Italian Fascism: An
Interpretation
James B. Whisker
When the Grand Council of Fascism on
The roots of fascism are many and complex.[1] The fascist leadership,
notably Mussolini, admitted the multi-faceted influences of liberalism, marxism,
syndicalism, risorgimento, socialism, catholicism and nationalism on
their ideology.[2] Their speeches and writings were replete with quotations
from Schopenhauer, Hegel,[3] Sorel, Saint-Simon, Pareto, Mosca, Mazzini and a
hundred other writers. They admitted fascism was a unique blending of all of
these and much more, yet they were never able to wholly explain it to their own
satisfactions.
Italian fascism was the first application of what would become a generic
ideology encompassing, or allegedly encompassing, movements of the political
right in every nation of Western Europe, the United States, the British
Commonwealth nations and even Japan.[4] It was believed by Italian leaders to
be highly exportable, yet it carried strong Italian nationalistic overtones. It
was essentially non-racist, yet in
Italian fascism had at least four principal phases. Until 1925, it was
political action seeking an ideology. Mussolini had himself been variously a
socialist, a pacifist, an internationalist, a war hawk, an anarchist, a
statist, and, most of all, a pragmatist.[5] When he sought an ideology he found
none to satisfy him. When he came to power after the 1922 March on
From 1925 until 1938 the first fascist state operated. Its primary
theoretician was Alfredo Rocco.[6] As he conceived it, the state was to be a
strong, modern nation-state, accepting both the ideas of capitalism in the
socio-economic sphere and a syndicalist state which brought about a forced
union of labor and capital. Rocco encouraged the tendency of the fascist-sponsored
capitalism to form monopolies and cartels because he believed that this
increased productivity and thus encouraged the growth of state powers. The new
elites of modern society-labor unions, industrialists, party bureaucracy and
civil servants-were to be placed under the authoritarian control of the state.
Indeed, the state became the single value to which all other values, including
the fascist party itself, were to be subordinated.
Rocco conceived of creating direct channels of communication between the
masses and the party hierarchy. He demanded that a hierarchical arrangement of
capitalism be created, one in which the masses would be supportive of the
regime because the regime would guarantee them full employment and higher
wages. The party would provide the mechanism for mass communication with the
leaders of the state. The combination of workers, industrialists and the
omnipresent party representatives would ensure full and peaceful cooperation
which would benefit all while strengthening the power of the Italian state.
In this second period of fascism, the Italian electorate still played a
major role. The 400 candidates for the legislature had to be approved by the
voters. The workers played a larger role in the selection of their
representatives and the people at large had some role in the nomination of the
400 candidates for the legislature.[7]
In the third phase of fascism, Mussolini had come under the spell of
Adolf Hitler and his national socialist state. He was increasingly influenced
by the anti-Semitic wing of the fascist party led by Farinacci and Preziosi.
From 1938 until he was relieved of command by the Grand Fascist Council in 1943
Mussolini became the victim of his own propaganda efforts. He dreamed of wars
of conquest, wars that were far and away beyond the industrial capacity of the
state to sustain. He involved the state in wars of colonial conquest, perhaps
the last of the great imperialistic wars of Europe.[8]
In 1938 a change was made in the Italian government which separated the
people from the decision-making process entirely. The list of parliamentary
candidates was no longer offered to the masses for their approval. Mussolini
merely emulated Hitler by creating the totalitarian state while removing basic
democracy.[9]
During the final years of the second phase of fascism[10] Alfredo Rocco
had fallen into disfavor as had the quadrumvir Balbo,[11] the party leader
Starace, the syndicalist thinker Rossoni and former party secretary Giuriati.
Mario Palmieri[12] had a brief career as party theoretician and Mussolini[13]
had attempted himself to create a theory of fascism. Generally, the third
period of fascism had produced neither the presciptions for an ideology Rocco
had offered earlier nor the descriptions of fascist procedures that marked the
attempts to explain fascist doctrine in the later stages of the second fascist
period.
After Mussolini's fall from power and his heroic rescue by German
paratroopers, a proto-fascist state with Mussolini nominally at its head was
created under the watchful protection of nazi troops. Precious little time
remained to develop a theory. Mussolini was wholly preoccupied with staying
alive and with dealing with his protectors. Valuable time was spent in dealing
with the traitors within the party who had fired the Duce in 1943. A show trial
and subsequent executions of these traitors took place. Mussolini's son-in-law
Count Ciano was among those executed.
Giovanni Gentile had been among those competing with Rocco for
Mussolini's favor in earlier periods of fascism. He had held positions of minor
consequence in the fascist state, culminating in his ministership of education.
Now, with the Italian fascist state crumbling around him, and without a direct
charge from Mussolini, Gentile created the last Italian fascist theory.[14]
Properly enough, it was more philosophical than the earlier attempts at
creating an ideology were.
Gentile's theory had its descriptive moments, but, in the large, he
offered a wholly philosophical oversight into pure fascism. It had little in
the way of a call to arms. It was not the usual post facto justification for
what had transpired. It was a highly exportable theory of the state set against
a fascist state background.
Each man is unique because of his own individual experiences. He forms
other associations which become unique because of the collective group
experiences; these group experiences, in turn, bear on the individual. The
highest association an individual can form is with all his fellows in the state
mechanism. The state is the ultimate association and it has its own collective
experiences which mark it different from all other states which have existed,
do exist or can exist. The state, like all other human associations, profits
from both its own collective experiences as a state and the individual
experiences of its component parts, that is, both the individuals and the
subservient associations which are merged into the organic state. The state,
the individual and all human associations thus have life, conscience, and will
to achieve. The uniqueness of the state experiences then bend back upon each
and every citizen who fully cooperates within the state to enrich these lives
and add to their individual memories and experiences.
The state is thus given a real, organic fife. It is necessarily supreme.
All that is, within the state, is brought to fulfillment in the state. Nothing
that is, within the state, can be permitted to exist beyond the reaches of the
state. Nothing that is, within the state, can be permitted to go against the
state. The state is the culmination of all human endeavors. It is the final
resting place of all that man has created. The state knows, sees, participates
in, profits by all that man does. Man is because the state is. Man lives
because he has the state wherein to live. Without the state man is nothing, can
become nothing.
It is thus the natural destiny of man to be linked with the state. The
corporate state gives man the schema wherewith to associate himself with other
men. The corporate state provides the forum for discussion of problems. It is
the conduit with which man communicates with the natural leaders of the state.
It is also the pipeline which the state uses in communicating with individual
men or corporations or groups of men who are employed in industries. Without
the corporate framework man could not associate with the state. He would be
separated from the state and from his fellow men. He would be isolated and
devoured by the nameless and uncontrolled masses who would be without form, substance
or discipline.
By the time Gentile had completed his Genesis and Structure of
Society fascism was dead as an ideology. The proto-fascist states such as
Fascism operated as a reasonably efficient statist system with admitted
strong totalitarian overtones until it became interested in wars of colonial
conquest. It had come to power because of the decaying social, economic and
political conditions of post-World War I Italy. It had brought order out of
chaos. Indeed, order was its strong selling point when, after a series of
crippling strikes sponsored by the socialists, it had managed when the liberal
democratic state could not manage. Fascism bragged of its accomplishments in
areas such as making trains run on time and draining swamps. With agencies not
unlike those found in the American New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, it tried to
use state power to combat the economic catastrophies of the great
depression.[15]
The great irony of fascism is that it taught that the highest form of
the state is found in the nation at war. No matter how great the state may be
in normal times it takes on even greater dimensions, greater self-fulfillment,
greater attributes as a result of a national war. Of these national wars, the
most significant in the life of the nation was the war of imperialistic
conquest. A state for fascism grows or it dies. A vibrant and dynamic state is
constantly seeking new areas of conquest. It seeks to grow at the expense of
those states which are dying, hence contracting, and it grows at the expense of
those states which have never matured and become great nations. Wars are the
duty of the truly modern, organic state.[16]
Where fascism had grown, even flourished, in peacetime, it faltered in
war. While it is true that the Italian state had grave problems in trying to
support the war machinery when engaged against the Western Allies, it is
equally true that
The interest of Mussolini in re-establishing the
Fascism shared with bolshevism a common Marxian heritage.[18] Both were
formally rooted in socialist tradition, both scientific and utopian.[19]
Several modern analysts have suggested that Mussolini was at heart a Marxist. It
was largely an academic dispute on how Marx was to be read and interpreted that
kept Marxists and fascists apart ideologically. It was a question of whose
Marxism one accepted as true belief that separated fascism from bolshevism.
Fascism accepted, in the large, the unorthodox renderings of Marxism as
transmuted by Georges Sorel whereas Lenin accepted his own and other Russian
interpretations of Marxism.
For
Marx had offered rational explanations for reality as
Political solutions, in the normal sense of politics, were worse than
useless; they were misleading. Offer instead,
The proletarian problem was, first, a professional, not a political,
problem. The frustrations of the proletariat were professional in nature.
Professional problems implied professional remedies, including strikes and
trade unionism. Action must be violent professional activity to be most
effective. One must have or develop faith in the natural, irrational but
professional capabilities of the proletarian class. One must follow the basic
worker impulses to action. These impulses will be mythical visions of the
better world, but not blueprints designed to lay out in specific terms the
design of the
As with every problem there is a solution. Cooperation within a state
sponsored framework will provide an answer. This came about through an unusual,
Italian conception of Hegel's dialectic.[22] In the writings of Italian
Hegellans, the conflicting and mutually exclusive thesis and anti-thesis do not
disappear completely as they do in Hegel's pure dialectic. Rather, in the
synthesis, formed by the clash of thesis with antithesis, the individual
elements of both thesis and antithesis are still evident. While the synthesis
may indeed be a higher and better idea than its progenitors, the thesis and the
antithesis, it still shows separately each of its sires. Thus, in Italian
Hegelian philosophy it is possible to see labor and management, that is,
proletariat and bourgeoisie, existing together, although diametrically opposed
to one another, in the synthesis.[23]
The practical application of this doctrine is seen in syndicalism.[24]
Within the syndicate one finds both labor and management. They are joined there
by the fascist representative, that is, the representative of the omnipresent
state mechanism. In the co-joining of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie one
has a new synthesis, the others being respectively the thesis and the
antithesis. The new synthesis is the syndicate and it has recognizably within
it the heretofore diametrically opposed classes of the workers and management.
Hegel's law of "negation of the negation"[25] wherein the worst or
most negative elements of each of the dialectically opposed thesis and
antithesis cross one another out is at work. The most negative, the most
mutually exclusive, the most hostile elements of management and labor are
negated. Under the beneficent eye of the fascist representatives this frozen
dialectic, this syndicate, operates to the good of state, labor and management.
With the introduction of the syndicate would also be created what French
utopian writer Saint-Simon[26] called a national-industrious class, what
One can see in the willingness to use state coercive power to achieve an
end the, general will philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his Social
Contract[27] he had spoken of a general will, that is, of a set of values
which had to be created and then authoritatively allocated for the masses, even
if they did not consent to such allocation. There was a general will, that
which represented the greatest good for the masses, a distillate remaining from
the individual wills of all men after their own petty desires had crossed one
another out. This was really a political program that carried with it quality
of moral necessity. It had to be enacted, once recognized, for the good of all
men in the state. Where men could not or did not recognize what was in their own
best interests the state was obliged, in order to justify its existence, to
step in and guarantee that the provisions of the general will be carried into
execution.
The fascist state then could justify its actions both in creating
syndicalism and in enforcing compliance with its requirements under good,
liberal Rousseauist philosophy. Creating a general will and carrying it into
execution is correct liberal philosophy.
The general will of course could be expressed in natural, irrational
terms in order to make that compatible with
In fascism there was a reciprocity established with the producer class.
Production, full employment, wages, prices, distribution and the like were
guaranteed by the state. In turn, both management and labor gave up the right
to have strikes, lockouts, and disorders which would interrupt the production
processes. Since they could not legally act independently, they would only act
together, not as capital and labor, but as the producer class. Outside fascism
such a class was not held to be possible.[28]
Since only fascism could provide the essential union of workers and management
into the producer class, it was logical that the state should have a monopoly
of power. Power and coercion go hand in glove for
The fascist party had a special mission to the world as well as to the
Italian people in keeping the ideology orthodox. Initially, fascism was
conceived as an Italian movement, the natural byproduct and the logical
culmination of the emerging Italian nationalism and its cultural risorgimento.[29]
Little thought was given to its potential exportability. By the middle of the
1930s Mussolini had come to the conclusion that fascism represented the new
dynamic driving force that would conquer the world and take the place of the
faded liberalism of the nineteenth century.
Giuseppe Mazzini,[30] philosopher, revolutionary, soldier-of-fortune,
patriot and nationalist leader of the nineteenth century had sought in vain a
set of Italian principles wherewith Italy could re-establish her intellectual leadership
and philosophical pre-eminence in Europe. One or two great ideas, ideas that
would motivate mankind to abandon the false premises of French liberalism, that
was all Mazzini wanted. His own search for ideas or revolutionary zeal failed.
Nonetheless, he was quite convinced that the rebirth of Italian philosophy and
culture, the risorgimento, would indeed be ultimately productive to the
extent the
When the nineteenth century ended without producing such an
awe-inspiring idea many Italian patriots were heartbroken, but the dream was
not vacated. After
By the time of the great depression, other fascist movements had arisen
in
It soon appeared that the fascisms that grew up in the remainder of
Fascist movements in general had certain distinguishing features.[35]
They opposed parliamentary governments as being impotent to handle such
worldwide crises as the great depression of 1929. They distrusted the laissez-faire
economic system of capitalism as associated with the French liberal
philosophy of the nineteenth century, for the system had collapsed in 1929.
They preferred authoritarian governments which they felt alone were powerful
enough to deal with crises without failing. They looked for collective social
security against the social atomism of the liberal society. Liberal value
systems grounded in utilitarian and value-relativism had failed to provide
basic morality for society.
In seeking collectivist alternatives to the socially disintegrating
systems of liberal philosophy, fascist movements rushed toward the deification
of the state. They reacted collectively to problems of society and the state.
Fascism was thus able to attract followers by offering class solidarity against
individual isolationism. The groups found, discovered or fabricated common ethnic
heritages and found the enemy within to be those who did not share these
characteristics. The community was sewn together with the fabric of tradition,
custom, language, religion and culture. Those not possessing these group
characteristics were different, hence evil, the cause of the problems of state.
The fascist movements exhibited essentially lower-middle class values.
They viewed the upper strata of society as being run by those who shared other,
often foreign, values. They found that the values that the upper classes
created were foreign, non-traditional, liberal-value relative, and removed from
their kind. Where foreigners made up a goodly portion of the upper strata, or
where natives were socialized to foreign, internationalistic or non-traditional
value systems, the lower and lower-middle class groups were treated as merely
tributary classes in their own nation.
Fascist movements as nationalistically oriented parties were most
distrustful of international communism. The short-lived Bela Kun regime in
Fascism often offered elitist movements which spun off the ordinary
fascist parties and which were dedicated strongly or exclusively to fundamentalist
religion. Such movements lost virtually all ties with the real world of
politics and spent their time and effort on frequently quite bizarre religious
practices. The tie here is most clear in Roumania and in
Many fascist movements looked fondly backwards to a former period of
alleged accomplishment. The members had liked simpler times with less demanding
schedules and ideals. Fascism often became a kind of telescope through which
one could look behind him and enjoy the blessings of medieval society. The
prospects of a highly industrialized society frightened many fascists,
especially in
Against this varied background Italian fascism stood out as a nearly
unique movement. It had no special longing for the past, for its leaders
pointed the way to modernity as the desired road to be traveled.
While it would have been more than possible for
Anti-Semitism was virtually unknown in fascist
Religion did become an important consideration in Italian fascism, but,
again, in a way unlike other fascisms. The Roman Catholic church was dominant
in
Fascist found in several papal encyclicals apparent justification and
support for fascist doctrines. The denunciation of liberalism in Rerum
Novarum (1891) seemed to justify subsequent fascist doctrine. Pope Leo
XIII[36] and Pope Pius XI[37] had both denounced communism,[38] and, generally,
socialism, while praising the interventionist state and capitalism. They had
called, especially Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno (1931), for control over
the unions and moral responsibility in the application of economic laws and
principles. The call by Pius XI for worker-employer confederations seemed to
justify the corporate state. The call for rebuilding society along the lines of
harmonizing social-producers classes again seemed directed at the syndicalist
organization of fascism. Superfluous income could be redirected by the state.
The intervention on behalf of the very poor according to principles of charity
but by the state and not just by individuals again seemed tailor made for
fascism's practices. With socialism proscribed by papal decree fascism offered
one viable alternative for the proletariat to the liberal state which had
failed it.
The great enemy of Italian fascism was liberalism. There would, of
course, have been no fascism without liberalism, but nonetheless fascism found
in liberalism the antithesis of the needs of the working class. It was
nineteenth century laissez-faire liberalism that was objected to, not
the contemporary interventionist liberalism. Since liberalism had originated in
Liberalism offered no place for the individual who wished to join with
his fellow men in fraternal association. Liberalism was atomistic, meaning that
it isolated men from one another, forbidding cooperation and association.
Liberalism placed man higher than the state so that the state ultimately was
subordinate to the individual. It denied the organic nature and structure of
the state.
Liberalism supported democracy. It was thought that a liberal democracy
was inherently the most unstable form of government that man could create. The
Italian flirtation with democracy had been short and it had been a very
unfortunate experience. The majority of Italians were not enfranchised; among
those who were there existed, for the formative years, a papal prohibition on
political participation owning to the fact that the papacy was most displeased
at the seizure of papal lands and other properties during the unification.
Democracy had been blamed for all the failures of the infant republic. It had
never served the agrarian interests of the Southern rural poor. It had become
the seat of state capitalism, serving large industry and corporate monopoly. It
had failed to accomplish tangible results in the first world war, even after
the machinations of secret diplomacy. And it had collapsed during the workers
strikes in the immediate post-war period, opening the door for the march on
Liberal democracy was seen as an anachronism, an unfortunate vestige of
a past epoch. It was impotent to deal with crises of the modern world. It was
made up of many political parties, none of which could serve the worker, each
of which could argue endlessly over trivial matters without ever reconciling
even the pettiest matters. It functioned satisfactorily so long as there was
nothing to be done and so long as the state was not involved in crisis. once
crisis came the leaders crawled away and the parliament failed. Such was the
political legacy of liberalism.
Liberalism not only fragmented society into isolated individuals, it
encouraged the fragmentation of industry into bourgeoisis and proletariat.
Rather than seeking closer cooperation between classes in society it acted as a
separating agent. The Marxian analysis of the two classes is nothing more than
natural observation of the consequences of liberalism. Marx had thought it
necessary to wholly reconstruct society after the liberal state. That was
because he was a victim of liberal ideology. Outside a liberal state a
reconstruction of society was possible without undergoing a Marxian revolution.
Thus, Marx was himself entrapped by the same liberal society he chose to try to
overthrow. Marxism was a product of liberalism, as was any doctrine which
taught the class struggle as culminating in revolution.
Liberalism was universalist whereas fascism was nationalistic. The
various worldwide movements such as the
Liberalism encouraged monopoly and international cartels. While fascism
was monopolistic itself, it found the same practice in liberalism to be quite
objectionable. The laissez-faire economy of liberalism produced only monopoly
while bringing about none of the benefits consequent to fascist monopolies.
The romantic spirit that was part and parcel of liberalism had its
counterpart in fascism. Indeed, the romanticism of such writers as Rousseau
find much in the way of fulfillment in fascism. Still, fascism criticized the
romantic spirit as being too rational, not mythical enough.
Perhaps the most objectionable feature of liberalism, in fascist terms,
was its value relativism. While fascism entertained some elements of value
relativism, it preached, by and large, value absolutism. In many areas of
ethics this meant a return to Roman Catholic teachings. In other areas the
state merely granted values authoritatively by virtue of its supremacy. In any
case the pragmatic or utilitarian values of especially English liberalism were
rejected. An idea in the fascist state was absolute today, yesterday and
tomorrow. Truth was not an event that happened to an idea; it was a necessary
part of that idea. There is a paradox here, for fascism was the value of the
twentieth century -having superseded liberalism, the value of the nineteenth
century. Hence, the value of ideologies came to them in their own epoch and not
in another epoch, certainly a relativist concept.
Fascism sought to create an idea that would be as lasting and as
influential in its own time as liberalism was in its time. First and foremost
it wished to achieve the quality Mazzini had posited of any system: it must
necessarily represent the unity of thought and action. Action without some sort
of doctrine was useless; and, conversely, doctrine alone without consequent
action was useless. The thought need not be too specific. A general idea, some
sort of dream of the future, some picture of the new and better world had to
precede action. After the action commenced, a goodly portion of the thought
could be made up along the way. Better to begin action before the ideology is
completed than miss the opportunity for action.
Mussolini expanded that idea of creating while practicing to include the
individual and the nation. The nation need not exist before nationalist fascism
begins to forge the state. Indeed, he thought of the state as most generally
preceding the creating of a nation. The state could, on its anvil, forge the
people of that state into precisely what it wished them to become.
The contrast with Nazism is obvious. Only with satisfactory materials
could a nation be built, according to Nazi ideology. Inferior races could never
be forged into anything worthwhile, no matter how great the effort. The
national spirit in Nazism exists within the people, albeit latently. Nazism can
only reawaken that spirit; in could not create it. Only Nordics could ever
realize the Nazi racist dream.[39]
In fascism there is no suggestion of either recruitment of suitable
subjects or of the exclusion of unsuitable ones. The fascist state could take
people as they were given to it and then make them over according to the
desires of the power elite. While there might still be within the population
those who dreamed the Roman dream and could identify with the Roman spirit of
the past, it was far more important what they should become rather than what
they were at the time of fascist ascension to power.
Since nothing eluded the fascist state its power must necessarily extend
to the creation of a superior race. It was the ideology, the doctrine of
fascism, that would make of the race a people fit to control a substantial
share of the earth. The vitality of the race would be shown by its works and
deeds rather than by its genetic purity and its physical characteristics. A
manufactured nation would enjoy power and prestige; one that had not been
properly articulated could not enjoy the fruits of expansionism. If the state
has done its job properly its race will show an aggressive foreign policy. Its
art, drama, music and literature will show an ideologically motivated vitality
that can be appreciated only if observed.
The people inhabiting a given geographical area are a nation after they
have been motivated and inspired by the ideological fascist state. Their
nationhood is then not a natural but an artificial construct, one superimposed
on them from above by a charismatic leader and his fascist party. Thus the
state is fully empowered to educate its people, to offer them propaganda, to
indoctrinate them fully, and to persuade them by force if necessary. It is
charged with maintaining ideological purity and with spreading that orthodoxy.
This is the civilizing mission of the state.
The state must provide enriching experiences for its members. Inasmuch
as each individual is unique he must be fulfilled by offering him opportunities
to develop his unique nature. The state must make him subservient to the state,
its party and its leaders, but it must also enrich his life. While in the final
analysis the individual lives to serve the state, it is equally important that
the fully socialized citizen be given as many opportunities as he can utilize.
Without individualizing experiences as offered by the state there would be no
meaningful way for the individual to be differentiated from all other persons
in the state. The uniqueness of the fascist state is to no small extent
dependent upon the gathering in of the unique and individualizing experiences of
its various members.
By offering him help in self-fulfillment, the state has helped to create
the individual. By indoctrinating him with the ideology with which to approach
outside phenomena, it has made him in its own image. For the fascist, the state
has the obligation, while performing its social, political, and economic
functions, to create the individual person. It must teach him the values
established authoritatively by the state. It must strengthen the virtues of
man. It must provide him with a world view. It must teach him to reject such
alien values as move him from the state. He and every other individual must be
inside the state, not against it nor outside it. He and all other persons make
up the living body of the organic state.
The state is properly viewed as a real organic being.[40] It is not only
like any other organic being; it is a living organism. It has a life all its
own. It undergoes various experiences, including happiness, sorrow, joy,
melancholy, ectasy and the like. It is born out of the ideas of men and their
courage in culminating the act of creation. It matures to adulthood. It can
become ill and it can die. All other beings living within the state help to
comprise it. Some parts die and others are born to replenish the needs of the
state. The state can show courage, especially in an aggressive foreign policy;
it can also show cowardice in the face of its enemies. Since the state is
primary its life is far and away more important than the lives of the
individuals who are its component parts. Like individuals it can create art,
drama, poetry, music and literature as a national characteristic.
There is a spirit, a motivating factor, placed in the state much like
the soul is for man. One can really speak of the "Italian national spirit"
as being something actual, real and existing. Take away the spirit and the body
public dies. Give the state a healthy spirit and its accomplishments can be
almost without limits.
The organic analogy offered by fascism is very important because it
tells something of the individual's role in the state. Ideally, the individual
cannot consider himself independent of his fascist state. He is completely
immersed in his state. It would be unthinkable, inconceivable to be outside the
state. When an individual posits his existence, he is positing the existence of
his state simultaneously. The fascist state offers the only possible existence
for him. The individual without the state would not exist. The individual and
his fascist state are inseparable.
Fascist ideology articulates the reason for the individual's being. It
is his source of legitimacy. It is his home, his patria, his source of thoughts
and ideas. An anti-state thought is impossible.
When his state accomplishes something he is proud. When his state suffers
so does each individual. Creations of the state give the individual national
pride which is itself inseparable from pride in self. The state's ideology is
his own. He accepts no other state or ideology. The fascist party is legitimate
because it is interconnected with the state. It guards the ideology and offers
an orthodoxy which makes the individual orthodox.
The party is supreme and allows no competition. As the bearer of the
ideological orthodoxy[41] it has an historical mission. It cannot tolerate
public factionalism or party disputes. It cannot legitimately allow power to
pass out of its hands, say, to the army or the bureaucracy. The fascist party
is the sole agent of secular redemption; it is the guardian of the future and
the protector of the past. It thus has an unquestioned right to an absolute
monopoly of power. The party monopoly of power is not a part of fascist
ideology, but it is the most important inference from it.
Since the fascist state remained Roman Catholic and did not attempt to eradicate
organized religion it did not create a rival religion. To be certain, as a
carryover from the days of the reunification there was some anti-clericalism,
but its effect was negligible on the ideology. Therefore, the fascist party's
role as the agent of secular redemption and secular salvation was not nearly so
important as it was in Nazism. The emphasis on a perfect society was less than
that of Nazism. It wished to produce the good society, but disdained the
possibilities of the perfect society. The inordinate emphasis on the perfect
society was one of the fallacies of communism. There was no teleolgy in fascism
as there was in Nazism and communism.
Fascism did propound a theory of a nearly infallible leader. The cult of
the personality was as well developed in
As long as the leader remained in power he spoke with a single voice of
authority for his nation. Fascism never conceived of an oligarchy or a
democracy governing. It is rather pointless to speculate about what the death
of Mussolini might have brought, provided fascism lived after him, for every
fascist movement has risen and fallen with its single leader. Surely another
leader would have risen to the position of Il Duce. Fascism required
that the party be led by a single individual who could, by sheer force of will,
decide all disputes and right all wrongs. Only a single individual was
considered to be the rightful spokesperson for an entire nation; no combination
of individuals could accomplish this. Where fascist movements have not come to
power they usually die with their charismatic leader. Where a fascist movement
might outlive its leader because he has brought the movement to power is just a
matter of guesswork.
Fascism, as noted above, accepted the idea of violence as a political
tool; indeed, it was one of the most useful tools available to those seeking
political power and those already possessed of political power. We also noted
that fascism rejected the idea of the class struggle that would culminate in
revolution. The doctrine of violence and the idea of revolution require
additional qualification and explanation.
Mussolini rejected the notion of the warfare between opposing classes.
Following Gaetano Mosca,[42] he did not reject the possibility of warfare
between segments of classes, as between, say, socialist workers and fascist
workers, or between socialist workers and reactionary strikebreakers hired by
industrial management. These portions of classes were less guided by
ideological considerations than by a natural, irrational, and generally
incomprehensible determinism. Most frequently portions of classes would clash
because they were seeking identical goals through identical means than because
they were conscious of differences between them.
The determinism of Marxism was found in the class struggle whereas
Mosca[43] and Mussolini found it to be unrelated to any social struggle.
Whatever struggles there may be in society were determined beyond the powers of
man to change or alter. Men became the pawns of deterministic fate. In the long
run, the politicized portions of all classes struggled with one another in a
predetermined manner for control over the rest of the men in that state. Hence,
fascists could expect, as one political element or fragment of the classes in
Italy, to have to meet socialists, anarchists and communists, these being other
politicized fragments of the various classes, in open combat. Violence was thus
fully justified, indeed, determined, long ago and by powers beyond the pale of
men to control.
This leads us to the ideas of Roberto Michels.[44] Michels formulated a
hypothesis known as the Iron Law of Oligarchy.[45] He believed that there would
necessarily and inevitably be competition among elites for political control of
all states. Political leadership is then recognizable only in small groups,
fragments of society, never in larger organizations. Leadership is always in
the hands of the few who compete with other small groups for control. Stated
simply, society requires organization; organization requires leadership; and
leadership in inevitably oligarchic. To Mussolini, this meant that Mosca's
politicized fragments of society were nothing more than oligarchic groups who
were competing for power. The socialists, the anarchists, the communists and
the fascists were all oligarchies. The competition was necessarily accompanied
by violence. The most prepared and the most violent would win. The fascists had
to be ever vigilant because no victory was final. The competing fragments of
society were always waiting in the wings, ready to rotate power to themselves.
Hence, another of Michels laws comes into play. Because of the threat to the
oligarchy in power from other potential rivals the ruling elite becomes
obsessed with the maintenance of power rather than the application of programs.
If the proposition that action and thought should always go together was
to have meaning the fascist party had to both maintain power and develop
programs. Without power, programs were useless. Without doctrine, the
maintenance of power was nothing but an exercise in futility. Mussolini
theorized that the threat of an opposition party ready to seize power would
stimulate fascism to increasingly superior acts on behalf of the state and its
people. Without the agitation of a bit of sand inside its shell the oyster does
not produce a pearl and its value is naught.
Violence is necessarily produced by an irrational act, but, then,
fascism was an irrational ideology. It was not an ideology of violence, but it
was a doctrine that found violence useful. The violence was to be directed at
its enemies. Both fascists and their enemies were predetermined to use violence
or fail.
The revolution, since it involved only competing elites, was
superimposed on society from above. Fascism rejected completely the Marxist
doctrine of whole class struggles as we saw above following Mosca. Thus the
idea of a mass revolution, a popular revolution involving the masses of men
rising up spontaneously from below, this was unthinkable in fascism. All
revolutions were elitist and involved only small fragments of all classes. By
many standards, these titanic struggles Could not be called revolutions since
they presume the seizure of the state by the few, classically called coups
d'etat. The bulk of the fighting would be done in the underworld of
society, much like two giant sea monsters fighting in the depths who only
occasionally surface enough to show us that a struggle is going on.
Fascism never claimed that it would necessarily win all such struggles
the way communism claimed inevitable and final victory. The determining
features of nature offer only determined struggle, not determined outcome. No fascist
victory was necessarily final. While fascist states could cause by their own
efforts final victory, they could as well by errors of omission and commission
cause the battle to be lost.
Since no victory was final, violence would never disappear in the state.
Violence was the means to come to power and it was the means of most
successfully maintaining power. Violence was seen to harden the individual.
Life after fascism was not to be the proverbial bed of roses. Fascism promised
neither a millenium nor utopia.
The heart and soul of fascism was the corporative state. Its great
concern was the syndicalist organization of industry through the
worker-management cooperatives. This was and remains its most exportable
element. Mosley recognized this in Great Britain. Few other fascists have seen
this fact. The racist fascism of contemporary fascism is more kindred to Nazism
than to fascism, and even it has generally lacked the basic understanding of
Nordic volk and Aryan racism.
Notes