaks of "mystique" which

manifests itself as a sense of # Unity which cements individuals in the
community and the community with the earth and the entire nation with that
unwritten law which [...] can only be a law of human nature".
This has the same value as Gentile's "sentiment", the initial impulse of spiritual
life. But Zapponi goes on to define the manifestations of this sentiment as
«irrational impulses», that is something that Gentile would have
considered extraneous to moral activity: A. Zapponi, « PNF Mistica
Fascista », Gerarchia, XIX (March 1940), 157-158.
135 C. Costamagna, Doctrine of fascism, pp. 340-341.
136 D. Pellegrini-Giampietro, op. cit., pp. 68, 69, 73. See, in this regard, M.
Rivoire, « Fascist mysticism and totalitarian mysticism », Gerarchia XIX
(March, 1940), 132; M. Jannelli, « The dominion of the spirit in the fascist
state », Gerarchia, XVIII (January, 1938), 3; A. Assanta, « Spiritual state
», Hierarchia, XII (August, 1934), 666.
131 E. Martinoli, op. cit., pp. 100-1 23-32; A. Carlini, op. cit., p. 60.
138 Preface by Mussolini to A. Oriani, op. cit., p. v; "Alfredo Oriani", Opera.

XX, 244-246.
139 A. Oriani, op. cit., p. 243.

140 O. Di Giamberardino, op. cit., pp. 60 and following, 62 and following, 65.
141 A. Carlini, op. cit., p. 60
142 E. Ludwig, op. cit., pp. 100-1 129 ,
143 Silus, « Civilization, aristocracy, intelligence », Gerarchia, XIX (March, 1939), 162
and following, B. Damiani, « Authoritarian Democracy », Gerarchia, XVIII (July, 1938),
485.
144 P. Ubaldi, « For a realistic philosophy of fascism », Gerarchia, XVIII (September,

1938), 620, 621.
145 F. Paolini, Representative System of Fascism (Rome, 1937), p. 220 et seq.
146 W. Cesarini Sforza, « The Chamber of Fasci and Corporations », in The Chamber of
Fasci and Corporations, Florence, 1937, p. 250.
147 E. Ludwig, op. cit., pp. 100-1 122 , 123 .
148 Cf. « Soliloquy in ' freedom ' on Trimellone Island ». Opera. XXXII. 170.
149 Ibid.. p. 178.
150 A. Aquarone. op. cit.. provides a brief but serious attempt at analysis.
Cfr. anche D.L. Germino, The Italian Fascist Party in Poiver. A Sludy in Totalitarian Rule.
Minneapolis 1959.
151 G. Battagline « Fascist state, people's state », Gerarchia, XII (May, 1934),
361; A. Fiaccaderi, « The authority of fascism ». ibid.
(October, 1934), 859. Cf. A. Navarra, "Government and the governed in the Fascist
regime", in La Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni, p. 166; Paulines, op. cit., p. 114.
152 S. Panunzio, « Contribution to the examination of the problems of the establishment of

the Chamber of Fasci and Corporations », in The Chamber of Fasci and Corporations,
p. 228.
153 O. Di Giamberardino, op. cit., pp. 303 et seq. It is a paraphrase of Gentile (OD p.
9). but the conclusions are evidently different.
154 R. Michels, First Lectures in Politicai Sociology, cap. VI.
155 Cfr. Friedrich e Z.K. Brzezinski, op. cit., pp. 24 e segg.
156 G. Bottai. Twenty Years and a Day, p. 196.
157 « Pontine and Sardinian Thoughts », Opera, XXXIV, 278.
158 G. Gentile, « Reconstructing », GG, IV, 86 et seq.
159 OD, pp. 43 et seq.
160 N. Tripods. Commentary on Mussolini, p. 19; see p. 14.

NOTES TO CHAPTER SIX

1 See E. Susmel, op. cit., chap. XXIX; G. Roux, op. cit., pp. 261 and following,
277; M. Bardèche, op. cit., chap. The; J. Evola, Fascism, Rome 1964. p. 95.
2 E. Nolte, op. cit., p. 240.
3 R. De Felice, History of Italian Jews under Fascism, Turin 1962.
4 « To the National Council of the PNF », Opera, XXIX, 190.
5 See « The Party and Italian racism », Difesa, I, 1 (5 August 1938), 2; AND.
Leoni, Mystic of Fascist Racism, Padua, 1941, pp. 19-27. On the relationship
between intellectuals and racism cf. C. Quarantotto, The cinema, the flesh and
the devil, Milan 1963, 3
pp. 100-116.
6 "Discourse of Bologna", Opera, XVI, 239, 240, 243.
7 « The fatal victory », Opera, XI, 81.
8 «To the people of Cagliari», Opera, XIX, 267 and following; «The first
anniversary of the March on Rome», Opera, XX. 64; « For the Festival of
Fighters », Opera, XIX, 288.
9 « Internal politics in the Senate», Opera, XXI, 201; «The twenty-fifth year of
the reign of Vittorio Emanuele III», Opera, XXI, 343.
10 "Discourse of Genoa", Opera, XXII, 138.
11 R. Michels. Work and race, Milan 1924, p. IX, see p. 1, no. 1.
12 FT Marinetti, op. cit., pp 25, 51, 60, 64, 67, 68. 79, 87. 90. 95, 101, 103,
109. 110, 111. 113, 114, 123, 136, 137, 174, 175, 176. 191. 198. 199. 200.
206. 208. 209. 210, 212, 218, 219, 228, 242.
13 Ibid., p. 19.
14 Ibid., p. 113.
15 Ibid., 174, 175.
16 Ibid., p. 199.
17 Ibid., pp. 198-200.

18 "Discourse of Bologna", Opera, XVI, 243; see "To the people of Piacenza".
Opera, XIX, 272.
19 See R. Michels, Work and race, pp. 4, 97.
20 V. Pareto, The Mind and Society, New York 1935, par.. 664. n. 3; 729, 779,
n. 1; 782, 784, 2236, n. 1.
21 "To the workers of the Poligrafico", Opera, XIX, 115.
22 Cf. A. Rocco, Political writings and speeches, Rome 1938, 1, 9. 71, 88: cf. R.
The Felice, op. cit., p. 33.
23 "The speech of the ascension", Opera, XXII, 363; see pp. 361-363; "The
Fascist Programme", Opera, XVII, 219; see also <c Synthesis of the regime »,
Opera, XXVI, 190-191.
24 B. Spampanato, Countermemorial , Rome 1952, II, 131.
25 A. Oriani, op. cit., p. 112.
28 "Number as strength", Opera, XXIII, 210.
27 E. Corradini, The shadow of life, pp. 170-173.
28 « The accomplices », Opera, XIII, 169 et seq. A year after this apparent
identification of the Jews with Bolshevism, Mussolini explicitly
stated that "Bolshevism is not a Jewish phenomenon...": "Jews,
Bolshevism and Italian Zionism', Opera, XV, 269. Many Jews, in that period,
provided considerable financial aid to the first Fascist squads. Indeed, it seems
that Elias Jona «was one of the main supporters of Mussolini's « Popolo
d'Italia » See R. Dh Felice, Storia..., p. 85, and Y. De Begnac, Life of Benito
Mussolini, III, pp. 603-609.
29 I. Horowitz, Radicalism and thè Revolt against Reason : The Social Theories
of Georges Sorel, New York 1961, pp. 39 e segg., n. 1; cfr. J.
Meisel, The Genesis of Georges Sorel, Ann Arbor 1951, pp. 86, 176-180.
30 « But it is ridiculous to think, as was said, that the Synagogues should be

closed! Jews have been in Rome since the time of the kings; perhaps they supplied
the clothes after the abduction of the Sabine women; there were fifty thousand
in the time of Augustus and they asked to cry over the body of Julius
Caesar. They will remain undisturbed...": "Report to the Chamber of Deputies
on the Lateran Agreements", Opera , XXIV. 82; see E. Ludwig, op cit., p. 72.
31 M. Sarfatti, Dux. Milan 1929.
32 R. De Felice, History..., p. 277.
33 R. MacGregor-Hastie, The Day of thè Lion, New York 1963, p. 199.
34 See G. Gentile, War and faith, Naples 1919, pp. 48-52; Harris, op. cit., p. 133.
35 ft. Mahinetti, op. cit., p. 199.
36 G. Gentile, War and faith, pp. 156-161.
37 Ibid., pp. 309-314; Harris, op. cit., p. 139.
38 Cfr. G. Pini and D. Susmel, op. cit., I, 279; R. MacGregor-Hastie, op. cit., p. 97.
39 Marinetti himself remained a fascist and on his death in 1944, he obtained
the honor of state funerals (E. Amicucci, op. cit., pp. 195 et seq.).
40 See E. Corradini, The national rebirth, Florence 1929, p. 147; Pighetti,
op. cit., p. 13; Panunzio, People, nation, state, pp. 14 and following; see St. Raguso,
Elements of corporative political science (Florence, 1935), pp. 93; Bottai, La Carta
del Lavoro, p. 137.
41 See AO Olivetti, Syndicalism as a philosophy and as a policy.
42 AO Olivetti, National syndicalism, pp. 172 and following.
43 S. Panunzio, National state and trade unions, p. 35; Pighetti, op. cit., p. 18.
44 Corso, op. cit., pp. 34 et seq.
45 E. Corradini, Rebirth, p. 144.
46 E. Santarelli, « From nationalism to racism », in Difesa, IV (5 January 1941), 26

et seq.
47 G. Acerbo, / foundations of the fascist doctrine of race, Rome 1940, p. 25.
48 See N. Timofeeff-Ressowsky, "Genetics and evolutions", and "On the

question of territorial isolation within specific populations", in Scientia Genetica,
I (1939); C. Gini, Birth, p. 100, no. 31.
49 G. Acerbo, op. cit., p. 26.
50 A. Capasso, Clear ideas on racism, Rome 1942, p. 21; see G. Landra, « The
Italian race in the theory of hologenesis », in Difesa, II April 5, 1939), 10.
51 Capasso, op. cit., p. 23; see G. Acerbo, op. cit., E. Canevahi, « The
politics of race and the new European order », in Difesa, IV (5 August 1941), 9.
52 M. Canella, Outline of anthropobiology, Florence 1943, p. 8.
53 Ibid., p. 4; M. Canella, Extinct and Living Human Races, Florence 1942, p. 8.
54 Capasso, p. 26; G. Landra, « The influence of the city on the shape of the
head », in Difesa, IV, (December 20, 1940), 28-30; "Studies on the growth of
stature in Scandinavia", in Difesa, IV (January 5, 1941); « Physical characteristics
of the Italian race », in Difesa, I (5 September 1938), 12; Brown, op. cit., p. 13.
55 "Human societies, ethnic groups, nations are concrete realities, essential

expressions of the complex human psyche, developed with the contribution of
various factors
order, biological, geographical, climatic, historical and social. Now, in a well

individualized, historically and politically well integrated ethnic group, even if
relatively heterogeneous in its racial constitution, the same common civil life, the
same laws, the same uses and customs, the same language, the same religion,
the same cultural climate, the same collective aspirations and ideals, together
with the mixing of the bloods of the various regional lineages and sub-races, can
lead to the constitution of a new average racial type [...] A nation, that is, and this
is the opinion of many anthropologists, it can constitute the hotbed of a new
breed in formation » : M. Canella, Lineamenti..., pag. 8. See G. Maggiore,
op. cit., pp. 204 and following; A. Capasso, op. cit., p. 18, 26.
56 G. Acerbo, p. 23.
57 See C. Gini, Birth, pp. 72 and following.
58 A. Solmi, « The ethnic unity of the Italian nation in history », in Difesa, I (5

August 1938), 8-11; G. Landra, "Blonds and browns in the Italian race", in Difesa,
I (September 20, 1938), 26-28.
59 G. Brown, op. cit., p. 32; M. Canella, Human Races, p. 18.
60 M. Canella, Human Races, p. 17.

61 G. Maggiore, op. cit., p. 41.
62 A. Capasso, op. cit., p. 34.
65 See Pareto, Corso, II, par. 991, 992 and 992, no. 2.
87 N. Pende, « The unitary biotypological principle », in Gerarchia, XX, 1 (1940),

569-72,
68 « ...All races would originate from crossings. The feeling of the group determined
by physical, or social, or cultural or administrative factors (race, caste, city, state,
etc.) and the hospitality of the neighboring groups, would function as insulators,
and in the isolation, the fusion would gradually take place. full of intermingled
races. This would be the biological function of group sentiment. And this is
understood as [...] we were able to define the nation as a group of people having
their own individuality, not only from a political and cultural point of view, but also from
a biological point of view. The fact is that political and social individuality
inevitably brings with it a certain degree of isolation which has the effect
of making the nation also assume peculiar biological characteristics [...]. All
human races would therefore, as is often said today, be crossed, in the sense that
they all derive from recent or remote crossings: in this sense, there would not be
pure races, but purified races [...] ».
« The populations of the Nordic race who had invaded the Roman Empire and had
established themselves as rulers on its territory had at first kept themselves more
or less apart from the Latin population. In a subsequent period when the Latin
civilization prevailed and was assimilated by the Germanic elements, the two
lineages gradually merged and, after some time, a new race was formed from which
the evolution of a new nation has started » (C. Gini, Nascila, evolution
and death
of the nation, Rome 1930, pp. 100, 86).
69 Ibid., p. 89, no. 2.
70 M. Canella, Principles, p. Vile.
71 Cfr. A. Keith, Nationalily and Race from an Anthropologist’s Poinl of Vieto,

Londra 1919, e The Place of Prejudice in Modera Civilization, New York 1931.
72 Turin 1941, I, 300, 297.
73 M. Canella, Human races, p. 18.
74 Ibid., p. 16. G. Landra, « Two years of Italian racism », in Difesa, III
(5 July 1940), 14. Cf. U. Redanò, « Italian doctrine of race », in Difesa, III
(November 20, 1939), 14 and following; RS Salis, «Legislative defense of race»,

in
Defense, III (April 5, 1940), 38; A. Modica, "Origin and classification of the Italian
breed", in Difesa, IV (20 July 1941), 21-4.
75 G. Landra, « The conference on the concept of race », in Difesa, III

(February 20, 1940), 17 et seq. In fact, Monladon used slightly different
terminology and considered nations to be "sub-ethnic" rather than "ethnic"
communities that were developing or had developed into regional or municipal
races.
76 G. Montandon, « L'etnie putaine ». in Defense, III (November 5, 1939), 19.
77 Cfr. A. Keith, Evolution and Ethics. New York 1947, A Ne tv Theory oj

Human Evolution, New York 1949.
78 Cfr. A. J. Gregor, Contemporary Radicai Ideologica, New York 1968, cap.

v.
79 S. Blaas, The idea of race: its biological and philosophical foundation,

Berlino 1940. pp. 203, 240 e segg.
80 Cf. F. De Felice, History, p. 295.
81 M. Canella, Principles, pp. 18-20.
82 P. Orano, The Jews in Italy, Rome 1937; see also P. Orano (edited by).
Inquiry into Race, Rome 1940, pp. 5-48.
83 R. Michels, “The Rise of Fascism”, in Neue Zuercher Zeitung December 29,

,1922.
84 It is difficult to determine exactly the number of Jews in Italy during the Fascist
period. The most responsible sources place it at a maximum of forty
thousand. The Fascists, in general, at forty-five fifty thousand. Fanatic
anti-Semites like Preziosi value it at a hundred thousand.
8a "Trentino seen by a socialist", in Opera , XXXIII, 153-61; see OR.

Reche. Introduction to Woltmans Werke, Leipzig 1936, I, 7; A. Rosenberg, Der
Mythus des 20 Jahrhunderts, pp. 638 and following; A. Bullock, Hitler: A Study
in Tyranny, New \ork 1952 (tr. it.: Hitler, Studio sulla tyranny Mondadori. ,
Milano 1964), 72: S. Blaas, op cit., pp. 91, 97, 98. 104, 122, 137, 204, 235,
240, 252, 260.
86 « From Guicciardini », in Opera, IV, 172.
87 E. Ludwig, op. cit., p. 71.
89 G. Maggiore, Race and fascism, Palermo 1939, pp. 95 et seq.
90 Cfr. A. Rosenberg, Mythus, p. 114.
91 See J. Evola, The myth of blood, Milan 1937, pp. 187, 190 and following, 194
and following; E. Leoni, op. cit., p. 40; C. Costamagna, op. cit.. p. 200.
92 A. Rosenberg, Mythus, p. 81.
93 This was Meisel's interpretation; see J. Meisel, The Myth of Ruling

Class, p. 259. For Mosca's criticisms of biological racism, see G. Mosca,
«Historical and critical notes on racist doctrines», in Rendiconti of the R.
Accademia dei Lincei. Class of moral, historical and philosophical
sciences, XI (1933), 455-70, History of political doctrines, Bari 1951, cap.
XXXIX.
94 G. Selvi, « The myth of race », in Gerarchia, XIV, 10 (1934), pp. 803 et

seq.
95 G. Bianchini, « Racist mysticism and politics », in Gerarchia, XIV, 7 (1934),

577.
98 J. Gomez de Terán, « The integral solution of the Jewish question », in
Hierarchy, XVI, 6 (1936), 408.
97 "Arian Fallacy", in Opera, XXVI, 298.
98 "Race and racism", in Opera, XXVI, 327-29.
99 G. .Gentile, Italian Memories (Florence 1936), p. 384.
100 See A. Canepa, op. cit.. III, 225, n. 19; G. Magnoni, « The GUF and
the fascist politics of race », in Gerarchia, XVIII, 9 (1938), 633; L. Franzi,
Current phase of German racism, Rome 1939, pp. 56-9; C. Costamacna,
Doctrine, pp. 185-210; E. Leoni. op. cit., p. 27; A. Capasso, op. cit., pp. 35 et
seq. See also A. Banzi, Razzismo fascista, Palermo 1939, p. 13.
101 Milan 1937.
102 N. Pende, « The unitary biotypological principle », in Gerarchia, XIX, 11

(1940). 569; M. Canella, Principles of racial psychology, Florence 1941, pp.
128 and following. A. Modica, « Origin and classification of the Italian race »,
in Difesa. IV (July 20, 1941), 21-4.
103 L. Franzi, op. cit., p. 15.

104 G. Cogni, op. cit., p. 108.
105 Ibid., p. 109.
106 Ibid., p. 115.
107 J. Evola, The myth; « Mystical ethical philosophy of racism », in Difesa, IV (April
20, 1941), 27-9.
108 Cf. A. Capasso, op. cit., p. 40, no. 7.
109 R. De Felice, History, p. 325; I. Kirkpatrick, Mussolini: A Study in Power,

New York 1964, p. 373. And here is the complete text: «Manifesto of Italian racism A
group of fascist scholars teaching in Italian universities, under the aegis of the
Ministry
of Popular Culture, established the position of Fascism towards the problems

of race in the following terms: 1) Human races exist. The existence of human races
is not already an abstraction of our spirit, but corresponds to a phenomenal, material
reality, perceivable with our senses. This reality is represented by masses,
almost always impressive, of millions of men, similar in physical and psychological
characteristics that were inherited and continue to be inherited. To say
that human races exist does not mean a priori that there are superior or inferior
human races, but only that there are different human races. - 2)
There are large and small breeds. We must not only admit that there exist
major systematic groups, which are commonly called races and which are
individualized only by some characters, but we must also admit that there exist minor
systematic groups (such as, for example, the Nordics, the Mediterraneans, the
Dinarics, etc. ) individualize them from more common characters. These groups
biologically constitute the true races, the existence of which is an evident truth. — 3)
The concept of race is a purely biological concept. It is therefore based on other
considerations than the concepts of people and nation, essentially based
on historical, linguistic and religious considerations. But at the basis of
the differences of people and of nation there are differences of race.
If the Italians are different from the French, the Germans, the Turks, the Greeks,
etc., it is not only because they have a different language and a different history
different, but because the racial constitution of these peoples is different. It

has been different proportions of different races which since very early
times constituted the different peoples, whether one race has absolute
dominion over the others, whether they are all harmoniously blended,
or finally whether the different races still persist in assimilation to each
other. — 4) The population of present Italy is of Aryan origin and its civilization is Aryan.
This Aryan civilization population has been living in our peninsula for
several millennia: very little is left of the civilization of the pre-Aryan people.
The origin of today's Italians essentially starts from elements of these same
races which constitute and constituted the perennially living fabric of Europe.
— 5) The contribution of huge masses of men in historical times is a legend.
After the invasion of the Lombards there were no other notable movements
of peoples in Italy capable of influencing the racial physiognomy of the
nation. From this it follows that, while for other European nations
the racial composition has varied considerably even in modern times, for Italy,
in its broad lines, the racial composition of today is the same as it was a
thousand years ago; the forty-four million Italians of today therefore go
back to the absolute majority of families who have lived in Italy for a
millennium. - 6) There is now a pure "Italian breed". This statement is not
based on the confusion of the biological concept of race with the historical-
linguistic concept of people and nation, but on the purest blood relationship
that unites today's Italians with the generations that have populated Italy for
thousands of years. This ancient purity of blood is the greatest title of nobility
of the Italian nation. — 7) It is time for the Italians to frankly proclaim
themselves racists. All the work that the Regime has done in Italy so far is
basically racism. The reference to the concepts of race has always been very
frequent in the speeches of the Chief. The question of racism in Italy must be
treated from a purely biological point of view, without philosophical or
religious intentions. The conception of racism in Italy must be essentially
Italian and the orientation Aryan-Nordic. However, this does not mean
introducing the theories of German racism into Italy as they are or stating
that Italians and Scandinavians are the same thing. But it only wants to
point out to the Italians a physical and above all psychological model of the
human race which, due to its purely European characteristics, is
completely detached from all non-European races; this means elevating
the Italian to an ideal of superior self-awareness and greater responsibility.
— 8) It is necessary to make a clear distinction between i
the Mediterraneans of Europe (Western) on one side, the Orientals and the Africans on
the other. Theories which support the African origin of some European peoples and
include the Semitic and Hamitic populations in a common Mediterranean race are
therefore to be considered dangerous, establishing absolutely inadmissible
ideological relationships and sympathies. — 9) Jews do not belong to the Aryan
race. Of the Semites who over the centuries have landed on the sacred soil of
our country, nothing has remained in general. Even the Arab occupation of Sicily left
nothing but the memory of a few names: and moreover the process of assimilation was
always very rapid in Italy. Jews represent the only population that has never
assimilated in Italy because it is made up of non-European racial elements.
absolutely different from the elements that gave rise to the Italians. — 10) The purely
European physical and psychological characteristics of the Italians must not be
altered in any way. The union is admissible only in the context of the European
breeds, in which case we must not speak of true and proper hybridism, given that these
breeds belong to a common body and differ only in some characteristics, while they
are the same for many others. The purely European character of the Italians is
altered by crossbreeding with any extra-European race and bearer of a
civilization different from the millenary civilization of the Aryans ». [July 15, 1938-
XVI]
110 C. Costamagna, Doctrine, p. 207.
111 /6/d., p. 194.
112 Cfr. E. Ludwig, op. cit., pp. 100-1 70 e seg.
113 See A. Capasso, op. cit., pp. 35 et seq.
114 L. Franzi, op cit., pp. 44 et seq.
115 G. Landra, « The concept of race », in Difesa, II (5 March 1939), 12.
117 G. Landra, « The concept », p. 12; G. Major, op. cit., p. 65.

118 C. Costamagna, Doctrine, pp. 193 et seq.
120 /6/d., pp. 16 et seq.
121 M. Canella, « Differential psychology of human races », in Rivista di Psicologia, XXXVI

(July-December 1940), 312.
122 G. Marro, Physical and spiritual characteristics of the Italian race, Rome 1939.
123 A. Rosenberg, The essence of National Socialism, Monaco 1934, p. 14; A. Baeumler,
Alfred Rosenberg and the myth of the 20th century
, Munich 1943, p. 13, 27 and following, 32 and following.
124 Y. De Begnac, op. cit., p. 642.
125 E. Ludwig, op. cit., pp. 100-1 70 and segg.
126 M. Missiroli, « Race and culture », in Circoli (July-August 1939), pp. 981-89.
127 Cf. C. Gini, Birth, p. 21.
128 See G. Landra, « L'ologenesi del Rosa », in Difesa, li (March 20, 1939), 11-14; to The
Italian race in the theory of hologenesis », Ibid., II (April 5, 1939), 9-11; "Concepts of the
Italian racist", Ibid., I (August 20, 1938, 9-11.
129 Cf. G. Brown, op. cited
130 See A. Capasso, op. cit., pp. 35 et seq.
131 Ibid., p. 41, no. 11. Does not correspond to G. Major, op. cit., p. 33.
132 L. Cipriani, « Racismo », in Difesa, I (5 August 1938), 12-13; « Racism only

nial», in Difesa, 1 (August 20, 1938), 18-20; A. Petrucci, « Negroes and whites
in Africa », ibid., pp. 34-6; L. Pranzi, « Miscegenation threatens the physical
health of the people »,
in Defense, I (September 20, 1938), 29-31; A. Chiauzzi, « The metric scale

of intelligence
and the mental inferiority of Negroes”, in Difesa, 1 (October 5, 1938), 32-33.

It is necessary to distinguish between the writings of fascist apologists
and those of experimental scientists such as Mario Canella who, although
convinced of the fact that races are characterized by hereditary psychological
differences, attempted to highlight the complexity of any judgment regarding
hereditary racial differences. Given the period in which it was written, his
Principles of Racial Psychology is an interesting treatise on a hotly debated
scientific topic. Of course, today, many of the conclusions he reached could
be much better clarified (as Canella himself would acknowledge). See also
S. de Martino, The spirit and the race, Rome 1940, cap. XII.
133 N. Minovici, « Race and nation: Fascism creator », in Difesa, III (November
5, 1939), 52.
134 See R. De Felice, History, pp. 280 and following. This could be confirmed by
the fact that Mussolini, as a young man, maintained that it was "an
indisputable fact that the intellectual potential is in direct relationship with the
weight of the brain and with the number of cerebral convolutions" ("L'uomo e la
divinity", in Opera , XXXIII, 11). If this logic were followed and racial
differences in brain weight and cytoarchitecture taken seriously, the
arguments against race-mixing would have to be essentially biological.
135 "To the National Council of the PNF", in Opera, XXIX, 190-91.
136 "Second message to the American people", in Opera, XXIV, 330.
137 « Therefore, all discussions on the term seem perfectly idle to us

' Aryan ', given that this term has long since come into use to indicate overall
all the individuals who belong to the related anthropological varieties,
called respectively Nordic, Dinaric, Alpine, Jalica, Mediterranean and Baltic ": G.
Landra, a Due anni di Italian racism », Difesa, III, 17 (5 July 1940), 14.
138 A. Donacgio, « Characters of Romanity », in Difesa, I (5 August 1938), 22 et

seq.
139 G. Marro, op. cit., p. 31.
140 Ibid.; E. Zavattari, «Natural environment and biopsychic characteristics

of the Italian race », in Difesa, I (5 August 1938), 20.
141 M. Canella, Outlines, p. 239.
142 E. Zavattari, op cit., p. 21.
144 Ibid., p. 23.
145 Ibid., p. 19. _
146 G. Landra, "The scientific and political justification of the racial question
in Italy", National soziali sii sche Monatshefte, CIX (April 1939), 201, cf. 298.
147 Cf. M. Canella, Human Races, pp. 18 et seq.; cf. G. Montandon, "L'ethnie
putaine", in Defense, III (November 5, 1939), 18-20.
148 G. Marro, op. cit., p. 30.
150 See G. Landra, « Two years of Italian racism », in Difesa, III (5 July
1940), 14.
151 M. Canella, Human races, p. 234, see G. Genna, « The Jews as a race »,
in Defense, I (September 5, 1938), 13-15.- „
152 L. Livi, The Jews in the light of statistics, Florence 1933; g.

Montandon, "How do you recognize the Jews?" », in Difesa, III (5-20 September
1940), 6 et seq.,
« Characters of the Jewish type », in Difesa, IV (June 20, 1941), 16-20.
153 M. Canella, Outlines, p. 38.
154 Ibid., p. 39.
155 M. Canella, Human races, p. 234.
156 M. Canella, Outlines, p. 236; Principles, p. 206 and following, n. 1.
157 Cf. R. De Felice, History, p. 293.
158 B. Spampanato, op. cit., II,
159 Cfr. Harris, op. cit., p. 245.
160 R. De Felice, History, p. 443; Harris, op. cit., p. 245, no. 3.
162 See E. Susmel, op. cit., chap. XXIX; G. Pisano, Mussolini and the Jews,
Milan 1967.
163 R. De Felice, History, p. 148.
184 Ibid., p. 286.
165 Ibid., p. 293.
166 Cf. Ibid., p. 659, document 30; cf. pp. 509 et seq.
167 Ibid., p. 511.
168 M. Missiroli, « Race and culture », in Circoli (July-August 1939), 981-89.
169 « Memorial of G. Preziosi to B. Mussolini », in II. De Felice, History, p. 670.
170 Cf. G. Preziosi in Ibid., p. 670.
171 E. Amicucci, op. cit., pp. 19-27
172 E. Cione, History of the Italian Social Republic, Caserta 1948, p. 161.
173 Cf. B. Gentile, Giovanni Gentile: from the speech to the Italians to death,
Florence 1951, pp. 50 and following.
174 E. Amicucci, op. cit.. p. 199; FW Deakin, The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini.
Hitler and the fall of Italioti Fascism, New York 1962, p. 620 (tr. it. History of the
Republic of Salò, Einaudi, Turin 1964); see Opera, XXXII, 76.
176 "History of a year", in Opera, XXXIV, 305; "To the Blackshirts of the Aldo
’
Resega Black Brigade", in Opera, XXXII, 115; "Brennus at Yalta", ibid., p. 452;
« Fine royal hospitality », ibid., p. 264; "Rome or Death", ibid., p. 371; "Plots
of Betrayal", ibid., p. 269; see "A new Pope", ibid., p. 264; « Final balance 1943
», ibid., p. 284; "Brennus at Yalta", ibid., p. 451; « Urbania », ibid., p. 311.
NOTES TO CHAPTER SEVEN

1 Cf. "Pontini and Sardinian Thoughts", in Opera, XXXIV, 278, 285.
2 The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943. Translated and curated by LP Lochner

Garden City, NY 1948, pp. 101-1 472 , 469 .
3 Ibid., p. 468.
4 F. Martinelli, Mussolini in X-rays, Milan 1964, p. 448.
5 C. Silvestri, Mussolini, Graziani and anti-fascism, Milan 1949, p. 79.
6 See FW Deakin, The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini. Hitler and the Fall of Italian b
asci sm. New York 1962. pp. 587-606 (tr. it.: History of the Republic of
Salò, Turin).
7 « The first speech after the liberation », Opera, XXXII, 4.
8 « I Meeting of the Republican Council of Ministers », Opera. XXXII, 7.
9 G. Pini and D. Susmel, op. cit., IV, 362 e seg.
10 Full text of the 18 Points of the PFR Congress Manifesto. dated 14 November
1943:
IN CONSTITUTIONAL AND INTERNAL MATTERS
L The Constituent Assembly, a sovereign power of popular origin, should be

convened to declare the decadence of the monarchy, solemnly condemn the last
traitor and fugitive king, proclaim the social republic and appoint its head.
2 - — The Constituent Assembly is composed of representatives of all trade union

associations and of all administrative districts, including representatives of
the provinces invaded through the delegations of displaced persons and refugees on
free soil.
It also includes the representatives of combatants: those of prisoners of § uf rn V/r through

* repatriated for handicaps; those of Italians abroad; those of the Judiciary, of the Universities
and of any other Body or Institute whose participation contributes to making the Constituent
Assembly the synthesis of all the values of the Nation.
3- The republican Constitution will have to ensure to the citizen - soldier, worker and
taxpayer - the right of control and of responsible criticism on the acts of the public
administration.
Every five years the citizen will be called upon to rule on the appointment of the Head of the
Republic.
No citizen, arrested red-handed or stopped for preventive measures, can be detained

for more than seven days without an order from the judicial authority. Except in the
case of flagrante delicto, an order from the judicial authority will also be required
for house searches.
In the exercise of its functions, the judiciary will act with complete independence.
4. - The negative electoral experience already had by Italy and the partially negative
experience of a method of appointment that is too rigidly hierarchical both
contribute to a solution that reconciles the opposing needs. A mixed system (for example,
popular election of representatives in the Chamber and appointment of
ministers by the Head of the Republic and the Government and, in the Party, election of
the Fascio subject to ratification and appointment by the National Directorate) seems to be
the most advisable.
5. — The organization responsible for educating the people in political problems is unique.
In the Party, an order of fighters and believers, an organism of absolute political

purity must be created, worthy of being the custodian of the revolutionary idea.
Your membership card is not required for any employment or assignment.

6. — The religion of the Republic is Roman Catholic Apostolic. Any other

cult that does not conflict with the laws is respected.
7. - Members of the Jewish race are foreigners. During this war they
belong to enemy nationality.
IN FOREIGN POLICY
8- — The essential aim of the foreign policy of the Republic must be the
unity, independence, territorial integrity of the country in maritime and
Alpine terms marked by Nature, by blood sacrifice and by history, terms
threatened by the enemy with the invasion and with promises to refugee
Governments in London. Other end
essential will be to have the need for vital spaces indispensable to a

population of 45 million inhabitants recognized on an area
insufficient to feed them.
This policy will also work towards the realization of a European

following community with the federation of all nations which accept the
fundamental principles:
a) elimination of age-old British intrigues from our continent;
b) abolishment of the internal capitalist system and fight against world

plutocracies;
c) enhancement, for the benefit of European and indigenous peoples, of the

natural resources of Africa, with absolute respect for those peoples,
especially Muslims, who, like Egypt, are already civilly and nationally
organised.
IN SOCIAL MATTERS
9. - The basis of the Social Republic and its primary object is work,
manual, technical, intellectual, in all its manifestations.
Private property, the fruit of work and individual savings, integration

of the human personality, is guaranteed by the State. It doesn't have to
however, to become a disintegrator of the physical and moral personality

of other men, through the exploitation of their work.
11. - In the national economy everything which, in terms of size or function,

goes beyond the individual interest to enter the collective interest, belongs
to the sphere of action proper to the State.
Public services and, as a rule, war manufacturing must be managed by

the State through parastatal bodies.
12. - In every company (industrial, private, parastatal, state) the

representatives of technicians and workers will cooperate closely - through
direct knowledge of the management - in the fair fixing of wages, as well as
in the fair distribution of profits between the reserve, the use of the share
capital and the participation in the same profits by the workers.
In some companies this could happen with an extension of the prerogatives

of the current Factory Commissions, in others, by replacing the Boards of
Directors with Management Boards made up of technicians and workers
with a representative of the State. In still others, in the form of a para-union
cooperative.
13. - In agriculture, the private initiative of the owner finds its limit where
the initiative itself fails. The expropriation of uncultivated lands and poorly
managed companies can lead to the subdivision of laborers to be
transformed into direct farmers, or to the establishment of cooperative, para-
union or para-statal companies, according to the various needs of the
agricultural economy.
14. - Direct farmers, artisans, professionals, artists are fully recognized

as having the right to carry out their productive activities individually, for
families or groups, without prejudice to the obligations to deliver to the
stockpiles the quantity of products established by law or to control the rates
of services.
15. - The right to own a house is not only a property right, it is a right to
property. The Party includes the creation of a national body in its programme
for the home of the people, which, absorbing the existing Institute and
expanding its action to the maximum, provides for providing the home to the
families of workers of every category, through the direct construction of new homes
or the gradual redemption of the existing ones. In this regard, the general
principle must be affirmed that the rent - once the capital has been repaid
and the right amount has been paid - constitutes a purchase title.
Conte first task, the Body will solve the problems deriving from war destruction, with
the requisition and distribution of unusable premises and with temporary
buildings.
16. - The worker is officially registered in the trade union, without this
prevent him from moving to another union when he has the requisites. The
trade unions
converge in a single Confederation which includes all workers, technicians,

professionals, with the exclusion of owners who are not managers or
technicians. It calls itself the General Confederation of Labour, Technology and
the Arts.
Employees of state industrial enterprises and public services form trade

unions, like any other worker.
All the impressive social benefits achieved by the fascist regime in twenty years
remain intact. The Labor Charter constitutes its acknowledgment in its letter
prayer, just as it constitutes in his spirit the starting point for the further journey.
17. - In current affairs, the Party considers that a wage adjustment for workers
through the adoption of national minimums and prompt local revisions cannot be
postponed, and even more so for small and medium-sized employees, both state and
private. But for the measure not to be ineffective and in the end harmful to everyone,
it is necessary that with cooperative shops, company shops, extension of the duties of
the "Provvida", requisition of shops guilty of infringements and their parastatal or cooperative
management, the result is obtained to pay part of the salary in food at official prices. Only in
this way will it contribute to price and currency stability and to the recovery of the
market. As for the black market, it is requested that speculators - like traitors and
defeatists - fall within the jurisdiction of the Extraordinary Tribunals and are liable to the death
penalty.
18. - With this preamble to the Constituent Assembly, the Party demonstrates not
only that it is going towards the people, but that it is with the people.
For its part, the Italian people must realize that there is only one way for them to defend their
conquests of yesterday, today and tomorrow: to throw back the enslavement
invasion of the Anglo-American plutocracies, which, by a thousand precise signs, wants
to make even more narrow and miserable the life of the Italians. There is only one way to
achieve all social goals: fight, work, win.
11 « V meeting of the Republican Council of Ministers », Opera, XXXII, 31-38.
12 « VI meeting of the Republican Council of Ministers », Opera, XXXII, 41-56.
13 Tarchi to Mussolini, letter of 11 February 1944, quoted by FW Deakin, op. cit., p. 668.
14 FW Deakin, op. cit., pp. 100-1 670-6
15 Expresses the sentiments of commentators such as G. Perticone, La Repubblica di Salò,

Rome 1947.
16 E. Amicucci, The Six Hundred Days of Mussolini, Rome 1949, p. 152.
17 The communications of the Conference are collected in Proceedings of the Second

Conference on trade union and corporate studies, Ferrara 5-8 May 1932, Rome
1932, vol. I: Relations; you. II: Communications; you. III: Discussions.
18 U. Ojetti, The notebooks, 1914-1943, Florence 1954, p. 394.
19 U. Spirito, Capitalism and corporatism, Florence 1933, pp. XIV and seq.
20 "The rights of victory", Opera, XIV, 53.
21 "Twilight", Opera, XIV, 69; see also « Fascism and land », Opera, XVI, 170; «
Speech to the Senate for the Corporate State », Opera, XXVI, 147.
22 FW Deakin, op. cit., p. 671.
23 « French syndicalism. A statement-program », Opera, XIV, p. 247; "Where Lenin

rules", Opera, XVII, 78.
24 t< Speech for the Corporate State », Opera, XXVI, 87.
25 Cfr. H. W. Schneider, Making thè Fascisi State, New York 1928, p. 177.
26 A. Aquarone, The organization of the totalitarian state, Turin 1965, p. 125.
27 The Labor Charter , edited by G. Bottai, Rome 1928, p. 150.
28 L. Merlino, "The Congress of Fascist Unions", Gerarchia, VIII, 5 (May 1928),

355.
29 Cfr. “I problemi del lavoro”, Il lavoro fascista, I, 5 (agosto 1927), 15; e L.

Rosenstock-Franck, The practical achievements and the doctrines of fascist
trade unionism, Paris 1933, The fascist corporate economy in doctrine and in
fact, Paris 1934; C. Haider, Capital and Labor under Fascism, New York
1930.
30 « The foundations of the new economy », Opera, XXXII, 294. It is not certain that
Mussolini personally wrote this article, but if he did not write it, he certainly revised
and approved it.
31 E. Corradini, "After the strike", Popolo d'Italia, 18 March 1925.
32 U. Spirito, Critique of Democracy, Florence 1963, p. 31.
33 G. Gentile, "Individual and State", Critical Journal of Italian Philosophy, III

(1932), 313.
34 « Speech to the Senate for the Corporate State », Opera, XXVI, 147.
35 U. Spirito, Capitalism and corporatism, pp. 55, 59.
36 Ibid., p. 120.
38 U. Spirito, National Socialist Corporatism, Florence 1934, p. 6; see. p.

13.
39 Cf. P. Drieu La Rochelle, Fascist Socialism, Paris 1934, Socialism,

Fascism, Europe, edited by J. Mabire, Rome 1964; M. Manoilesco, Le
Siècle du corporalisme: doctrine du corporatism integrai et pur, Paris
1938.
40 « Speech to the workers of Milan », Opera, XXVI, 356, 357.
41 Giovanni Gentile, edited by V. Vettori, Florence 1954, pp. 43 et seq.
42 « The regulatory plan of the new Italian economy », Opera, XXVII,

241-248. See HA Steiner, Government in Fascist Italy, New York 1938, pp.
93-98.
43 « The master plan of the new Italian economy », Opera, XXVII, 245,
246, 247.
44 "To the Third General Assembly of the Corporations", Opera, XXVIII,

175-181.
45 HA Steiner, op. cit., pp. 97 et seq.

46 «Social revolution: first symptoms», Opera, XXXII, 267; see also "Twenty
years of logical development of Fascist doctrine", Opera, XXXII, 316.
47 « History of a year », Opera, XXXIV, 410.
48 « The speech at the ' Lirico ' of Milan », Opera, XXXII, 126.
49 « Soliloquy in 'freedom' on Trimellone Island », Opera, XXXII, 171.
50 « Praise to Padua for its faith in socialization », Opera, XXXII, 154.
51 E. Amicucci, op. cit., p. 143.
52 Central Archive of the Stalo, Rome: « National Fascist Party, Political

situation of the provinces, Genoa envelope », quoted by A. Aquarone, op. cit.,
p. 197, no. 3.
53 See F. Giolli, How we were led to catastrophe, Rome 1945, pp. 71-79;
E. Cione, History of the Italian Social Republic, Caserta 1948, pp. 293 et seq.
54 E. Amicucci, op. cit., pp. 147 et seq.
55 « Integral syndicalism », Gerarchia, XV, 8 (August 1935), 672.
58 « Clarifications for the ' Borghese ' », Gerarchia, XIX, 2 (February 1939),
85.
57 S. Gatti, « From the individualistic conception to the fascist conception

of private property », in The fascist conception of private property, published
by the Fascist Confederation of Agricultural Workers. Rome sd, pp. 30 et
seq., 35; L. Barassi, « The right to property and the social function », Ibid.,
p. 191.
58 F. Carli, « Property and fascism », Ibid., pp. 39, 55 and following; c.

Biggini,
« Code reform and property law », Ibid., p. 64 and following, 68-71; OR.
census,
"Property as a relationship under public law", Ibid., pp. 141 and following.
59 C. Biggini, Ibid., p. 75; cf. L. Barassi, Ibid, p. 193.
60 S. Panunzio, « First juridical observations on the concept of property ne! fascist regime
», Ibid., p. 115 .
61 F. Ferrara, « Property as a 'social duty' », Ibid., p. 281.
62 G. Chiarelli, « The publicistic foundation of property », Ibid., pp. 151, 153 and following;
see pp. 148 et seq.
63 P. Gaspar, « The firm as a social phenomenon », Ibid., pp. 381-383; c.

Arena, "Corporate ownership in the corporate order", Ibid., pp. 399-405.
64 L. Barassi, Ibid., pp. 187, 199.
65 A. Lanzillo, « Private property and the corporation », Ibid., p. 337. C.

Biggini argued that «within each enterprise, labor still remains distinct, dissociated and
often opposed to capital. It is certain that a complete and substantial corporate evolution
in industry cannot fail to involve work in the management, responsibilities and profits of
the company itself ». C. Biggini, Ibid., p. 78.
68 S. Panunzio, « The Italian empire of work », Gerarchia, XIX, 9 (September

1940), 463.
’
67 « To the Black Shirts of the Black Brigade ' Aldo Resega XXXII. p. », Opera,
114.
68 "Return", Opera, XXXII, 91.
69 « Soliloquy in 'freedom' on Trimellone Island », Opera, XXXII, 178 et seq.

70 C. Rossi, Thirty-three Mussolini events (Milan 1958), p. 443.
71 A. Pavolini, quoted by E. Amicucci, op. cit., p. 143.
72 Ibid., p. 144.
73 C. Silvestri, op. cit., pp. 320 from sect.
74 « Decree on the ' socialization ' of the CLNAI », in G. Perticone, La

Repubblica di Salò, p. 380.
75 Cfr. N. Rotknstreich, Basic Problems of Marx's Philosophy. New York 1965

(vedi la nostra recensione nel Journal of thè Hislory of Philosophy, IV, 4, October
1966), pp. 349 e seg.; L. Dupré, The Philosophical Foundations of Marxism.
New York 1966; AJ Gregor, "Giovanni Gentile and the Philosophy of the
Young Karl Marx." Journal of the History of Ideas.
XXIV. 2 (April 1963).
76 FD, pp. 172. 173.
77 Ibid.. pp. 175 et seq.
78 Ibid.. p. 190; cf. pp. 238 et seq.
80 Ibid.. p. 207; cfr. K. Marx and F. Engei.s, The Tedesca Ideology. Fly 1964, p.
646.
81 FD. p. 222.
82 K. Marx and F. Engels, L'Ideologia Tedesca, pp. 37, 47, 49.
83 Ibid., p. 80.
84 K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 196; see « Social evolution and

class struggle », Opera. II, 31.
85 FD, p. 303.
8B Ibid.. p. 264.
87 Ibid.. p. 298.
88 OS, p. 15.
89 U. Spirito, The Philosophy of Communism, Florence 1948. pp. 12 and following.
90 FD. p. 148.
91 Ibid.. p. 215.
92 PF. p. 27.
93 See M. Ma.nfredini. «Gentile is alive», in V. Vettori, op. cit... pp. 179 et seq.
94 GS, pp. Ili e segg.
95 CF, pp. 42 et seq.
96 OF. page 58.
97 G. Gentile, After the victory. New political fragments, Rome 1920, p. 178.
98 G. Gentile, « Individual and State ». Critical journal of Italian philosophy.

III (1932). 314.
99 VI Lenin, « Karl Marx », in Selected Works. Moscow 1964. XXI, 88.
100 A. Labriola, according to V. Vettori, « Introduction to Gentile », in V.

To the carrier Op. cit., p. 44
101 Cf. U. Spirito. Critique of democracy , Florence 1963, pp. 32-36.
102 G. Gentile, «Discourse to the Italians», in B. Gentile, Giovanni Gentile: From the speech
to the Italians to death, Florence 1951, p. 69.
103 Ibid., p. 72.
104 See Vettori, « Introduction to Gentile », in V. Vettori, op. cit., pp. 54 and
following.
l0S *Cf. D. Gaudknzi, « From heroic trade unionism to the humanism of work », in
V. Vectors, op. cit., pp. 163-170.
106 G. Gentile, "Individual and State", op. cit., p. 313.
107 GS. pp. 33, 34, 39.
108 CF. p. 56.
109 A. Carlini, Gentiliani Studies. Florence 1958, p. 106.
110 RE. pp. 25, 14.
111 U. Spirito, Capitalism and corporatism, p. 33.
112 G. Pannese, Ethics in fascism and the philosophy of law and history, Rome
1942, p. 158; see also O. Di Giamberardino, The individual in fascist ethics, Florence
1940, pp. 177 et seq.
113 « Doctrine of fascism », Opera, XXXIV, 117, 118.
114 O. Di Giamberardino, op. cit., p. 165.
115 Cfr. Harris, The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile, pp. 197-201.
116 « Private property in Hegel's conception », in U. Spirito, The Philosophy of

Communism, pp. 135-150.
117 See B. Spampanato. Contromemoriale , II, 33, 47. Cf. « XIII Meeting of the
Republican Council of Ministers », Opera, XXXII, 125.
118 «11 speech at the 'Lirico' of Milan», Opera, XXXII, 131; Circular of 10
March 1944. Opera, XXXII, 236.
119 "On true freedom", Opera , XXXII, 273.
120 "The foundations of the new economy". Opera, XXXII, 295.
121 « Legend of Muti », Opera. XXXII. 396.
122 "The sex of angels". Opera, XXXIT. 121.
NOTES TO CHAPTER EIGHT
1 cfr. A. Thalheimer, "About Fascism," in W. Abendroth (a cura di). Fascism

and Capitalism, Vienna 1967, pp. 19-38; J. Cammet, "Communisl Theories of
Fascism," in Science and Society. XXXI (primavera 1967), pp. 149-63.
2 H-Rogger seems to propose something like this in an otherwise profound

study of right-wing movements. See H. Rogger, "Aflerthoughts", in H. Rogger
and E. Weber. The European Righi, Berkeley 1966, p. 588.
3 R. Brown. Social Psychology , New York 1965 , pp. 101 - 111 . 478, 485. E.
Shils, « Aulhoritarianism : ' Righi and ' Leit ' », in li. Christie and M. Jahoda.
Studies in the Scope and Meaning of "The Authoritarian Personality," New York
1954, pp. 26 and segg.
4 E. Shils, « Authoritarianism », pp. 27 e segg.
5 H. J. Eysenck, The Psychology of Politics, Londra 1954.
6 R. Christie, « Eysenck’s Treatment of thè Personality of Communisls ». in

Phychological Bulletin, LII (1956), pp. 411-30.
7 M. Rokeach, The Open and Closed Mind , New York I960.
8 I. A. T.vv loro, « Similarilies in thè Structure of Extreme Social Altitudes », in

Psychological Monographs. LXIV, 2 (1960), pp. 1-36.
9 H. McCloskv e J. H. Schaar, « Psychological Dimensions of Anomy », in American

SociologicaI Retietc. XXX (febbraio 1965), 14-40.
10 E. Halevy. The Era of Tyrannies. Garden City, NY, 1965, p. 267.
11 F. Borken.au, World Communism, Ann Arbor, 1962. p. 423.
12 K. Marx. Economic-philosophical manuscripts of 1844, pp. 104 and following.
13 M. Hess, "The Last Philosophers," in Philosophical and Socialist

Writings: 1837-1850. Berlino 1961. p. 381
14 K. Marx, « Contribution to thè Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy ol Righi », in Earlx

Wrilings, tradotto e curato da T. B. Bottomore, New York 1964, p. 43; « Theses on
Feuerbach ». in K. Marx e F. Engels, The German Ideology, New York 1947, p.
198.
15 K. Marx, Manuscripts, p. 145.
16 K. Marx and F. Engels. The Holy Family, Moscow 1956, p. 142, and The
German Ideology, particularly Part I.
17 K. Marx, « Contribution », p. 52.
18 Ibid.. p. 59.
19 K. Marx, "Letters from the 'German-French Yearbooks'", in Il erke, Berlino 1961, I,

338 e seg.
20 K. Marx, Grundrisse der Krilik der Polilischen Oekonomie (Rohenlu itrf), Berlino
1953, p. 6, il corsivo è nostro; cf. Rotknstreich, Basic Problems of Marx's
Philosophy, cap. IV
21 K. Marx, Manuscripts, pp. 104 and following.
22 H. Hess, "L'eber the socialist movement in Germany", op. cit.. p. 284
23 K. Marx, Manuscripts, p. 104.

24 K. Marx e F. Engels, The Holy Family, p. 56.
25 K. Marx. « On thè Jewish Question », in Early Writings, p. 16.
26 K. Marx e F. Engels, « The Communisl Manifesto ». in Selecled Works,

Mosca 1955, I, 54.
27 K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 387
20 A. SCHAEF, op. cit.. p. 60.
29 D. Bergner, « Dialectical Materialism, Psychology and Ethics ». in G.

Heyden (a cura di), Science contro speculation, Berlino 1964, pp. 208 e segg.
30 cfr. « Collective Work », in The foundations of communist education,

Berlino 1964, p. 46; e FV Konstantinov, Fundamentals of Marxist
Philosophy. Berlino 1964, p. 650
31 K. Màcha, Individual and Society, Berlino 1964, pp. 9, 14 e seg., 297 e

segg.
32 Schischkin, op. cit., pp. 32, 238.

'
33 Ibid., p. 264.
34 F. Engels, «Two speeches in Elberfeld: I», in K. Marx e F. Engels,

Werke, Berlino 1957, II, 539, 542.
35 SI Bknn and RS Petebs, The Principles of Politicai Thought , New

York 1964, p. 259 and segg.
36 G. Shakhnazarov, et al.. Man, Science and Society, Mosca 1965, p. 251.
37 Archangelski, op. cit., p. 302.
38 G. Shakhnazarov, op. cit., pp. 254, 255, 258.
39 Schischkin, op. cit., p. 261.

40 This is particularly true of non-Soviet Marxists. See J. Lewis, Socialism

and the Individual, New York 1961.
41 V. I. Lenin. Philosophical Nolebooks, in V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Mosca

1960. XXXVIII, 361.
42 Cfr. F. Burlatsky, The State and Communism, Mosca sd, p. 85.
43 K. Macha, op. cit., p. 289.
44 R. T. Holt, Radio Free Europe, Minneapolis 1964, p. 26.
4o H. J. Berman, Jastice in thè U.S.S.R., New York 1963, p. 365.
46 Archangelski, op. cit., pp. 303 et seq. The complete sentence reads: «
Some people reason in the following way: since personal and collective must not
be distinguished each one must in the first analysis pursue his own interests;
thus serving the collective well-being. But this reasoning is fundamentally flawed.
In it, petty-bourgeois aspirations find expression, and anyone who takes
this position defends outdated and moribund ideas which are
incompatible with the essence of our socialist order.'
47 U. Spirito, The Philosophy of Communism, Florence 1948, p. 13.
48 M. Ardemagni, « Russian Deviations towards fascism », in Gerarchia, XIV

(July 1934), 571. For Mussolini's judgments on the same involution, cf.
"Reporting", in Opera, XXVI, 84; « Fifth act so far », in Opera, XXIX, 63.
49 L. Trotzky, The Belrayed Revolution, Garden City, NY, 1937, p. 278.
50 K. Marx, « Contribution », op. cit., p. 52.
51 K. Marx, «Letters from the 'Deutsch-Franzoesische Jahrbuechern'», in Werke,

1, 338 e segg.
52 Preface by Engel to the 1888 English edition of The Communist Manifesto,

ip K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, I, 28; see p. 24.
53 K. Marx e F. Engels, « The Communist Manifesto ». Selected Works, I, 34; F.

Engels, Anli-Duehring, pp. 365, 367.
54 K. Marx e F. Engels, The German Ideology, Mosca 1964, pp. 37 e segg.
55 Cfr. F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, pp. 130 seg., 145, 354; K. Marx and F.
Engels,
The German Ideology, pp. 48-51, 60 e seg.; K. Marx, Capital, Mosca 1954, I, 82
n.; K. Marx e F. Engels, «The Communist Manifesto», in Selected Works, I,
52.
36 K. Marx,. Capital, I, 8-9, 763; F. Engels, The Condilion of thè Working Class in
England in 1844, Londra 1950, p. 18.
57 K. Marx e F. Engels, « The Communist Manifesto », in Selected Works, I, 62.
58 K. Marx e F. Engels, The Holy Family, p. 52.
59 F. Engels, "Principles of Communism," Works, IV, 372.
60 K. Marx e F. Engels, The Holy Family, pp. 52 e segg.; «The Communist

Manifesto », in Selected Works, I, 45.
61 F. Engels, The Condilion of thè Working-Class in England in 1844, p. 295.
62 K. Marx e F. Engels, « The Communist Manifesto », in Selected Works, I, 44;

cfr. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 384.
63 F. Engels, Introduzione a « Class Strugglcs in France 1848-1850 », in

Selected Works, I, 134.
64 K. Marx e F. Engels « The Communist Manifesto », in Selected Works, 1, 63.
65 Cfr. Introduzione dl : T Engels a K. Marx. « The Civil War in France ». in

Selected Works, I, 482 e seg., 485; K. Marx, Ibid., pp. 520-21.
66 Ibid., p. 521.
67 Lettera di Engels a Marx del 18 November 1868, in K. Marx e F. Engels, The

correspondence between Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, Stoccarda 1913,
IV, 113; cf. lettera del 7 ottobre 1858, ibid., II, 290.
68 Marx and Kugelmann, lettera del 28 marzo 1870, in Marx and F. Engels,
Werke, XXXII, 664.
69 V. I. Lenin, « A Talk with Defenders of Economism », in Collected

Works, V, 316.
70 Ibid., p. 318.
71 F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 386.
72 V. I. Lenin, « The Immediate Tasks of thè Soviet Government », in

Selected Works in Two Volumes, Mosca 1950-51, II, p. 1, 455.
73 Ibid., pp. 471, 477, 478.
74 G. Stalin, « Concerning Questions of Leninism », in Works, Mosca

1952-55, Vili, 65.
75 L. Trotsky, The Revolution Belrayed, p. 278
76 Cfr. R. Lowenthal, World Communism: The Disintegration of a Secular Failh,

New York 1966, pp. 39-48.
77 G. Shakhnazarov, op. cit., p. 247.
78 G. Maggiore, Imperialism and the Fascist Empire, Palermo 1937, p. 145; see
A. Gravelli, Panfascism, Rome 1935, passim; P. Gorgolini, Fascism
explained to the people, Turin 1935, pp. 66-69.
79 B. Mussolini, "Discourse for the corporative state", in Opera, XXVI, 91; see
Mussolini's conversation with Emil Ludwig, Colloqui con Mussolini, p.
145.
80 C. Costamagna, « Great space and imperial enarchy », in Lo Stato, XIII (January

1942), 1-18; F. Lo Bianco, « European action » in Lo Stato, XIII (April 1942), 119-123; "The
Pisa Conference on the Economic Problems of the New Order", in Lo Stato, XIII (May 1942),
162-65; TO.
Tramonti, «Nation or revolution», in Lo Stato, XIV (January 1943), 24 and following; C.
Costamagna, «The idea of Europe and the war », in Lo Stato, XIV (March 1943), 65-78.
31 E. Cione, Storia della Repubblica Sociale Italiana, p. 175
82 B. Mussolini, « Conversation with Maddalena Mollier », in Opera, XXXII, 157-61.
83 V. I. Lenin, « The State and Revolution », in Selected Works, II, p. 1, 204, 299.
84 G. Stalin, « Politicai Report of thè Central Committee to thè Sixteenth Congress », in

Works, XII, 381.
85 CF, p. 36; see ibid., p. 50, OD, p. 63, "The constitutionalization of the Grand Council
of Fascism", in Educazione fascista, VI (February 1928), 86 et seq.
86 N. S. Kruscev, Report on thè Program of thè Communist Party of thè Soviet Union,
New York 1961, pp. 104, 107-9.
87 V. Podosetnik, Marxisl-Leninisl Philosophy, thè Theory of Revolulionary

Praclice, Mosca, s.d., p. 24.
88 F. Burlatsky, op. cit., pp. 5th segg.
89 Ibid., p. 6.
90 Cfr. M. M. Drachkovitch, « Introduction », in M. M. Drachkowitch (a cura di),

Marxism in thè Modern World, Stanford 1965, pp. XI e segg.; R. Aron, « The
Impact of Marxism », ibid., pp. 11, 31; B. D. Wolfe, « Leninism », ibid, pp. 88 e
segg.
91 U. Spirito, Il communiSmo, Florence 1965, pp. 199, 210.
92 Cfr. D. Lovve, The Funclion of « China » in Marx, Lenin and Mao,

Berkeley 1966, pp. 121 e segg.; « On thè Question of thè National
Bourgeoisie and thè Enlightened Gentry », Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works,
New York, s.d.. V, 207; « On thè People’s Democratic Dictalorship », ibid, V.
415; Ltu Shao-chi, The Viclory of Marxism-Leninism in China, Pekin 1959,
pp. 15, 37.
93 G. D. H. Cole, The Meaning of Marxism, Ann Arbor 1964, pp. 146 e segg.
94 K. Marx, letter to Vera Zasulich, March 8, 1881, in K. Marx and F. Engels,
Selected Correspondence, Mosca, s.d., p. 412.
95 J. IL Mensah, « The Relevance of iVIarxian Economica to Development

Planning in Ghana », in The Economie Biilletin of Ghana, IX, 1, v, 4, 14.
M Cfr. B. Fitch e M. Oppknhkimer. « Ghana: End of an Illusion », in

Monthly Revie ic, XVIII, 3 (1966). 111. n. 12.
97 «Dakar Colloquimi!: Search l'or a Definition ». in Africa Report, Vili

(maggio 1963), 17.
98 Cfr. L. Senghor. On A frican Socialismi Londra 1964, p. 52; “What is

Negritude? », in P. Sigmund (a fura di). Ideologies of the Developing
Nations. New York 1963, p. 250: “Constituent elements of a civilization of
NegroAfrican inspiration”, in Libertà I: Négritude et Humaitisme Parigi ,
1964, p. 284; A. QuaisonSackey. Africa Unbound, London 1963, p. 50.
99 L. Senghòr. On African Socialism. p. 3.
100 Ibid., p. 25.

101 Cfr. G. Balandikr. « Doctrines: From Negrilude to Socialism », in Jeune

Afrique , Tunisi, 3-9 dicembre 1962: K. Nkrumah, / Speak of Freedom: A
Statement of African Ideology, New York 1961, p. 169.
102 What is fascist syndicalism?, Rome 1927, p. 7; see E. Nolte, The Three
Faces of Fascism, p. 183.
103 Cfr. H. Schneider. Making the Fascist State, New York 1928, pp. 152 and
segg.
104 "Dakar Dialogue". Op. cit., p. 16.
103 L. Senghòr, Oh African Socialism, pp. 12, 25.
106 R. S. Morcenthal, « African Socialism: Declaration of Ideological

Indepen
dence », in Africa Report. VIII (May 1963), 5 and following.
107 Cfr. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, New York 1964, p. 64; Some
Essential
Features of Nkrumaism, edited by the editors of The Spark, New York 1965, pp.
42 and following; L. Senghor. On African Socialism, p. 52.
108 C. A. Kane. « First Steps Toward a Planned Economy », in Europe

Outremer, Parigi, settembre 1962.
109 L. Senghòr. On African Socialism, p. 159.

110 Ibid., pp. 3, 11 et seq., 25.

111 This thesis is further developed in AJ Gregor. Contemporary Radical
Ideologies. New York 1968, chap. 7; and in "African Socialism, Socialism
and Fascism: An Appraisal". in Review of Politics, XXIX (July 1967),
324-53.
112 The literature on "totalitarianism" is abundant. Among the most

important works are: C. Friedrich, Tolalilarianism, New York 1964; C.
Friedrich and Z. Brzezinski, Tolalitarian Declaration and Autocracy, Nerv York
1961; RC Tucker, "Towards a Comparative Politics of Movement
Regimes," in American Political Science. Review, reproduced in The Soviet
Political Mind, New York 1963; A. Kassof, «The Administered
Society: Totalitarianism Withoul Terror », in World Politics, XVI (July 1964),
558-75. Among the characteristics of totalitarianism, the predisposition to "world
conquest" is not considered here as a serious attribute. The 'conquest of the
sling' may or may not have been Hitler's serious intention, but it can hardly be
regarded as the foundation of Soviet Union policy. Soviet and Red
China policies, in this regard, can be considered the power politics of
nationalism. The attribution of the desire to "conquer the world" adds
nothing to the analysis.
113 Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, Texts of political doctrine, Madrid 1952,
pp. 43-48, 53. 65-69, 85-93, 215, 281. 335 e sec., 483-507, 559.
114 See B. Nellessen, The forbidden revolution: the rise and fall of the
Falange, Volpe, Rome 1965.
115 An exhaustive examination of the period can be found in R. De Felice,

Mussolini the fascist: the conquest of power. 1921-1925, Einaudi, Turin
1966; especially in chaps. 1 and 2.
116 J. Degras (a cura di). The Communist International, 1919-1943:

Documents (Londra 1956), II, 459.
117 C. Zetkin, «From the reterai of comrade Clara Zetkin about

fascism», in Inprekorr (giugno 1923), riprodotto in T. Pirker,
Comintern and Fascism: Documentary on the History and Theory of
Fascism, Stoccarda 1966, p. 119
118 See R. De Felice, Fascism and Italian political parties, Cappelli,

Bologna
1966. p. 12.
119 Cfr. J. Cammett. Antonio Gramsci and thè Origins of Italian
Communism, Stanford 1967, p. 179.
120 A. Tasca, Birth and advent of fascism, Florence 1950, pp. 543 et seq.
121 A. Rosenberg, “Fascism as a Mass Movement”, in Fascism and

Capitalism. p. ili; G.Aquila. « Il fascismo Italiano », in R. De Felice. Il fascismo. p.
428
122 A. Labriola, « The investigation of the ' Resto del Carlino ' ». Ibid. pp. 412-15.
123 Cfr. E. Nolte, Die faschislischen Bervegungen. Monaco. 1966.pp. 65 e segg.
124F Carsten. The Rise of Fascism (tr. it. : La genesi del fascismo, Baldini and
Castoldi. Milano 1970). Berkeley 1967, p. 66.
125 E. Weber, Varieties of Fascism, New York 1964, p. 10.
126 GDH Cole, op. cit., pp. 146 et seq.
127 I. Fetscher, op. cit., p. 237; cf. pp. 226 and so on.
128 F. Borkenau, «On the Sociology of Fascism». in Archive for Social

Science and Social Policy, 1933.
129 Cf. E. W'eber, « The Men of the Archangel », in Journal of

Contemporary History, I, 1 (1966), 101-26 (tr. il.: «Gli men
dell'Archangel», in Dialoghi del XX, Ed. del Saggiatore, Milan, April 1967); «
Romania », in H. Roggf.re E. W'eber. op. cit., pp. 523 et seq.
130 Ibid., p. 504.
131 Cfr. Schneider, Making thè Fascist State, pp. 141 e seg.
132 In this regard, compare the current fascist prejudices on the revolution in
underdeveloped countries. There is a clear sympathy for anti-colonialist
aspirations. M. Bardèche, Quest-ce que le fascisme?, ch. II, III (tr. it.: What is
fascism?. Volpe. Rome 1944).
133 This is the central thesis in RP Dutt. op. cit., and S. Roberts, The House
That Hitler Built, London 1937.
134 cfr. I. Fetscher, « On the Critics of the Concept of Soviet Marxist

Fascism ». in Karl Marx and Marxism, Monaco 1967, pp. 218-37; A
Schweitzer, Big Business in thè Third Reich, Bloominglon 1964: D.
Schoebaum, Hitler s Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany,
1933-1939. New York 1966.
135 B. Moore, Social Origins at Diclalorship and Democracy. Lord and

Peasanl in thè Making of thè Modera World, Boston 1966.
136 For an interesting discussion of these questions, see J. Kautsky, Political

Change in Underdeveloped Countries: Nationalism and Communism,
New York 1962,
pp. 101-6.
137 Cfr. E. S. Mason, Economie Planning in Underdeveloped Areas:

Government and Business, New York 1958.
138 D. Apter, The Politics of Modernization, Chicago 1965, p. 328-3

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The intention of this bibliography is to give an indication of the basic
works for an exact interpretation of Fascism as an ideology. The material is
divided by subjects. It is tempting not to include trivial works, but some
apologetic or polemical works have been included whose contribution
is not negligible. No attempt has been made to include articles from
newspapers and magazines, even important ones. Such an undertaking
would have been of monstrous proportions. There is, however, a certain
number of fundamental journals for the reconstruction of fascist thought;
the most important are: Fascist criticism, The State, Hierarchy, Fascist
education and The defense of the race.
I) OR BIOGRAPHICAL AND GENERAL HISTORY ERAS
Bedeschi, Sante and Alessi, Rino: Mussolini's youthful years, Mondadori,

Milan, 1939. Bonomi. Ivanoe: From socialism to fascism, Formiggini,
Rome, 1924.
Bottai, Giuseppe: Twenty years and a day. Garzanti, Cernusco sul Naviglio,
1949. Ciano, Galeazzo: Diari, Rizzoli, Milan, 1947 (2. vols.).
De Begnac, Yvon: Palazzo Venezia: history of a regime. La Rocca, Rome,

1950.
-• Thirty Years of Mussolini: 1883-1915, Menaglia, Rome, 1934.
-• Life of Benito Mussolini, Mondadori. Milan, 1936-40 (3 flights.).
De Felice, Renzo: Mussolini the fascist, Einaudi, Turin, 1966.
-. Mussolini the revolutionary, Einaudi, Turin, 1965.
Dolfin, Giovanni: With Mussolini in tragedy. Garzanti, Cernusco sul

Naviglio, 1949. Farinacci, Roberto: History of the Fascist Revolution,
Cremona Nuova, Cremona, 1937. Finer, Herman: Mussolini’s Italy, Grosset and
Dunlap, New York, 1965.
Gaeta, Franco: The nationalist press. Hair. Rocca San Casciano, 1965.
Germino, Dante: The Italian Fascist Party in Power, Univ. of Minnesota Press.
Minneapolis. 1959.
Ludwig, Emil: Talks with Mussolini, Mondadori, Milan, 1950.
Mannhardt, Johann Wilhelm: Fascism, Beck, Monaco, 1925.
Marroni, Cesare: Mussolini himself, ICNF, Rome. 1941.
Pomegranates. Piero (edited by): Corriere della Sera ( 1919-1943 ), Cappelli,

Rocca San Casciano, 1966.
Missiroli, Mario: Fascism and the coup de stalo of October 1922, Cappelli, Rocca
San Casciano, 1966.
Nenni, Pietro: Twenty Years of Fascism. Come on!, Milan, 1964.
Nolte, Ernst: The fascist movements, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag,

Monaco, 1966.
• 1 hree Faces of Fascism: Action Franqaise, Italian Fascism, National

Socialism, trad. L. Vennewitz. Holt, Rinehart and Winsion, New York, 1966 (tr. it. /
tre volti del fascismo, Mondadori, Milano, 1971).
Pini, Giorgio and Susmel, Duilio: Mussolini: the man and the work. La Fenice,
Florence, 1953-55 (4 flights.).
Rocca, Massimo: The first fascism, Volpe, Rome, 1964.
Rossi, Arturo [Angelo Tasca]: The Rise of Italian Fascism, trans. P. and D.
Wait, Methuen, Londra, 1938.
Rossi, Cesare: Mussolini as it was, Ruffolo, Rome, 1947.

-. Trenlatré Mussolini affairs, Ceschina, Milan, 1958.
Roux, Georges: Fascist Italy, Subirana, Barcelona, 1933.
Salvatorelli, Luigi and Mira, Giovanni: History of Italy in the Fascist period ,
Einaudi, Turin, 1964.
Salvemini, Gaetano: Writings on fascism, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1966.
-. Under thè Axe of Fascism, Gollanz, Londra, 1936.
Silvestri, Carlo: Mussolini, Graziani and anti-fascism, Longanesi, Milan, 1950.

Spampanato, Bruno: Coniromemoriale. Illustrated, Rome, 1953 (3 flights.).
Susmel, Edoardo: Mussolini and his time. Garzanti, Cernusco sul Naviglio,
1950. Tasca, Angelo: Birth and advent of fascism. La Nuova Italia, Florence,
1950. Vinciguerra, Mario: Fascism seen by a loner.
Le Monnier, tirenze, 1963. Volpe, Gioacchino: History of the hashish
movement. Novissima, Rome, 1936.
-. The historical development of fascism, Sandron, Rome, 1928.
Zincone, Vittorio (edited by): Hitler and Mussolini: letters and documents,
Rizzoli, Milan, 1946.
II) HISTORY OF FASCIST INSTITUTIONS
Acerbo, Giacomo and others: The Mussolinian bushel. The Italian Review,
Rome, 1930. Ambrosini. Gaspare: The National Council of
Corporations. Littorio, Rome, 1930. Aquarone, Alberto: The organization of the
totalitarian state, Einaudi, Turin, 196 d. The Chamber of Fasci and Corporations,
Sansoni, Florence, 1937.
Corporate and Labor Code, Hoepli, Milan, 1940 (3 vols.).
Corsini, Vincenzo: Il Capo del governo nel stato fascista, Zanichelli, Bologna,
1935. Field, G. Lowell : The Syndical and Corporate Inslitutions of
Italian Fascism, Columbia Univ. Press, New York, 1938.
Haider, Carmen: Capital and Labor under Fascism, Columbia Univ. Press,
New York, Ì930.
Jaeger, Nicola: Principles of corporate law, Milani, Padua, 1939.
Lunelli, Italo: Fascist constitutional reform, Treves, Milan, 1937.
Manoilescu, Mihail : The only Parlei as a political institution of the new

regimes, Stollberg, Berlino, 1941.
Paoloni, Francesco: The representative system of fascism, Littorio, Rome,

1937. Pitigliani, Fausto: The Italian Corporate State, King, London, 1933.
Raue, Ernst: Contributions to the new conception of the state and

economy in Germany and Italy, Junker and Duenhaupl, Berlino, 1934.
Schmitt, Cari: The Corporate State in Action, Oxford Univ. Press, New
York, 1939. Sermonti, Alfonso: Italian trade union law, Littorio, Rome, 1929
(2 vols.). Sottochiesa, Gino: The new representative regime of the fascist
state, Paravia, Turin, 1939.
Steiner, IL Arthur: Government in Fascisi Italy, McGraw-Hill, New York,

1938. Tempel, Wilhelm: Structure of the Slaatsgewall in Fascist Italy,
Hirschfeld, Lipsia, 1933.
Welk, William: Fascisi Economie Policy, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge,

Mass., 1938. Zangara, Vincenzo: The single party and the new
representative state in Italy and Germany, Zanichelli, Bologna, 1938.
Ili) PRE-FASC1SM AND SOCIOLOGICAL TRADITION Andreu, Pierre:

Sorci: our Master, Volpe, Rome, 1966.
Arcari, Paola Maria: Socialism and democracy in the thought of Vilfredo

Pareto, Volpe, Rome, 1966.
Barth, Hans: Mass and myth, the theory of violence. Georges Sorel,
Rowohlt, Amsterdam, 1959.
Bitelli, Giovanni: Filippo Corridoni and pre-war workers' unionism.

Very modern, Milan, 1925.
Borge.se, Giovanni: D'Annunzio, Bompiani, Milan, 1932.
Clough, Rosa Trillo: Futurism: The Story of a Modern Art Movement ,
Philosophical Library. New York, 1961.
Corradini, Enrico: Political speeches (1902-1923), Vallecchi. Florence. 1923.
-. The shadow of life, Ricciardi, Naples, 1908.
-. The distant homeland, Treves, Milan. 1910.
-. Above the streets of the new empire, Treves, Milan, 1912.
-. The unity and power of nations, Vallecchi, Florence, 1912.
-. National life, Lumachi, Florence, 1907.
-. The will of Italy, Perrella, Naples, 1911.
Delle Piane, Ma: !.• : Gaduno Mosca: political class and liberalism. Italian Scientific
Editions. Naples. 1952.
Glmplowicz, Ludwig: The Outlines of Sociology, trad. F. W. Moore;

American Academy of Politicai and Social Science, Philadelphia. 1899.
-. The Race War. Wagner, Innsbruck, 1883.
-. The rule of law and sociolism, Wagner. Innsbruck, 1881.
-. Die sociological Slaatsidee, 2nd ed. enlarged, Wagner, Innsbruck, 1902.
-. Social philosophy un ì mriss, Wagner, Innsbruck, 1910.
Horowitz. Irving Louis: Radicalism and thè Revolt Against Reason: The Social
Theories of Georges Sorel (with a Translalion of his Essay on ’ The

Decompo
sition of Marxism Hunianities, New York. 1961.
Horowitz, Irving Louis: Radicalism and thè Revolt Against Reason: The
Social
Cambridge, Mass.. 1951.
Joll, James: Three Intelleclnals in Politics: Blum, Rathenau, Marinetli, Harper

and Row, New York, 1960.
La Ferla. Giuseppe: Portrait of Georges Sorel, La Cultura, Milan, 1933.
Le Bon, Gustave: Psychology of the crowd, Longanesi, Milan, 1971.
Marinetti. Filippo Tommaso: Futurism and Fascism, Campitelli, Foligno. 1924.
Meisel, James: The Genesis of Georges Sorel. True. Ann-Arbor, 1951.
-. The Myth of thè Ruling Class : Gaetano Mosca and thè ’ Elite ', Univ. of
Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1958.
-• Pareto and Mosca, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965.
Melis, Renato (edited by): Italian trade unionists. Fox, Rome, 1964.
Michels, Robert: First Lectures in Politicai Sociology, Harper and Row, New
York, 1949.
-. Work and race, Vallardi, Milan, 1924.
-. Politicai Parties , Dover, New York, 1959.
-. Socialism and Fascism in Italy. Meyer & Jessen, Monaco, 1925 (2 vol.).
-.C. Marx's theory on growing poverty and its origins. Mouth,

Turin, 1922.
Mosca, ^ G aetano: Elements of political science, V ed., Laterza, Bari, 1953

(2 flights.).
-. History of political doctrines, VI revised edition, Laterza, Bari, 1951.
Olivetti, Angiolo Oliviero: Contemporary issues. Parthenopea, Naples, 1913.
-. Syndicalism as a philosophy and as a policy, Alpes, Milan, 1924.
Oriani, Alfredo: Ideal revolt, Capelli, Bologna, 1943.
Papini, Giovanni: Pragmatism, Vallecchi, Florence, 1943.
Pareto, Vilfredo: Course of political economy, Einaudi, Turin, 1949 (2

flights.).
-. Manual of political economy, II ed., Libreria, Milan, 1919.
-. Socialist Systems, V. Giard and E. Brière, Paris, 1902 (2. vol.).
-. Transformations of democracy. Hats, Rocca San Casciano, 1964.
-• Treatise on general sociology, II ed., Comunità, Milan, 1964 (2, vol.).
Pasini, Ferdinando: D'Annunzio, Auguslea, Rome, 1928.
Schuler, Erwin: Pareto's Marx criticism, Becht, Tubinga, 1938.
Sighele, Scipio: Ideas and problems of a positivist, Sandron, Palermo, 1908.
-• The intelligence of the crowd. Mouth, Turin, 1922.
-. Nationalist pages, Treves, Milan, 1910.
-. The social sciences, Vallardi, Milan, 1903.

Sorel, Georges: From Aristotle to Marx, Rivière, Paris, 1935.
-. The Socialist Future of Trade Unions, Jacques, Paris, 1901.
-. Capitalist degeneration and socialist degeneration, Sandron, Milan, 1907.
-. Europe under the storm, Corbaccio, Milan, 1932.
_. The illusions of progress. River, Paris, 1908.
_. Social teachings of contemporary economy, Sandron, Milan, 1906.
_. Introduction to modern economics. Jacques, Paris, 1903.
-. Materials for a theory of the proletariat. River, Paris. 1919.
-. The trial of Socrates, Alcan, Paris, 1889.
-. Reflections on violence, Laterza. Bari, 1970.
-. The ruin of the ancient world, Jacques, Paris, 1902.
-. Critical essays on Marxism, Sandron, Milan, 1903.
-. Of the futility of pragmalism. River, Paris, 1921.
THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM
Ballarini, Franco: From liberalism to corporatism, Einaudi, Turin, 1935.
Bardèche, Maurice: What is fascism?, tra. E. Beltrametti, Fox.

Rome, 1963. Biagi, Bruno: Writings on corporate politics, Zanichelli.
Bologna, 1934.
_. The corporate state. National Fascist Institute of Culture. Rome, 1934.
Bortolotto, Guido: Doctrine of Fascism, Hoepli, Milan, 1939.

-. Fascism and Nation, Hanseatische, Amburgo, 1932.
-. Masseti and Fuehrer in the Fascist doctrine, Hanseatische. Amsterdam, 1934.
-. The state and corporate doctrine, Zanichelli, Bologna, 1930.
Bottai, Giuseppe: La Carla del Lavoro, Labor Law, Rome, 1928.
-. Corporate experience (1929-1935), Vallecchi, Florence, 1935.
-. Pages of fascist criticism 1915-1926, Le Monnier, Florence, 1941.
Gambo, Francisco: Around Italian Fascism. Catalan, Barcelona, 1925.
Canepa, Antonio: System of doctrine of fascism. Formiggini. Rome, 1937 (3

flights.). Carli, Filippo: The historical and doctrinal foundations of the
corporative economy, Cedam, Padova. 1938.
The Fascist conception of private property, Fascist Confederation of Agricultural

Workers, Rome, 1939.
Corso, Giovanni: The Fascist State. Littorio, Rome, 1929.
Costamagna, Carlo: Doctrine of Fascism. II ed., UTET, Turin, 1940.
-. Elements of fascist corporative constitutional law, Bemporad, Florence, 1929.
Fascist culture (National Fascist Party), State Library, Rome.

1938. D'Ambrosio, Manlio: Corporate political economy. Littorio, Rome, 1930.
De Marsanich, Augusto: Lo Stalo nel ventennio fascista (1922-1943),

Aniene, Rome, sd, De Montemayor, Giulio: Lo Stato fascista, Sandron,
Palermo, 1928.
The Fascist Economy (National Fascist Party), State Library, Rome, 1938.
Ercole, Francesco: The Origins of Fascist Italy, Alberti, Rome, 1927.
Fanelli, Giuseppe Attilio : Essays on fascist corporatism. Fascist century.

Rome. 1936.
Ferrari, Santo: Fascist Italy. Italian, Turin, 1942.
Filareti, General: In the margins of fascism, Unitas, Milan, 1925.
Fontanella Luigi: Feeling of the revolution. UESI. Rome, 1941.
Franck, Louis: The Stages of the Italian Fascist Economy. Social and economic
library, Paris, 1939.
Gaucher, Francois: Fascism and the world today, trans. A. Romualdi, Volpe,
Rome, 1966.
Giglio, Carlo: Party and empire. Brancaccio Palace. Rome, 1939.
Goebbels, Paul Joseph: We Germans and Mussolini's Fascism, trans. TO.

Luchini, Beltrami, Florence, 1936.
Goméz Homen, Pier Filippo: Theoretical antecedents of fascist

corporatism, Sandron. Palermo, 1929.
Gorcolini, Pietro: Fascism in Italian life, Silvestrelli, Turin, 1923.
-. Fascism explained to the people, Paravia, Rome, 1935.
-. The Fascist Revolution, Paravia, Rome, 1928.
Gravelli, Asvero: Panfascism, New Europe, Rome, 1935.
Landini, Pietro: The doctrine of fascism. New Italy, Florence, 1936.
-. The New National Consciousness, Tip. an. ed., Rome, 1933.

-. The Fascist Imperial State. Rates, Pistoia, 1937.
Mancini, Ezio: Fascism and democracy, Piccinelli, Rome, 1945.
Manoilescu, Mihail: The century of corporatism, Alcan, Paris, 1938.
Marpicati, Arluro: The Fasdsta Party, Mondadori, Milan, 1938.
Martinoli, Ettore: Function of mysticism in the fascist revolution, Trani, Udine, 1940.
Mesetti, Vincenzo: Civiltà fascista, Nuova Italia, Florence, 1941.
Mussolini, Benito: Opera omnia. La Fenice, Florence, 1951-61 (36 flights.).
Olivetti, Angiolo Oliviero: Features of the new Italian State. Littorio, Rome, 1930.
Olivetti, Ezio Maria: National Syndicalism, Monanni, Milan, 1927.
Not now. Paolo: From revolutionary syndicalism to the syndicalist state.

Camera, Rome, 1925.
The Organization of the Fascist State (National Fascist Party), Libreria dello Stalo,
Rome. 1938.
Panunzio, Sergio: What is fascism, Alpes, Milan, 1924.
-. Union and corporate law. New Italy, Perugia, 1930.
-. The Fascist State, Cappelli, Bologna, 1925.
-. People nation state, New Italy, Florence, 1933.
-. National Stalo and trade unions. Imperia, Milan, 1924.
-. General theory of the fascist Statp, Cedam, Padua. 1939.
The National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista), State Library, Rome, 1938.
Pellegrini-Giampietro, Domenico: Historical and spiritual aspects of fascism,

Vallerini, Rome, 1941.
Pighetti, Guido: Fascism, trade unionism, corporatism. Scientific, Milan,

1930. -. Fascist syndicalism, Imperia, Milan, 1924.
Prezzolini, Giuseppe: Le Fascisme, trans. G. Bourgin, Bossard. Paris, 1925.

Puchetti, Antonio Cesare: Scientific fascism, Bocca. Turin, 1926.
Quaglio, Chiarissimo: Orientations of the fascist revolution, L'Artiglio, Lucca,

1937. Raguso, Stefano: Elements of corporate political science, New Italy.
Florence, 1935. Rocco, Alfredo: The political domination of fascism,
Aurora, Rome, 1925.
-. The transformation of the state, La Voce, Rome, 1927.
Romanini, Luigi: The principles of fascism in the field of education, II ed., Paravia,
Turin, 1939.
Rossoni, Edmondo: The ideas of reconstruction. Bemporad, Florence, 1923.
Sammartano, Nino: Ideas and problems of the fascist revolution, Vallecchi,

Florence, 1932. Schneider, Herbert: Making the Fascist State, Oxford Univ.
Press, New York. 1928. Spinetti, G. Silvano: Fascist mysticism, Hoepli,
Milan, 1936.
Turati, Augusto: The Fascist doctrine, Littorio, Rome, 1923.
Ungari, Paolo: Alfredo Rocco and the legal ideology of fascism,

Morcelliana, Brescia, 1963.
Zangara, Vincenzo: Trade union revolution: the corporative state. Littorius.

Rome, 1927. V) THE PHILOSOPHY OF FASCISM
Aebischer, Max: The individual and the state according to Giovanni

Gentile, Kanisiusdruckerei, Friburgo, 1954.
Beauty, Vito: The positive existentialism of Giovanni Gentile, Sansoni,

Florence, 1954. Carlini, Armando: Gemiliani studies. Sansoni, Florence, 1958.
’
De Sarlo, Francesco: Gentile and Croce. Philosophical letters of a Le passed ',
Monnier, Florence, 1925.
Di Giamberardino, Oscar: The individual in the fascist prop, Vallecchi, Florence,

1940. Evola, Julius: Fascism seen from the Right, II ed., Volpe, Rome, 1971.
— —. Pagan Imperialism: Fascism in the Face of the Euro-Christian Danger,

Atanor, Rome, 1928.
-% Revolt against the modern world, Hoepli, Milan, 1934; 111 ed.
Medium Editions
terranee, Roriia, 1969.
-. The men and the ruins, Ascia, Rome, 1953; III ed.. Volpe, Rome, 1972.
Gentile, Giovanni: What is fascism?, Vallecchi, Florence, 1925.
-. Doctrine of Fascism: Fundamental Ideas, Hoepli. Milan, 1935.
-. Fascism and culture, Treves, Milan, 1928.
-. Philosophy of fascism, Littorio, Rome, 1929.
-. Contemporary Italian philosophy. Sansoni, Florence, 1941.
_. Fundamentals of the philosophy of law with the addition of two studies on

philosophy of
Marx, III ed., Sansoni, Florence, 1955.
_. Genesis and structure of the company. Sansoni, Florence, 1946.
_ 4 War and faith. Political fragments, Ricciardi, Naples, 1919.
-. Introduction to Philosophy, Treves, Rome, 1933.
_. Origins and doctrine of fascism. Littorio, Rome, 1929.

_, «The Philosophic Basis of Fascism », in Readings on Fascism and

National
Socialism, Swallow, Denver, s.d.
_. Preliminaries to the study of the child, VI ed.. Sansoni, Florence, 1958.
_. Education reform, 5th ed., Sansoni, Florence, 1954.
_. General theory of the spirilo as a pure act, IV ed., Laterza, Bari, 1924.
Giovanni Gentile: life and thought. Giovanni Gentile Foundation for

Philosophical Studies; Sansoni, Florence, 1948-1961 (9 flights.).
Harris, Henry Silton: The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile, Univ. of

Illinois Press, Urbana, 1960.
Holmes, Roger: The Idealism of Giovanni Gentile , Macmillan, New York,

1937.
Marcuse, Herbert: Reason and Revolution: Hegel and thè Rise of Social
Theory, II ed., Humanities, New York, 1954 (tr. it.: Regions and Revolutions.
The Mill, Bologna, 1964).
Mazzetti, Roberto: Which humanism?. Armando, Rome, 1966.
Mehlis, Georg: Italian philosophy of the present, Junker and

Duennhaupl,
Berlin, 1932.
Mueller, Ferdinand-Lucien: Contemporary Thought in Italy and the

influence de Hegel, Kundig, Ginevra, 1941.
Pannese, Gerardo: Ethics in fascism and the philosophy of law and of

history , Voice of the Press, Rome, 1942.
Spinetti, G. Silvano: Fascism and freedom, Il ed., Cedam, Padua. 1941.

Spirito, Ugo: Capitalism and corporatism. Sansoni, Florence, 1933.
-. Communism, Sansoni, Florence, 1965.
_. Critique of Democracy, Sansoni, Florence, 1963.
-. The Philosophy of Communism, Sansoni, Florence, 1948.
_. Italian idealism and its critics. Le Monnier, Florence, 1930.
-. Beginning of a new era, Sansoni, Florence, 1961.
-. Machiavelli and Guicciardini, Sansoni, Florence, 1945.
-. From myth to science. Sansoni, Florence, 1966.
_, Notes on the thought of Giovanni Gentile, Sansoni, Florence, 1954.
-. New humanism. Armando, Rome, 1964.
-. Pragmatism in contemporary philosophy, Vallecchi, Florence, 1921.
-. Science and philosophy. The ed., Sansoni, Florence, 1950.
-. Life as research, Sansoni, Florence, 1937.
Tripodi, Nino: Comment on Mussolini: Notes on the Doctrine of Fascism »,

Mouth, Rome, 1956.
-. Life and ideals of Giovanni Gentile, MSI, Rome, 1954.
Vectors. Vittorio (edited by): Giovanni Gentile. La Fenice, Florence. 1954.
VI) THE RACIAL DOCTRINE OF FASCISM
Acerbo, Giacomo: The Foundations of the Fascist Doctrine of Race. Ministry

of Popular Culture, Rome, 1940.
Banzi, Antonio: Fascist Racism, Agate, Palermo, 1939.

Biasutti, Renato: Races and peoples of the earth, UTET, Turin, 1941 (3 vols.).
Canella, Mario: Outline of anthropobiology. Sansoni, Florence, 1943.
-. Principles of racial psychology. Sansoni, Florence, 1942.
-. Extinct and living human races , II ed.. Sansoni, Florence, 1941.
Capasso, Aldo: Clear ideas on racism, Augustea, Rome, 1942.
Cogni, Giulio: Racism. Mouth, Milan, 1937.
De Felice, Renzo: History of Italian Jews under Fascism, Einaudi, Turin, 1962; The
ed., Einaudi, Turin, 1972.
De Francisci, Pietro and others: Fascist politics of race, National Fascist Institute of
Culture, Rome, 1940.
De Martino, Salvatore: The spirit and the race, Signorelli, Rome, 1940.
De Rossi dell'Arno, Giulio: Judaism against Europe. Sweater, Rome.

1940. Kvola, Julius: The Myth of Blood. Hoepli, Milan, 1937.
-. Synthesis of the doctrine of race. Hoepli. Milan, 1942.
Lunches, Leone: Current phase of German racism. National Fascist Institute of Culture,
Rome, 1939.
Gini, Corrado: Birth, evolution and death of nations, Littorio, Rome, 1930. Koriierr.
Riccardo: Regression of births: death of peoples. Littorio, Rome, 1928. Leoni. Enzo:
Mystic of Fascist Racism, Cedam, Padua, 1941.
Lodolim, Armando: The history of the Italian race from Augustus to Mussolini, UEI,
Rome, 1939.
Maggiore, Giuseppe: Race and fascism. Agates, Palermo, 1939.

Brown. Giovanni: Physical and spiritual characteristics of the Italian race.

National Fascist Institute of Culture, Rome, 1939.
-. Primacy of the Italian race. Principality, Milan. 1940.
Mastrojanni, Gabriele: Mars and Israel, Cappelli, Bologna. 1943.
Momigliano, Eucardio: Tragic and grotesque history of fascist racism,

Mondadori. Milan, 1946.
Orano, Paolo: The Jews in Italy, li ed., Pinciana. Rome, 1938.
-. (edited by): Inquiry on race, Pinciana, Rome, 1939.
Pesci, Ernesto: Chaff and destiny of race, Alterocca, Terni, 1939.
Pisano, Giorgio: Mussolini and the Jews, FPE, Milan, 1967.
Podaliri, Guido: De Republica llebraeorum, Barulli, Osimo, 1941.
Preti, Luigi: Fascist Empire. Africans and Jews, Mursia. Milan, 1968.
VII) FASCIST SOCIALIZATION
Amicucci, Ermanno: The Six Hundred Days of Mussolini, Faro, Rome, 1949.
Cione, Edmondo: History of the Italian Social Republic, 11 Last Supper.

Caserta. 1948. Deakin. Frederick: The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini. Hitler and
the Fall of Ita! ian Fascism, Harper and Row, New York, 1962 (ir. it.: History of
the Republic of Salò, Einaudi. Turin, 1967).
Dkieu la Rochelle, Pierre: Fascist Socialism, Gallimard. Paris, 1934.
Perticone, Giacomo: The Republic of Salò, Leonardo. Rome, 1947.
Saracrista, Vito: With the Italian Social Republic at the service of the country,
Manara.
Milan, sd'
License plates. Angel: Hard heads, SELC. Milan, 1967.
VIII) THEORIES ON FASCISM
Arend^, Hannah: The Origins of Totalitarianism, Ilarcourt, Brace, New York,

1951. Bauer. Otto, Herbert Marcuse, e Arthur Rosenberg, Fascism and
Capitalism: Theories on the Social Origins and Function of Fascism,
Europaeische. Vienna, 1967.
De Felice, Renzo (edited by): Fascism and the Italian political parties. Hats,
Rocca San Casciano, 1967.
Dutt, R. Palme: Fascism und Social Rei>olution, International, New York, 1934.
Fetscher, Iring: "On the Critique of the Avpet-Marxist Concept of
Fascism". in Karl Marx and Marxism, Piper, Monaco, 1967.
Lipset, Seymour Martin: « ’ Fascism—Left ’, Righi and Center », in

Politicai Man:
The Social Bases of Politics , Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1959.
Lukàcs, Georg: The destruction of reason, construction, Berlino, 1954.
Moore. Barrington: Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Beacon

Press, Boston, 1966.
Nathan, Peter: The Psychology of Fascism, Faber and Faber, Londra* s.d.
Nolte, Ernst (a cura di): Theories about fascism, Kiepenheuer and Witsch.
Berlino, 1967.
Parsons, Talcott: «Some Sociological Aspects of Fascisi Movement », in

Essays in Sociological Theory, Free Press, New York, 1954.
Pirker, Theodor (a cura di): Kominlern and fascism: 1920-1940,

contemporary history. Stockarda, 1965.
Trotzkv, Leon: Fascism: Whal It Is, Hoiv lo Fighi It. Pioneer, New York, 1944.
INDEX OF NAMES AND TOPICS
Collective 102 Albrecht-Carrié René, 93 Alessi Rino, 102 Hallucinations

,
Paolo Alatri, 62, 74-75 Anarchy, 99-100
in revolutionary socialism, 99-100 working class and, 48

Antintetellectualism experience and, fascist, 70-71, 189-91 by Mussolini, 120,
122-123 as a reaction to positivism, 69-71 by Sorel, 69, 74
Anti-parliamentarism, 50-52 elite government and, 63 by Mussolini, 143-144
Anti-rationalism
definition of, 71 by Mussolini, 120, 122-123 by Sorel, 74

Anti-Semitism, 252-256 by Gentile, 253 by Mussolini, 232-233, 240 by
Sorel, 232
in the Manifesto of Racism, 252, 379 of the State, 253-257 Antonio José, 332
Ardigò Roberto, 100, 120, 195 Ariani
definition of, 230, 243 Italians, 379-380
in the Manifesto of Racism, 248 Aristotle, 197, 228 Actualism, 194-197 criticism
of it, 209-213 in Fascism, 212
as support of Fascism, 195-197 proto-fascist sociological tradition and, 220-221
Vatican and, 194
Babeuf Francois, 102-103, 110 Badoglio Pietro, 261, 276 Bakunin MA, 99 Balabanoff
Angelica, 253 Battisti Cesare . 130 Bergson Henri, 69-71, 126,
211, 254 Bianchi Michele, 146, 157, 195 Bianchini Giuseppe, 242 Biasutti Renato,
238, 239 Biologism, 244-251 criticism of, 244-248 presence of, 231 rejection of,
250 -251 Leonidas Bissoali, 48 Blanqui August, 110 Bolshevism birth of,
133 class composition of, 146 dictatorship of, 319 Fascism and, 272
Fascism and b. according to the fascists. 166-167
as imitation of Fascism, 302 logic of, 317
such as national socialism, 319 struggles of the. 336
Bombacci Nicola, 264, 279, 289 Bonfantini Corrado, 280 Borghese Valerio,
263 Bourgeoisie in the abstract, 144
man's conception of, 308 corporatism and, 276 power through democracy of. 111 ethics
of, 307 Fascism and, 38, 156-157, 269 Fascism as a defense of, 332335
fascist economic control and, 269271, 273-275
in the Fascist Party, 157-158 the years of the Fascist Regime and the, 275-276
functional myths of the Italian, 58, 46-49
minority government of the, 63 Mussolini on the, 279 Mussolini on the Fascist Regime
and the, 275-276
nationalism of the, 93 in the proletarian revolution, 108-110 Soviet development

and, 323-324 working class and b. national, 133-134 Borkenau Franz , 301, 302, 335 Bottai
Giuseppe , 40, 196, 219, 277 Brown JF 37 Brotvn 38 Bukharin Nikolaj /., 40 .,Buffon
129 Georges, 55 Buonarroti Filippo, Roger , 110 Bureaucracy, 23 Burtzev Vladimir,
Cafie.ro Carlo, 100
Warmth Emilio, 273
Canella Mario, breed e, 238-39, 249, 252
Canepa Antonio
on topics of fascist doctrine, 194 fascist theory and practice and, 192-193 racism and.
242 Capasso Aldo, 241 racism and, 242-244-249 Capitalism
the class struggle under the, 107 crisis of. 269 elimination of, 273-275
expropriation of, 171 «fascist defense of, 36 Fascism as a creature of, 27-28 free
initiative, 20 Gentile and the, 287 as an obstacle, 293 proletarian
revolution and, 315-316 resistance of, 266 -268 of State (see also Stalo), 13
Carsten FL, 334 Caste, in the racist theory, 243 Chamberlain Houston
S., 241 Ciano. Count Galeazzo, 253 Class, fight of
Corradini's views on, 79-82
elitism in, 53-54, 56-58
Fascism and the abolition of, 156
as strength, 109
history of society as, 313
non-existence of, 143
Marx on, 64
Marxism and the, 66
Michels on, 64
Mussolini's views on the myths, 108 and, 59
the nation as a substitute for the, 158 order through the state and the, 5759
under capitalism, 107 Ruling class
Elilism of (see also: Elitism), 55-57
as a necessity, 92 dominated and, 52-53
10 State as an instrument of (see also: State), 321-22
Working class and anarchy, 48

elections as a measure of, 111-12 emigration of — Italian (18751905), 47
11 Fascism and the, 37-38
the fascist regime supported by the, 276 in the fascist state, 154 functional myths
of the, 57 humanism of work and (see also: Work), 286, 288
increase in production and (see also: Production), 86 moral regeneration through the,
289 national bourgeoisie and, 133-35 socialization program (1943) and, 264-68
guardianship of the war, 290-91 (1914) and the, 127-33 (see also: Proletariat)
Social classes
in African socialism, 327-29 in Bolshevism, 146 caste in racial theory and, 244-45
Communism and, 317-18
conflict between the — Italian, 48
discordant interests of the, 292
corporatism and, 271-74
Corradini and her, 86
replaced by nationalism, 140-45
Fascism and, 27-28
Fascism as a transcendence of the,* 39
in the Fascist Party, 157-58 in the foundation of Bolshevism and the

Fascism, 146 as a functional myth, 92-93 Mao on, 325 mediation between, 158 Mussolini
and the concept of class e, 126-29 the classes replaced by nationalism e, 140-45
nation and class identification, and, 127
nation versus class in syndicalism, 175-77 nationalism and, 133-35 petty

bourgeoisie in Fascism, 334 in the Fascist Party, 156 the political myth of,
115-16 production and rift between, 318 in mass revolutionary movements (see
also: Mass Movements), 324-26
the rise of Fascism and the dominant 339
elitism of the — dominants (see also: Elitism), 55-57 needs of the — dominants, 92
dominant and dominated, 52-53 the Stalo as an instrument of the — dominants (see
also: State), 320-22
State and, 25, 320-22
(see also: Bourgeoisie, Class struggle, Masses, Proletariat, Working class)
Clemenceau Georges, 91 Codreanu Corneliu, 28, 338 Cogni Giulio. 242-43 Colajauni
Napoleon, 128 Cole GDH, 38, 325, 334 Collectivism (see also Corporatism), 309
Communism History and, 281
national (see also: national socialism), 319 social class and, 317 resistance to
socialization, 267 Soviet (see also: marxism).
14-15, 301-302, 323-324, 336 communist party, rationale of the, 25
Community, Gentile (see also: Corporatism, Nation), 204-206

Consensus, concept of, 209-214 Conservatism as an ally, 338
Fascism and, 38
the fascist revolution as, 269 by Gumplowicz, 62-63 revolutionary,

164-165 Coppola Francesco, 195 Corporatism
bourgeois reaction to, 276 radicalization of, 288 as a transition, 269, 272-275 Corradini
Enrico, 78-82, 157. 220, 22627, 233
the second class struggle, 78-82 ethnocentrism of, 78-80 functional myths of,
81 Gumplowicz e, 78, 81
influence of, 184 Italy and, 78-79 on Jews, 232 Moscow and, 79, 81
nationalist, 86-89 Sighele and, 86 socialism and, 86, 271 Sorel and, 78, 81, 87
Corridoni Filippo, 130 Corso Giovanni, 173 Conscience
of the masses (see also: Masses), 117 revolutionary (see also:

Revolution), 313-316
Costamagna Carlo, 40, 177, 281, 220 fascist, 240
the rational foundation of Fascism and, 183 Gentile and, 209, 211 racism and, 242,
244 on the State. 214 Coulter T., 301 Crispi Francesco, 91 Croce Benedetto,
68, 103, 115, 155, 190, 195, 283, 287
Cult of Personality, 217-18
D'Ancona Alessandro, 253 Social Darwinism , 80-81 Deal Marcel, 273
From Begnac Yvon, 101, 153, 195, 196, 245 From Felice Renzo, 40, 104, 114,
226, 232 Democracy
bourgeois power through the. 111 as a statutory myth, 116

classification of, 35 in fascist doctrine, 147 Michels's views on, 90 Moscow c
the theory of, 111 Pareto on. 147 improved, 24-25
social (see also: Socialism), 300 Sorel and la, 77 vera. 291-92
(see also: Anti-parliamentarism. Parliamentarism)
Dia Mamadoti, 328
By Giamberardino Oscar. 181
Rights
equality of (see also: Equality), 58
Gumplowicz sui, 58, 67 of strike, 335 Dictatorship
Bolshevik, 318-19 of development, 14

Gentile rationale for the, 214-20
Mussolini's rejection of the proletariat, 155-56, 314, 321-22 Doctrine
supremacy of nationalism over classes in, 141-46 Canepa on, 192 codification
of, 160-67 of community society, 173-77 definition of, 20-23 democracy in,
147-48 development of (after 1925), 16873
ends and means of, 168-69 Gorgolini's opinions in, 158-59

interpretations of, 171-72 the most important literature of, 169-70
mature, 173-84
of production and of the nation, 146-50
dello Stalo, 149-50, 177-79 in the neo-Hegelian sense, 152-56

syncretistic character of, 157 as a synthesis, 184-85 (see also: Racism,
socialization)
Drieu la Rochelle Pierre , 273 Dutt. J.P., 37
Jews
Corradini sui, 232 Fascist controversies and treatment of, 34
Marx and his, 134 nationalism and, 240-41 Zionism, 253-56 (see also:
Anti-Semitism) Economy
bureaucratic control of the e. capitalist, 23
class struggle under the, 106 crisis of, 269 elimination of, 273-75
expropriation of, 171 Fascism as a creature of, 2728
maintenance of — by Fascism, 36-37 free initiative, 20

Gentile and the, 286-87 as an obstacle, 292-94 proletarian revolution and,
315-16 resistance of the, 266-67 of the state (see also: State), 14 end of
the — market, 21 growth of the, 4648 imperial
cultural imperialism, 211 sacred function of, 80
State control over, 269-71, 273-75 Equality
the classification of ideologies and the, 35
nationalism and, 35-36 Pareto's views on the presumptive and

procedural, 53-54, 34 of rights (see also: Rights), 58 Elections
as a measure of the working class, 111113
suffrage ed, 46-48
(see also: Parliamentarianism)
Elite, function in totalitarian ideology, 24 Elitism
anti-parliamentarism and, 63 foundation of the, 53-54 African socialist, 330

bourgeois, 63
in the class struggle, 53-54, 56-57 Engels and the revolution led by, 110
Gentile's rational foundation of, 207-8
Fascism as a product of, 158
fascist, 167
inevitability of, 59
fighting instinct ed, 55-56
revolutionary leadership as, 23-24
in Lenin, 110, 330
Marxism and, 68
Michels' opinions on Mosca, 63-64 and Olivetti's, 55-57, 59, 112-113 masses
and
elite necessary to the, 109, 143-45 masses modeled by Mussolini's,

154-55, 316-17, 330 consistency of Mussolini on, 108-10.
117-18, 124-26 Pareto and lo, 53-57, 59 of the ruling classes (see also:
Dominant classes), 55-57 Engels Friedrich , 139, 307 conception of — of history,
313 the revolution led by the elite and, 110
historical materialism and, 283 humanism of, 312 Mussolini and, 103, 105, 107,
114 on the organization, 111 political ideal of, 23-25 as a rationalist, 108 opinions
of — on the revolution, 31318
the State and, 322 Ethics
bourgeois, 307
Marxist and totalitarian, 308-11
Ethnocentrism
definition of, 60-62 by Corradini, 79 generalizations intended as, 50 racism

ed, 239 Sorel and lo, 76-77 Evola Julius, 213, 243 Eysenck HJ, 301
Farinacci Roberto, 166 Fasci di combat, 169-70 Fascism, foundation

of, 146-48 Fascisms, contemporaries, 339-40 Fascist, as a cataloguing,
36-37 Fetscher Iring, 335 Fichte JC, 232 Philosophy
as a practice (see also: Practice), 286
di Gentile (see also: Actualism), 194-98
Italian, 189-91 Mussolini on neo-idealism, 191-94, 190, 195-96 Papini and the,
189-90, 195 philosophical development of, 190 social and political definition of,
20-22 Marxism as (see also: Marxism) , 22
(see also: Equality, Ethics, Freedom and particular philosophies, such as:
Actualism, Positivism, Pragmatism)
Freud Sigmund, 71 Futurism, 88-89, 93, 131, 233 Social and political
philosophy definition of, 20-21 Marxism as (see also: Marxism and particular
social and political philosophies such as: Actualism,
Syndicalism), 21-22 Finzi Aldo, 253 Fiorentino Francesco, 100 Forza
class struggle as, 108-9 as the foundation of the law, 66 opinions of

Sorel on, 77 the State as the depositary of, 165 right of the State to use it
(see also: State), 77-78
as violence (see also: Violence), 66-77 Fossani Ivanoe, 279 Franco

Francisco, 332 Francis Louis, 242, 243
Gambetta Leon, 91 Garibaldi G., 99
Gatti Salvatore, 277 Gentile Giovanni, 22, 26, 168, 193-221, 268, 269, 310
actualism of (see also: Actualism), 193-98 attitudes of, 39 capitalism

and, 286-87 consensus conception of, 209-13 corporatism and, 271 death of,
220, 255, 263 fascist, 240
fascist socialism and, 279, 285-89 fascist totalitarianism and, 206-208

opinions of — on freedom, 203-206 ideologue, 39-41 on the individual, 290-91
influence of — on Labriola, 194-95, 287
Lenin e, 287
opinions of — on man, 196-208 comparison between, 39-41 Marx and,

194-95 comparison between, 39-41 criticism of — on Marxism, 280-85 on
myth, 209-10 nationalism and, 232-34 Gentile's rationale for the, 207-08
neo-idealism of, 190 racism and, 256 aid to Jews, 253-54 on racism, 242
rational foundation of — for dictatorship, 214-20
rational foundation of — for elitism, 207-8 opposed, 255 Sorel e, 287

opinions of — on the State, 152, 153, 165, 172, 184, 185, 212, 214-18
Hierarchies, Mussolini on (see also:
Elitism), 149 Ghisellini Iginio, 263 Giolitti Giovanni , 48, 160 Gini
Corrado, 40, 168, 220, 226 racial theories of, 234, 238, 239 about society,
173-76 Giuliano Balbino, 162, 196 Gladstone William, 91 Cabinet {De) .
Arthur, 239, 241 Goebbels Joseph, 254, 262 Gorgolini Pietro, 158, 159
Parliamentary Government, 46-50 Gramsci Antonio, 333 Grandi Dino, 157
Red Guards, 167 Guicciardini Francesco, 118 Guide, revolutionary (see also:
Dictatorship, Elitism, Party), 24 Gumplowicz Ludwig, 99
conservative thinker, 62-63
on ethnocentrism, 59 influence of, 52-57, 65, 114, 163, 17677, 184, 227, 240
on Cor radini, 79. 81 the fascist doctrine and, 161 on Michels, 89-90, 113 on
Mussolini, 117 , 125, 148, 154, 212 on Fascism, 62-63 opinions of — on
man, 198-99 on man, 161
rejection of — of marxism, 68 race and, 256 definition of race of. 236-39 on

rights, 58, 67 Sighele e. 85-86 socializing and, 61-62 Sorel vs, 65-68, 76-78
on Spencer, 83
opinions of — on the State, 62-63 on the State, 53-54 Giinther Hans, 243
Halew Ely, 301 Harris H. S„ 27, 196 Hegel G. W. F., 110, 309 Hervé
Gustave, 128, 129 Hess Moses, 302, 305 Hitler Adolf, 15, 26-27, 99, 226.
240, 241, 326
anti-Semitism and, 253-55, Fascism and, 261-62 the ideal of, 33

nationalism of, 35 socialization and, 267 Hughes H. Stuart. 113
Ethical Idealism, 2W-15 Ideas
politics, 11-12 ed revolution, 23-24 Ideology
affirmation of, 30-36 contemporary fascist, 339-40 definition of, 20-23, 191
Fascism as, 11-12, 26-39 dominant, 324-25 totalitarian,
336-39 definition of, 24 Imperatives, formal and informal definition of, 22

Cultural imperialism, 211 sacred function of the, 80 Individual
in African socialism, 331 freedom of the, 306-09 in society, 198-202
(see also: Freedom)
Gentile sull, 291
as a tool of production, 283-85 the logic of substitution and the. 309-11
Mussolini's views on, 106-107.
150- 153
property ed, 277-78
true will of the, 207-8
company ed, 161-63
individual freedom in, 198-202
individuality and, 303-305
State and
consent to the State by the, 209-213
the Fascist State and it, 178-79, 270-72
loyalty to the state, 163-65
as a moral union of individuals,
151- 52
the State as a personality of the, 290-91 in liberal opinions, 164-65 (see also:
Man) Industrialization
in contemporary fascisms, 339-40 fascist rationale for the. 337
nationalism ed, 322-23 (see also: Syndicate, Production.

socialization)
Intellectuals, distrust of Sorci in the. 66
National interest, 145
Public interest, the State and it, 178
Personal interests, 307
Private interests, 178
Special interests. 145
Internationalism
crisis of — socialist (see also:
Socialism), 128-33 Leninist and Fascist, 319-20 Instinct to fight (see also:
class struggle), 55-56 Italy
Corradini and the, 78-80 economic development of, 45-48 seizure of power
by the fascists in, 20. 159-61 foreign policy of, 48-50 illiteracy in, 46 invasion
of, 261-64 Mussolini on, 229- 30 parliamentary system in (see also:
Parliamentarianism), 46-47 d'unification, 45-46
James William, 69, 70, 71. 123, 124
Janelli Guglielmo. 230

Jaurés Jean, 143
Jouhaux Leon, 145
Jung Guido, 254
Kane Amidou, 330 Kant sull'uomo, 101, 162 Kautsky Karl, 101, 103, 114, 129, 322
Keith Sir Arthur, 238 Kelsen Hans, 24 Kemal Ataturk, 332 Krusciov N., 25,
321, 322 Klopstock Friedrich G. , 101 Korherr Richard, 232 Kouyate Seydou,
329, 330 Kropotkin P., 101, 129
Labriola Antonio, 103, 281 Labriola Arturo on Fascism, 333-34 on the defeat
of Fascism, 288 influence of Gentile on, 195, 287 Mussolini and, 110, 113-15,
119, 273, 287 nationalism of, 176 syndicalism of, 102, 190, 337
Landra Guido, 238, 239, 250 Lapouge Vacher De, 241 Lassalle Ferdinand,
151 Work
African socialism and, 335 humanism of, 35, 285-86, 288-89 in the
programmatic manifesto (1943), 383-84
as a source of value, 288 units between capital and, 294-95 (see also:
manufacturing, working class)
The Good Gustav
collective hallucinations and, 62, 74-76 crowd psychology and, 74, 85-86
influence of, 64, 114, 218, 227 on Mussolini, 114, 155 Michels and, 90
on the parliamentary system, 84 race and, 239 Sighele and, 82 Law
strength as the foundation of (see also: Strength), 66-68 in Soviet ideology, 22-23,
309-10
Legislation, enactment of laws, 216 Lenin V. /., 13, 22, 24, 26, 99, 156 opinions
of — on conscience, 315-18 elitist concepts of, 110, 330 faction of, 101-2 Gentile
and, 287 compared, 39-40 on the individual, 309 Marx a
comparison of, 22 marxism modified by, 102 Mussolini compared with, 105 opportunism
of, 29
production and, 327
revolution in backward countries and, 317-19 on the state, 25, 320-23 the war (1914)
and, 131 Leninism, 311-24
awakening of the masses through the. 315-18
Democrat, 25
as an extension of liberalism, 24
such as Fascism, 311-12
as Fascism imperfect, 322-24
10 Fascist state compared to the state governed by, 320-22
ideologues of, 40-41 international, 320 involution of, 312-19 lack of importance of,
327-28 as a rational foundation, 24-26 Sorel and the, 65 theory and practice of, 29-30
totalitarian, 311-12, 336 Lensch Paul, 129 Leo
Henry, 65, 115, 121 Leyhers General Hans, 267 Free initiative
end of (see also: Capitalism), 20
Liberalism
contemporary fascisms and the, 339-40
criticizes, 87-89
defense of, 155
the selfish man and the, 204-25
freedom in (see also: Liberty), 198

Gini Sul, 174
hope of the nineteenth century, 20 the individual seen from (see also:
individual), 164
11 Leninism as an Extension of (see also: Leninism), 23-24
property under the, 277 Rocco on, 174 sovereignty in, 67 unrealistic, 82 true (see also:
Liberty), 292 Liberty
individual, 198-206 of the individual in society, 197-202 in liberalism, 198 as behavior

governed by norms, 203-206 true, 291-92 by violence, 200 (see also: Equality)
Liebknecht Wilhelm, 101, 103 Lingua, 201
Lloyd George David, 91 Locke John, 198
Struggle in the nature of man (see also: Class struggle). 148 Ludwig Emil, 119, 30,
242, 245
Luxemburg Rosa, 25, 103, 322 Luzzatti Luigi, 91
Mac Gregor-H ostie Roy, 93 Me Closky, 301 Manifesto
of the Republican Fascist Party (1943), 382-84
of Race (see also: Racism), 378-80
Manoilesco Mihail, 273 Mao Tse-Tung, 13, 325 Marchello M., 193 Marinetti FT,
88, 93, 146, 157 race and, 229-30 Marro Giovanni, 245 racism and, 248 Martinelli
Franco, 263 Marx Karl, 22, 26, 51, 132 on class struggle, 64 death of, 99 dedication
of, 312-13 ethics of, 305-7
the fascist theorists in comparison of, 67, 113
Gentile and, 194-95
by comparison, 39-40
ideal of, 30
the Jews and, 134
history seen by, 312-14
Lenin vs., 22
on man, 106-7, 161, 302-306
Mussolini and, 114, 120, 121
criticizes Marx, 121
youth Marxist commitment, 100
influence of Marx, 102-3
Mussolini's rejection of Marx, 126-27,
141-2
myths of, 73
political ideal of, 24 proletarian revolution and, 110 rationalist, 108 the revolution
seen by, 314 Sorel compared with, 67
10 State seen by, 150, 323 see also: Marxism
Marxism
betrayal of (see also: Leninism, Stalinism), 25, 322 class struggle and, 66
classification of, 35 conflicting interpretations of, 139-40 democratic, 24-25,
300 elitism and, 68 Fascism and, 36-37
11 Fascism derived from, 161 Gentile criticism of, 280-85 refusal of

Gumplowicz del, 68 unimportant del, 327-30
Michels on, 63, 284 Mussolini and the, 103-8, 282, 284, 317-18 influence of
Gentile on Mussolini and the, 287
importance of the concept of class, 126 rejection of Marxism, 144

Mussolini's interpretation of, 121-22
nationalism and, 323 claims of foresight of the. 281-82
productive forces and, 67-68
as a science of history, 280-82
as social and political philosophy, 22
10 State according to the, 149-50 totalitarian ethics and the, 302-11 transformation
of, 14-15 betrayed, 25, 322
modified by Lenin (see also: Leninism, Stalinism), 102 Marx

Leninism, Fascism second
11 (see also: Leninism, Marxism, Stalinism), 27
Marx-Leninists, fascists and, 29 masses
lack of intellect in, 211-12 in African socialism, 830 consciousness of, 116-18 cult of
personality for, 217-19 as primordial energy, 64 elitism and
elite's need for, 109, 143-45 shaped by elitism, 153-55 endemic limitations of,
325-26 fascist control of, 182 fascist hierarchies over, 167 Leninist awakening
of, 315-18 mobilization of, 63 motivation delle, 119 Mussolini on, 119-20, 154-55, 215
Mussolini and the psychology of, 116-20 nationalism and, 87 nature of, 82- 84
organization of — by parties, 90-92
Sighele's views on, 85-86 the end of Sorel and le, 73-75 in totalitarian ideology, 23
agitation in, 19-20 use of, 59
(see also: Mass movements) Historical materialism (see also: Marxism), 280-85
Matteotti Giacomo, 168 Mazzini Giuseppe, 99, 142 Megaro Gaudens, 94, 101, 104,
115 Mensah JH, 328 Mezzasoma Ferdinando, 279 Meyer Alfred , 24, 102
Michels Roberto, 4p. 103, 168, 240
on the class struggle, 63
Opinions of — on Democracy, 89-91
views of — on elitism, 63-64
on Fascism, 184
Gumplowicz e, 90, 113, 114
ideologist, 39-41
influence of, 140, 161, 163, 167, 177, 198, 218, 227, 240
on Mussolini, 63, 117, 144, 148, 154, 212
Le Bon and, 90 Marxism and, 63, 284 Moscow and, 90, 92 Pareto and, 90, 92
racism and, 240 trade unionist, 113 synthesizer, 89-93 Fascist militia, 166- 67 Mill JS,
307-8
Minorities, historical dominance of (see also: Elitism), 66 Missiroli

Mario, 245, 255 Mysticism, 211-13 Myths
African socialists, statutory 330-31
changes in, 60-61 definition of, 58-59 democracy as, 115-16 class struggle and, 58
collective hallucination as, 62, 7576
discordant conceptions of Gods, 212-13
failure to develop i, 179-82
functional
bourgeois, 58
by Corradini, 81
definition of, 58
effects of, 77
Mussolini's conception of, 118-19 social classes as, 92-93 strategic use of,
59-60 the general strike (see also:
general strike), 87 Gentile sui, 209
as a stimulus to rebellion, 62 history as — social, 72 as the spring of history,

74-75 of Marx, 72-73
the nation as — central, 179-80 the nation as — fascist, 148-50 politicians, 51
definition of, 69-71 Mussolini's acceptance of, 115-16 the political formula as,
182-84 social, 72-76, 78 definition of, 64-66 Soviet,
324 Functional bourgeois myths, 58 by Corradini, 81
definition of, 58 effects of, 77-78
Mussolini's conception of, 118 social classes as, 92-93 strategic use of,
59 Organizational myths (see: Functional myths)
Political myths, 50-51 definition of the, 69, 181 Mussolini's accession to the, 115-
16 parliamentarians, 31-32 Social myths, 72-76-78 definition of the, 72-73
Statutory myths
change in, 60 definition of, 58 democracy as, 116 Montandon Georges, 238
Moore Barrington, 339 Morality, Sorel on, 78 Mosca Gaetano, 99 conservative
thinker, 62-63 democratic theory and, 111 elitism and, 55-57, 59 ethnocentrism
and, 61 the futurists and, 89 Gumplowicz and, 113 influence of, 50-54, 64, 113,
163, 167, 176, 177, 183, 184, 227 on Corradini, 79, 81 on Michels, 89- 90,
92 on Mussolini, 51, 117, 125. 148,. 154, 212
interventionist, 130 Marxism and, 284 rejection of Marxism, 68 racism and, 239 on
racism, 242
Sorel vs., 65-68, 76-77, 78 Moves George, 26
National liberation movements (see also: African socialism), 327

Mass movements
contemporary fascists, 339-40 totalitarian regimes of, 324, 26 totalitarian and

revolutionary, 331-35 traditional, 336-38 typology of, 11-12
Mussolini Alessandro, 99, 100, 102, 105 Mussolini Benito, 11, 26, 93-161, 228-264 anti-
parliamentarism of, 143 anti-radical, 36-38 anti-Semitism of, 232-33, 240 actualism of,
193-95 seizure of power by, 160-62 precedents of, 99-101 birth of, 99 on the
bourgeoisie, 279 on the fascist regime and the bourgeoisie, 275-76
characteristics of, 93-95, 104-106
compromise of, 332-33 control of — over the Fasci, 172-74 death of, 295-
299 De Begnac and, 101, 153, 195, 245 deposition (1943) of, 261 rejection of the
dictatorship by, 156 Duce, 183-84 education of, 99-102 elitism of, 316, 330 consistency
of Mussolini to Elilism on:
Engels. 103, 106, 108, 114 Gentile, 22
Gumplowicz, 117, 125, 148, 154, 212
Kautsky, 103, 114
Labriola, 110, 113-15, 119, 273
The Good, 114, 155
Liebknecht, 103, 117
Michels, 63, 117, 144, 148, 154, 212

Moscow, 50, 52, 117, 125, 148, 154, 212
Nietzsche, 150-51
Olivetti, 110, 140
Panunzio, 117, 140
Pareto, 108-10, 117, 119-21, 122, 125, 140, 144, 148, 212
Sorel, 65, 114-21, 140, 144, 148, 179, 195, 212
intellectual development of, 194-96 on Italy, 142 Lenin compared with, 105 Leninism
seen by, 311-12 man seen by, 211-13 Marx and, 114, 119-20 critique of Marx, 121
Marxist commitment youth, 100 influence of Marx, 102-103 Mussolini's rejection of
Marx, 126-27, 141-42
Marxism and, 103-108, 282, 284, 318-19 Gentile influence on Mussolini and Marxism,
287
importance of the concept of class, 126 rejection of Marxism, 145

Mussolini's interpretation, 121-22 on the masses, 119, 154-55, 214
Mussolini and the psychology of the masses, 113-114
opportunism of, 29-30 typical dictator, 218-19 control over the Party by, 167-68
on philosophy, 191-94 philosophical development of, 191 positivism of, 104-106, 121,
122, 191 pragmatism of, 94, 115-120, 122-23 productivist intentions of, 327-28
proletarian nations and, 320 on race, 245 racism and, 239, 255-56 races of color and,
246-47 populationist definition of, 251-52, 253
justification of racism by, 228-32
opposition of — to racism, 240-42 state anti-Semitism and, 253-57 liberation of

(1943), 261 restoration of Fascism by (1943), 261-68 socialization and, 264-66 on
the revolution, 116 trade unionism
revolutionary and, 104105, 110-11. 125 ruler, 27-28 the social classes and,
126 the concept of class and, 126-29 the class struggle and,
107-108 the overcoming of classes through nationalism and, 140-45
socialism of, 102-104, 117 , 139-40, 144-45
fascist socialism and, 268-75, 279-80, 288-89
Mussolini sul, 118-19
Mussolini's refusal of, 121-22, 318
10 state and,
on the Fascist State, 178 Mussolini against it, 151-53 Mussolini's opinions on
it, 149-50, 165
Mussolini and the conquest of the, 320-22 thinker, 12 thought of
anti-intellectual and anti-rational, 11920, 122-23
11 overcoming classes through nationalism in, 140-145
continuity of thought, 12, 93-95 youthful parts of the, 101-102 Marxist phase,
103-108 on material interest, 106-108 morality in, 107 nationalism
and the, 129-33, 140-45 starting points towards Fascism in, 108-10
on science, 105-106 transition to Fascism, 133-39 totalitarian claims of,

293-95 the conquest of the state and, 320-22 Mussolini Maltoni Rosa, 99
Napoleon Louis, 300 Nature in political and social philosophy, 21
African Socialist Nationalism, 327-31
anachronistic, 320-21 biologism and, 249-50 bourgeois, 93
the class replaced by Corradini's, 140-45, 86-88 as a critical focal point,

234-35 as a qualification of Fascism, 2627, 328
equality and, 34-35 as a fascist myth, 148-50 Gentile and the, 232-33 Gentile
rationale for the, 207-208 Gini on, 174
historical circumstances for Hitler's, 50, 35
growing importance of, 140-46
individual and, 161-64
industrialization and, 323
Jews and, 240
of Labriola, 176
Marxism and, 323
mass e, 87-88
Mussolini's thought and, 129-33 populationist racism and, 251 social classes
and, 133-35 classist identification and, 127 Sorel's influence on — Italian, 78
totalitarian, 26, 331-36 (see also: National Socialism)
Nationalization (see also: Socialization), 274 National Socialism (
Nazism) as an anomaly, 14 consider it Fascist, 36-37 conservative allies
of the, 339 Fascism put on par with the, 26-27
tensions between Fascism and, 228 racism of, 240-45 fascist imitations of, 26-30
fascist racism confronted with, 226-39, 256-7 racial differences and, 34-35 racism
and alliance with, 253- 54 Sorel and the, 64 totalitarian, 336 Nation
as central myth, 179-80 the doctrine of production and, 146-50
supremacy of, 163-66 as a product of history, 142 proletarian, 320
race as equivalent to class struggle, 229-39, 158
Stalo as a personality of the, 203206, 207

the State identified with the underdeveloped, 184-85, 14
(see also: Nationalism)
Nazism (see: National Socialism) Negroes, biological inferiority of gods, 247-48

Neo-idealism by Gentile, 190 by Mussolini, 195 Niceforo Alfredo, 239
Nietzsche Friedrich, 125, 131 anlirationalist, 71 Mussolini and, 150-51 Sorel
versus, 69 Nkrumah Kwame, 328, 329, 331, 337 Nolte Ernest, 27
Nordicism (see also: Aryans, Biologism), 241-44
Olivelli Angelo Oliviero, 40 elitism of, 112 the fascist theory and, 40, 226,
240 on the individual in society, 162 interventionist, 130 Mussolini and, 110,
140 on syndicalism, 176 theoretical, 114, 140, 162, 166, 190 on violence,
67 Olivetti Ezio M., 177 Orano Paolo, 240
Hierarchical organization (see: Elylism)
Orioni Alfredo, 109, 167, 233 on man, 214 on race and, 231, 232, 247
Palmieri Mario, 213 Pan-Africanism (see: African socialism), 330-31

Pannese Gerardo, 291 Panunzio Sergio, 110, 112, 113, 157, 216, 220, 226
on corporatism, 276 the cult of personality and, 218 on Fascism, 163 fascist,
240
on fascist theory and practice, 193 Gentile and, 209 ideologue, 113 Mussolini
and, 119, 140 pragmatist, 123 on property, 277 the state seen by, 163-64,
177 on the fascist state, 165-66 Paoloni Francesco, 216 Papini Giovanni,
89, 123, 130 on philosophy and, 189-90 on pragmatism, 123-24 Pareto Vilfredo,
99
conservative thinker, 62-63 on democracy, 147
/MA
411
elitism and, 53-57, 59 equality seen by, 53-54 ethnocentrism and, 61 the
futurists and, 89
influence of, 50-52, 63, 65, 163, 167, 177, 184, 227 on Corradini, 79, 81 the
fascist doctrine and the, 161 on Michels, 90, 92 on Mussolini, 108-110,
117, 119- 20, 122, 125, 140, 144, 148, 212 interventionist, 130 the March on
Rome and, 160 Marxism and, 284 rejection of Marxism by, 68 myth and,
181 about myth, 179 race and, 230
the definition of race by, 237-39 Sighele and, 86
Sorel vs., 65-68, 76, 78 Sorel judged by, 73-74

Parliamentarism critical of, 82-86 support of Fascism to, 160-61 in
Italy, 47-49 Le Bon sul, 84-85 choice of representatives and, 216-17 (see
also: Anti-parliamentarism) Parliamentary political parties (see also:
Party), 32-33 Party
as a collective will, 309-10 current in, 274 Gentile's opinion on the, 206
mass organization since, 90-92 Mussolini's control over, 168, 172
obligations of, 182
programmatic manifesto of the — Fascista Repubblicano (1943), 382-84

rational foundation of ; — Communist, 24-26
leninist avant-garde, 316-17 function of, 166 sole totalitarian, 332-33

violence of, 168
Fascist Republican Party is the programmatic manifesto of, 382 (see also:
Party)
Parvus-Helfand Alexander, 129 Pavolini Alessandro, 261-2, 264 on fascist

socialism, 279 Pende Nicola, 238, 239 Thought, 200-202 Perón,
28 Cult personality of the, 217-19 of the radicals, 301-302 Petty bourgeoisie in
Fascism, 334 in the Fascist Party, 157
Pighetti Guido, 166 Pini Giorgio, 114 Pisenli Piero, 280 Plato, 212 Plekhanov
G., 103, 129 Foreign policy, 382-83 formulations of, 148 Positivism
anti-intellectualism as resistance to, 69-70
Gentile criticism of, 282 influence of, 51
by Mussolini, 105-106, 121, 122, 190 Pragmatism
as anti-intellectualism, 70 definition of, 123-24 fascist
Italian, 189-90
by Mussolini, 94, 115, 121, 122, 123 Papini sul, 123-24 by Panunzio, 123 by
Sorel, 123
in syndicalism, 115, 124 Practices, philosophy as (see also: Philosophy,

Practice), 286 Practice
and theory of revolutionary syndicalism, 111
Leninist theory and, 30 philosophy as, 286 theory separate from, 192-94 Preziosi
Giovanni, 255 Prezzolini Giuseppe, 15, 89, 123, 130.
189, 195 Production
rift between social classes and, 316-19 as an end, 170-71 focus on, 156-57
importance of, 145-47 the individual as an instrument of, 283-85
Lenin and the, 328 Marxism and the, 67-68 Mussolini and the, 327-28 nation and
doctrine of the, 147 proletarian revolution and, 314 revolution in backward
countries and, 31719
as a social foundation, 313 (see also: Work)
Proletariat
as an abstraction, 142-43, 145 attraction of Fascism on, 334 dictatorship of, 314,
321-22 general strike of (see also :
general strike), 87 intellectuals as masters of, 66 rationalist vision of, 108

revolution of, 313-17 the bourgeoisie in, 107, 110
capitalism and, 315-17 production and, 314 social myths for the, 76, 78 will of
the, 309
(see also: Work, Production, Working class)
Property, 211-19 the individual and the private, 276-78, 277
impositions on, 292-94 in the programmatic manifesto (1943), 383
Private property, 277 impositions on, 292-94 Proudhon Pierre J., 102- 103
Psychology, collective, 62, 81-84, 85, 94, 108, 215
Puchetli AM, 220
Quaison-Sackey Alex , 98
Reason, 122-24 Raguso Stefano, 173 Ranh Rudolf, 267, 269

Representatives, choice of, 173 Rationalism, Marxist (see also:
Antirationalism, Transrationalism), 108 Races
definition of, 236-39 as equivalent of nations, 229-39 history as struggle of.

245 (see also: Racism) racial differences and, 34-36 racism and alliance
with, 253-54 Nordicism in, 241-44 Racism, 225- 263 African socialist, 331 anti-
Semitic, 232-33 Aryans and the definition, 230 , 243 Italian, 378-79
in the Manifesto on Race, 248 previous of, 221-33 biological, 244-252 criticism
of, 244-48 presence of, 231 rejection of, 249-52 definition of, 233-39 apologies
for, 226 Gentile and the, 256
Gentile and aid to Jews, 254 Gentile on racism, 242 Gumplowicz and
Gumplowicz, 256 definition of racism, 236-39 Manifesto of, 378-79 anti-
Semitism, 251-52
intrinsic difficulties in the, 247-51 text of, 378-80 Mussolini and the, 239, 256
races of color and, 247 population definition of, 251. 253
justification of racism, 226 opposition to racism. 226 state anti-

Semitism and, 253-57 as nationalism, 226-32 Nazi, 240-45
fascist imitations of, 27-30 fascist racism compared with, 226, 239, 256-57
Religion, decline of, 19 ^
Revolution
in backward countries and production, 31819
Bolshevik and fascist, 317-18 definition of, 23-24 Engels and the — led by
the elites, 110
Fascism as — conservative, 268-69
seizure of power by Fascism, 20, 160-61
Fascism and the — nationalistic, 26 ideas and, 23
beginning of — socialist, 108-109 marxist ideas on, 313-18 Mussolini on,

117 proletarian, 313-18 the bourgeoisie on, 107, 110 capitalism and, 315- 17
production and, 314 world, 19-20
strike and (see also: Strike), 112 (see also: Mass movements.
Revolutionary Socialism, Revolutionary Syndicalism)
Proletarian revolution, 107, 313-17 the bourgeoisie in, 107, 110 capitalism and,
315-16 production and, 314 Rocca Massimo, 130, 166 Rocco Alfredo, 157, 195,
196 on society 173-75 Rokeach M., 301 Rosenberg Alfred, 241
Rossi Cesare, 279 Rossoni Edmondo, 157, 270, 337 Roux Georges, 41
Russell Bertrand, 24
Saint-Simon Henry, 51 Salandra Antonio, 160 Sarfatti Margherita, 102,

232, 253 Scissors 301
Schopenhauer Arthur, 101, 132
Science , 192-93 axioms of, 281-83 of history, Marxism as, 280-

82 Mussolini on, 104-106 national limits on, 201-202 Political scientists,
definition of, 22 Strike
myth of — general, 87 proletariat and — general, 87 opposition to, 143-44,

145-46 as a revolutionary weapon, 112 right to, 335
the war and the — general, 129-30 General strike myth of. 87 the proletariat
and the, 87 war (1914) c, 130-31 Nineteenth century, order of, 19 Selci
Giovanni, 242 Senghor Leopold, 228, 328, 337 Sergi Giuseppe, 230
Seton-Watson Hugh, 17 Sforza Cesarmi W., 216 Show George Bernard,
95 Sighele Scipio, 62, 81-86 Corradini and, 86 Gurnplowicz and, 85-86 influence
of, 114, 227,
Le Bon e, 62, 82, 85 the masses seen by, 85 Michels e, 90 Mussolini e, 154- 55
the race e, 240 Silvestri Carlo, 263 Sindacalismo Nazionale (see also:
Syndicalism), 144-45 Revolutionary Syndicalism
the conception of Blanqui of, 110 of Corradini, 80-81, 86 definition of, 112-13
of Labriola, 102, 190, 337 the mass party and the, 91 Mussolini and the, 104,
105, 110-11. 125 pragmatism of, 189 the main theorists of, 64-65 theory and
practice of, 112 Unions, 208
Zionism (see also: Jews), 253-257 Diarchic System, 275-76 Skorzeny

Eight, 262 Socialism
Corradini's opinions on, 86, 271
definition of, 99
fascist
Gentile and, 279, 285-89 Mussolini and, 268-75, 279-80, 288-89 Pavolini and, 279
fascist opposition to the — orthodox, 332-34
humanism in, 306
imitation of the tending revolution
al, 108-109 international crisis in the, 128-33 fascist and Leninist, 318-20
Marxist as a model, 269 of Mussolini, 103-4, 118, 140-41. 14445
fascist socialism and, 268-75, 279-80, 288-89
Mussolini on, 118-19 Mussolini's refusal of, 121-22, 317, 318,
national, 254, 338-39 Bolshevism like, 319 Stalin's, 323
see also (National Socialism) as « religion », 57 revolutionary class struggle

and, 64 anarchy in, 99-100 Fascism and, 102 as legacy, 158 historical
circumstances for the, 50 spread of, 47-48 in the working class movement , 99
, Sorel sul, 53
Soviet, 15, 301-2, 319, 322-24, 335 totalitarian, 290-95 Socialism

African, 327-31 aims of, 327-29 elitism in, 330 as a form of fascism, 326
the individual in, 330-31 classical Marxism and, 327-28 work and, 335
function of the Stalo in, 329-30 as a form of totalitarianism, 336

National Socialist, 337, Bolshevik 339, Stalin's 319, 321
(see also: National Socialism) Revolutionary socialism class struggle and, 64

anarchy in, 99-100 Fascism and, 102 as a legacy, 158 historical circumstances
for the, 50 spread of, 48
in the working class movement,

99
Socialization, 261-295 repeal of (1945), 280 Communist resistance

to, 267 as the culmination of corporatism. 293-95
definition of, 279 for expropriation, 264-65 as mandate, 266-69
manifesto on (1943), 264-65
delia organization, 264-66
as a reflection of the defeat, 276 resistance to, 266-68 Society
as a meeting place for discordant groups, 66
class struggle as history of (see also: Struggle of class), 313

definition of, 59 Gini on, 173-76 individual and, 161-63 individual freedom
in individuality, 198-202 and, 303-5 (see also: Individual) liberalism and,
163-65 the man in the
Gentile's vision of man in, 196-208
man as, 192-93 man in the — community, 173-78 (see also:

Man) Mussolini's opinions on, 211-12 Rocco on, 174-76 the ruling class
as a necessity in (see also: Dominant class), 92
in political and social philosophy, 20-21 Sorel's views on, 76-77 (see also:
Social classes. State) Sombart Werner, 103 Sorel Georges, 64-78, 232,
289 Anti-intellectualism of, 69, 74 anti-Semitism of, 232 characteristics of,
64-65 classification of, 71-72, 74 Corradini and, 78, 81, 87 democracy and,
77
rejection of economic determinism by, 68, 283 ethnocentrism and, 77 views

of — on force, 77 the futurists and, 90 Gentile and, 287
Gurnplowicz vs. 65-68, 76-77
influence of, 167, 184, 212, 215, 219, 227

on Mussolini, 65, 114-21, 141, 144, 148, 179, 195, 212 interventionist, 130
on Italian nationalism, 78 Le Bon e, 86 Michels e, 90-91 Marxism e, 284
moralist, 69
Moscow vs., 65-68, 76, 78 Pareto vs., 65-68, 76, 78 Sorel judge him by
Pareto, 73, 75 political myth theory by, 69, 181 pragmatist, 123 the
end of, 73- 77 social conflict e. 66-67
social myths and, 72-75, opinions on society, - 76-77 Spampanato Bruno, 231,
253 Spencer Herbert 83 Spinelli Giuseppe, 268 Spirito Ugo, 190, 226,
,
287, 290, 310 definition of — of corporatism, 269-73, 276 fascist, 240-41 on

the individual, 291 property and, 278-79, 293
10 Soviet development judged by, 323-24
Stagner Ross, 37 Stalin Joseph, 40, 263, 319 Jews and, 134 national
socialism of, 322 production and, 327 purges of, 14 thinker, 13
the conquest of the state and, 321-22 Stalinism, 311
such as Fascism, 14 State, 61-74
African socialist, 329-30 anti-Semitism of, 253-57
11 class conflict and order through it, 57-59
as a concept of life, 192 Corradini's opinions on, 81 Costamagna on. 214

neo-Hegelian doctrine, 149-50, 177-79, 152-56 control of — on the
economy, 26971, 273-75
end of — limited (see also:
Liberalism), 21-23 Engels e ÿ lo, 322
ethical, 152-53. The individual and it. 178-79 interpretations of, 171-73
Gurnplowicz's views on, 62-63 Gurnplowicz on, 53- 54 the ideal of — totalitarian,
270-72, 309 the individual and the
the individual's consent to the State, 209-13
the fascist state and the individual, 17879, 270-72
fidelity to the Stalo, 163-65 as a moral union of individuals. 151-52
as the personality of the individual, 29091
Lenin on, 25. 323 liberalism e. 163-65
Manchesterian, 153-56, 165-66 Marx's opinions on the, 150, 323 Marxist ideal,
24-25 Mussolini on, 165 on the fascist state, 178-79 Mussolini against the state,
151-53 Mussolini's opinions on the state, 14950
Mussolini and the conquest of the state, 321
the nation identifies with the neo-Hegelian, 183-84, 152-56 opinions of

Panunzio dello, 163-65, 177 on the fascist state, 165-67 as a personality of the
nation, 203206, 208
property relations and, 277-78 public interest and, 178 as a repository of force,
165 as an organized force, 116 right of the state to use force, 177-78
(see also: Strength) social classes and (see also: Social classes), 25, 321-22
social balance in, 173-74 socialization and, 263-66 Sorel's views on, 66-67
totalitarian, 177-78 Fascist state , 183-85 unity of capital and labor in, 294 as
will* of the minority (see also: Elitism), 68 disappearance of, 26 Stalin on, 320-22
Manchester state, 153-56, 165- 66 Steiner H. Arthur, 274 Stirner Max, 150, 152
History
as flour of art, 72 Communism and Marx's, 281 conception of — 312-14' Marxism

as a science of, 28082
the masses as an instrument of, 154-55 myth as the driving force of, 74 the
nation as a product of, 142 as the struggle of races, 245 as a social myth,
72 of society as a class struggle. 313
Suffrage (see also: Parliamentarism), 46-48

Summer William G., 61 Sun Yat-Sen, 332 Susmel Edoardo, 104, 114, 167 Trade
unionism
the class opposed to the nation in, 176
Fascism and — soreliano, 158 the individual and the, 161-63
by Michels, 112-13 national, 144-45 Olivetti sul, 176
pragmatist undertones in the, 115, 123 revolutionary
Blanqui's conception of, 110 of Corradini, 81, 86 definition of, 112-113 of Labriola, 102,
190, 337 the mass party and the, 90-92 Mussolini and the, 105-106, 110-111, 125
pragmatism of, 190 main theorists of, 64-65 theory and practice of, 111-112
Syngenism, definition of, 61
Tagliatela Alfredo, 105 Taine Hippolyte, 51, 63 Torchi Angelo, 266 Tarde
Gabriele, 82, 114 Tasca Angelo, 333,
Taylor IA, 301 Teran Josè Gomez De, 242 Totalitarianism, 297-340
charismatic, 208 definition of, 13. 24 Fascism as, 311-12 Gentile and the, 206-208
ideologies of (see also: Ideologies), 336-39
of left and right, 299-302 Leninism as (see also: Leninism), 311-12, 336-37 main
tendencies of, 240 Marxism and the ethics of, 302-10 of Mussolini, 293-95 nationalism
as, 324-26 the mass revolutionary movements and the (see also: Mass
movements), 324-26
in regimes based on mass revolutionary movements, 331-36 socialist, 290-95 state,

177-79
the totalitarian fascist state, 183-85 in the third world (see also: African socialism),
327-31 Tourè Sekou, 328 Transrationalism definition of, 71 in Fascism, 211-12 in
myths, 213 Tripodi Nino, 220 Trotsky Leon, 27 ,
311, 322 Turali Filippo, 48
of work, 36, 285-86, 288-89 of man as a social being (see also :

Male), 305 secular, 312 socialist, 305 Male
bourgeois conception of. 308 ethical fragility of, 214-15 fascist definition
of, 181-83 in the ethical state, 214-218 implementation of, 197
Gumplowicz's views on, 198 on man, 161-62
humanism of — as a social being, 305 Kant on, 162
Liberalism and — selfish, 204-5 Marx on, 106-7, 161, 302-5 Mussolini's
views on, 211-13 Oriani on, 214-15 in social and political philosophy, in
society, 21-22
Gentile's views on man in society, 197-208
man as — in society, 106-7 man in community society (see also: Society),

173-77
(see also: Equality, Liberty, Individual)
Vaccoro Angelo, 55 Vanni Icilio, 55, 113 Twentieth century, troubles of, 19-
20 Vi gorelli Gabriele, 280 Violence
as strength (see also: Strength), 6667, 77
freedom from, 213 as a moral necessity, 88-89 necessity of the party,

125-26, 167-68 Volpicelli Luigi, 193
Weber Eugen , 334, 337 Weber Max, 218 Woltmann Ludwig, 214
Zelkin Clara, 373 Zinoviev G., 40
Ubaldi Pietro, 215 Humanism, 310-311
Preface
Chapter I - Introduction
A definition of ideology
Revolution, totalitarianism, democracy .... Fascism as an ideology •

•••••
The evaluation of ideologies ...••• Description, analysis, empirical political theory .
Fascism and its ideologues
Chapter II - Historical setting and proto-fascism
Anti-parliamentarism and the proto-fascist sociological tradition
Elitism ...••••ÿ•• Miti e masse ....•••••
Georges Sorel.
The proto-fascist sociological tradition and nationalism The proto-fascist

synthesis • ••••••
11 proto-fascist thought and fascist doctrine.
Chap. Ili - The social and political thought of the young Mussolini
The Young Mussolini and Classical Marxism.
The young Mussolini and Georges Sorel . . . .
The young Mussolini, anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism ...*•••••
17
20
23
26
30
36
39
43
50
52
58
63
78
89
93
97
104
114
120
The Young Mussolini and the Concept of Class.
The Young Mussolini and Nationalism.
The transition to Fascism .....

Chapter IV - The development of the fascist doctrine
If the first Fascism.
The Fascism of Piazza San Sepolcro The Fascist conception of the State ....
Fascism in power and the codification of its dot
trina.
The development of fascist doctrine after 1925.
The Doctrine of Fascism in its Maturity.
Fascist synthesis ........
Chap. V - The social and political philosophy of Fascism
Fascism and philosophy ......
Giovanni Gentile and the Philosophy of Fascism.
Fascism and actualism ......
Gentile and the fascist conception of man and freedom Freedom as behavior governed
by laws . Gentile and fascist totalitarianism ....
Gentile and the fascist opposition: the concept of consensus Gentile and the
fascist opposition: the rationality of the dictatorship .........
Actualism and the proto-fascist sociological tradition
Chap. VI - Latest doctrinal developments: racism
The ideological context .... Precedents and genesis of fascist racism.
The Racial Doctrine of Fascism. The Influence of National Socialist

Racism The Manifesto of Italian Racism.
Head. ARE YOU COMING
Latest doctrinal developments: socialization
The Social Conceptions of Republican Fascism The Resistance Against Fascist Socialization Fascist
Socialism .....
Revolutionary Fascism and the « diarchic » system .
126
129
133
140
146
150
159
167
173
184
187
191
194
196
198
203
206
209
214
220
226
228
234
240
244
264
266
268
275
The fascist conception of property
The end of compromise and the advent of socialism ago
shale.
Gentile and the critique of classical Marxism Gentile and fascist socialism ....
Totalitarian Socialism......
Ch. VIII - The era of totalitarianism
Left and right totalitarianism.
Classical Marxism and the Totalitarian Ethic.

Leninism and Fascism as Totalitarianisms The Involution of Leninism

Leninist and Fascist Internationalism The Leninist and Fascist Conception of
the State Leninism as Imperfect Fascism .
Mass totalitarian and revolutionary movements Fascism, totalitarianism and

the "Third World"
Regimes of Totalitarian Revolutionary Mass Movements Totalitarian Ideologies.
contemporary fascisms
Notes to chapter I
» » II
» » III
» » IV
" " IN
» » VI
» » VII
» » Drill
Selected bibliography Index of names and topics
419321)
1 3D1U974
279
280 285 290
299
302
311
312 320 320 322 324 327 331 336 339
341
344
350
354
370
375
382
387
392
399

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FASCIST SOCIALISM 9. TOTALITARIAN

The ideology of fascism

This book was produced in EPUB format by the Internet

The book pages were scanned and converted to EPUB format

The Internet Archive was founded in 1996 to build an Internet

provides specialized services for information access for the

Created with abbyy2epub (v.1.7.6)

The result of such a work presents itself as an essay on the history of

Any political ideology has a particular history and, consequently, is unique

Fascist ideology assumes particular importance when considered in

The purpose of this book is a treatment. expository and descriptive

A major thesis argued here is that Fascism has been thoroughly

substantially correct. Any excessive uniformity is undoubtedly a

Given the intentions of the discussion, particular criticisms of fascist

What I believe emerges clearly, without any possibility of doubt, is

Mussolini was certainly as profound (or superficial) a thinker as Stalin

thirty-five volumes of his Opera omnia as much as can be gleaned from

Chapters II to VII attempt a reconstruction of fascist ideology. Chapter VIII

Fascism is considered there as the first regime of mass revolutionary

libertarian, distributive, and democratic characteristics of classical

Fascism is interpreted here as a developing dictatorship suited to

prerequisites for becoming a first-class world power lead us to assume

mind, further removed from Mussolini's Fascism than was the

These interpretations are of course offered as heuristics.

The writing of the manuscript made me indebted to more people than I

mind many topics. Furthermore, her encouragement and kindness

Our century, the twentieth century, is a time of turmoil and

«her century brought with it a clear increase in internal and international

Two world wars in the space of a generation, linked together by an

tradition, have been conquered by the ideological paraphernalia and

In general, the term ideology is used to mean a certain set of beliefs

plexus, have important implications across a wide range of human

•—— The first component of an ideology, as understood here

Speculative social and political philosophies tend to come across as

speculative social and political philosophers, or political theorists, represent

The second component of ideologies is doctrine: a series of

The third component of ideologies consists of formal and informal imperatives

tics or communists, depending on the doctrinal and philosophical climate that

From a philosophical point of view, even more interesting arguments arise

REVOLUTION, TOTALITARIANISM, DEMOCRACY

When an entire existing ideological system is threatened, we speak of imminent

then dominant. A revolution therefore indicates, as far as we are concerned,

They are fighting the fundamental principles of the late

and liberalism of the last century, oppose the tutelary, collectivist

Totalitarian ideologies rationally justify a type of society characterized

authoritarian of a charismatic (or semi-charismatic) leader and a

The attribution of a qualifying adjective, such as "democratic" to a political

subordination of man to another man, of one part of society to another

anarchist, it is part of the ideal society towards which Lenin and

Leninism, considered as a social and political philosophy, constitutes,

The tensions that have been building up in Leninism as an ideological

it substituted bourgeois falsehoods for Marxist-Leninist teachings on the

Soviet Leninism has shown itself manifestly incapable of rationally

manifestly nationalists, and nationalism emerges as one of the most dynamic

It is strange that Fascism, as an ideological system, has been the subject of

contemporary ideologies. The second claim, that Mussolini fully accepted

Only recently, has a more sober assessment of National Socialism and