Fascism: Comparison and Definition

3. The Fascist and National Socialist Movements

3 The Fascist and National Socialist Movements ITALIAN FASCISM It was for long commonly held that the the doctrines of Italian Fascism could not be systematically discussed because neither movement nor regime possessed a coherent ideology . Yet neither the fact that the Fascist Party never achieved a fully unified formal ideology nor that the Mussolini regime failed to follow or enforce a completely unified ideological system is novel in radical politics. Though an exact and elaborate codification of doctrine was never achieved, it is now becoming recognized that Italian Fascism did function on the basis of a reasonably coherent set of ideas. Fascism was created by the nationalization of certain sectors of the revolutionary left, and the central role in its conceptual orientation was played by revolutionary syndicalists who embraced extreme nationalism. Revolutionary syndicalists , especially in Italy, were frequently intellectuals or theorists who had come out of the Marxist and Socialist party matrix but had struggled to transcend limitations or errors that they believed they found in orthodox Marxism. They espoused direct action and a qualified doctrine of violence, 42 THE FASCIST AND NATIONAL SOCIALIST MOVEMENTS 143 but tried to reach beyond the narrow and cramped confines of the urban proletariat to broader mobilization of peasants and other modest sectors of producers. By around 1910 most of the revolutionary syndicalists had given up Marxism, and as early as 1907 a few of them had begun to exploit the concept of the "proletarian nation" first developed by Enrico Corradini and some of the more rightwing nationalists. According to this idea, the true "class differences " lay not between social sectors within a backward, weak country like Italy but rather between the peoples of the developed, imperial, capitalist, "plutocratic" nations and the peoples of backward, exploited, and colonized lands. This attitude has become a key political concept of the twentieth century and was central to the thinking of Italian Fascists. The leading revolutionary syndicalists who turned to nationalism , such as Sergio Panunzio and A. O. Olivetti, emphasized the broad function of syndical organization and education for all producing sectors of society. They were not devotees of "creative violence" and direct action for its own sake, though they believed that violence might be positive and therapeutic in certain instances. Sorelian-inspired doctrines of myth and emotional manipulation had little place in their schemes of national education. Nor were the revolutionary syndicalists, permuted into "national syndicalists," fanatical proponents of narrow new authoritarian elites. They held that national syndicalism should create a broad new elite of creative working forces to serve as examples and leaders for the development of Italy. On the international level, they ardently supported the Italian effort in World War I to develop a revolutionary struggle that would alter the power balance in Europe and promote revolution or radical reform within most of the belligerent powers. They did not necessarily support Italian imperialism . In 1916 Panunzio published a lecture II concetto della guerra giusta-The Concept of the Just War Gust war as distinct from imperialist war)-and in 1920, as a Fascist, he brought out a booklet in support of the League of Nations. 1 1. The best study of the transformation of revolutionary syndicalism into 44 I TIlE FASCIST AND NATIONAL SOCIALIST MOVEMENTS While it is probably correct to say that Mussolini himself never possessed a fully developed and systematic political ideology in the period between his abandonment of Marxism and the formal codification of Fascist doctrine in the late 1920s, he did operate throughout the main part of his career on the basis of certain fundamental ideas or notions formed during the decade 1905-15. These had to do with the concept of leadership necessarily excercised by an elite, of the substitution of the influence of ideas, emotions, and the subconscious for mechanistic materialism or pure rationalism, and of the importance of mobilizing the broader masses (approached at least in part by crowd psychology), rather than strict class orientation.2 Mussolini had considerable contact with the revolutionary syndicalists and their ideas, some of which he accepted, but he differed from the syndicalists in his more-categorically positive evaluation of violence and direct action and in the use of myth and symbols. By 1915 he had responded to the problem of the nonrevolutionary nature of the proletariat in Italy (or almost anywhere else) by substituting the idea of the revolution of the nation and the people. The Futurists, led...