The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain, and Romania, 1870–1945

2. Party Fascism: Italy,1870–1938

Why did Italy, instead of making a smooth transition from constitutional liberalism to mass democracy, produce the world’s first fascist regime, and why did this regime take the form of “party fascism”? The main argument of this chapter is that fascism was the consequence of rapid civil society development in a political context defined by three historically linked failures of hegemony: first a failure of intraclass hegemony, then a failure of interclass hegemony, and finally a failure of counterhegemony. The development of civil society in this political context, far from strengthening liberal institutions, undermined them. Fascism arose from this crisis as a movement proposing to establish a representative state without politics: an authoritarian democracy. This chapter is an analytic narrative comprised of five roughly chronological stages: it begins by investigating intraclass hegemony in the period of national unification. I argue that intraclass hegemony in Italy was weakly developed. Instead of a solid alliance forming between landed and moneyed interests, the Italian social elite remained fragmented into territorially defined interest groups. Organizationally and ideologically it was never a national ruling class. The chapter then moves to an analysis of the development of civil society in the late Party Fascism Italy, 1870–1938 2 24 The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe nineteenth century. Here I show that liberal rights were established enough to allow for the development of voluntary associations. Associationism was particularly pronounced in the countryside, occurring first under the protection and sponsorship of the social elite and then developing autonomously from the 1890s forward. Under the pressure generated by these developments, Italian social elites attempted to establish interclass hegemony from the turn of the century. But since this attempt occurred on the basis of a weak form of intraclass hegemony, it succeeded only partially, and by 1911 it had failed. Finally, in the post–World War I period, the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and its allies attempted to institute counterhegemony to establish a mass democratic state. But this project also failed, paradoxically because of the previous failure of intra- and interclass hegemony. Since these earlier forms of hegemony had not succeeded in adequately nationalizing Italian politics, counterhegemony also could not be articulated in national terms. These three historically interlinked failures of hegemony, in the context of rapid civil society development, produced a crisis of politics, out of which the fascist movement, and eventually the fascist regime, emerged. Intraclass Hegemony in Post-Risorgimento Italy Italy’s dominant classes in the period after national unification failed to establish intraclass hegemony. This was partially a consequence of the history of Italian state formation and partially a consequence of restricted suffrage. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Italy was divided into seven main states. Piedmont, in the northwest corner of the peninsula, was an autonomous principality ruled by the Savoyard monarchy. To the east, Lombardy-Venetia was an Austrian province. Tuscany and Modena were Austrian archduchies, and Parma was given to Napoleon’s second wife, Marie-Louise. The church directly ruled the Papal States in the center of the country. South of Rome the largest political unit on the peninsula was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which united Sicily with most of the southern peninsula. The native population controlled none of these political units, except for Piedmont. Broadly speaking, Austrians controlled the north and the Spanish Bourbons the south. Nineteenth-century Italy was a geographical zone in which political divisions followed dynastic lines (Holt 1970: 38–42). The presence of multiple foreign powers on Italian soil meant that diplomatic and military factors shaped unification. The process began from Piedmont. Given its small size, the Piedmontese could unify the peninsula only by maintaining good relations with the French and discouraging Austrian intervention: two Party Fascism 25 diplomatic priorities incompatible with radical social transformation. The conflict between them became clear with the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi ’s (1807–1882) expedition to the south in 1860. Garibaldi threatened both to arouse the rural masses and to unseat the papacy—outcomes unacceptable both to the French and the Austrians. In part to avoid foreign intervention, the main conservative architect of unification, Count Camillo Benso di Cavour (1810–1861), acted to check Garibaldi by marching Piedmontese troops to the northern border of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, thereby blocking his advance to the north. Cavour subsequently attached southern Italy to the new kingdom through a series of plebiscites. The last act of...