Fascism

Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, was the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. Similar political movements spread across Europe between World War One and World War Two and took several forms such as Nazism and Clerical fascism. Neofascism is generally used to describe post-WWII movements seen to have fascist attributes.

Italian Fascism

The Doctrine of Fascism was written by Giovanni Gentile, a neo-Hegelian philosopher who served as the official philosopher of fascism. Mussolini signed the article and it was officially attributed to him. In it, French socialists Georges Sorel, Charles Peguy, and Hubert Lagardelle were invoked as the sources of fascism. Sorel's ideas concerning syndicalism and violence are much in evidence in this document. It also quotes from Ernest Renan who it says had "pre-fascist intuitions". Both Sorel and Peguy were influenced by the Frenchman Henri Bergson. Bergson rejected the scientism, mechanical evolution and materialism of Marxist ideology. Also, Bergson promoted an elan vital as an evolutionary process. Both of these elements of Bergson appear in fascism. Mussolini states that fascism negates the doctrine of scientific and Marxian socialism and the doctrine of historic materialism. Hubert Lagardelle, an authoritative syndicalist writer, was influenced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who, in turn, inspired anarchosyndicalism.

Related Topics:
Doctrine of Fascism - Giovanni Gentile - Neo-Hegelian - Georges Sorel - Charles Peguy - Hubert Lagardelle - Syndicalism - Ernest Renan - Henri Bergson - Scientism - Materialism - Marxist - Elan vital - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon - Anarchosyndicalism

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There were several strains of tradition influencing Mussolini. Sergio Panunzio, a major theoretician of fascism in the 1920s, had a syndicalist background, but his influence waned as the movement shed its old left wing elements. The fascist concept of corporatism and particularly its theories of class collaboration and economic and social relations have similarities to the model laid out by Pope Leo XIII's 1892 encyclical Rerum Novarumhttp://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13rerum.htm. This encyclical addressed politics as it had been transformed by the Industrial Revolution, and other changes in society that had occurred during the nineteenth century. The document criticized capitalism, complaining of the exploitation of the masses in industry. However, it also sharply criticized the socialist concept of class struggle, and the proposed socialist solution to exploitation (the elimination, or at least the limitation, of private property). Rerum Novarum called for strong governments to undertake a mission to protect their people from exploitation, while continuing to uphold private property and reject socialism. It also asked Catholics to apply principles of social justice in their own lives.

Related Topics:
Sergio Panunzio - 1920 - Syndicalist - Class collaboration - Pope Leo XIII - 1892 - Encyclical - Rerum Novarum - Industrial Revolution - Class struggle - Catholics

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Seeking to find some principle to compete with and replace the Marxist doctrine of class struggle, Rerum Novarum urged social solidarity between the upper and lower classes. Its analogy of the state as being like a body working together as "one mind" had some cultural influence on the early Fascists of Catholic nations. It also indicated the state had a right to suppress "firebrands" and striking workers. Further Rerum Novarum proposed a kind of corporatism that resembled medieval guilds for an industrial age. This relates far more directly to Brazilian Integralism form of Fascism than anything in Italy. There are also disputable claims that it influenced The New Deal. The encyclical intended to counteract the "subversive nature" of both Marxism and liberalism.

Related Topics:
Class struggle - Classes - Corporatism - Brazilian Integralism - The New Deal - Marxism - Liberalism

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Themes and ideas developed in Rerum Novarum can also be found in the ideology of fascism as developed by Mussolini. Although it also contains ideas like "the members of the working classes are citizens by nature and by the same right as the rich" or "the State has for its office to protect natural rights, not to destroy them; and, if it forbid its citizens to form associations, it contradicts the very principle of its own existence," that never fit easily with Italian Fascism.

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Fascism also borrowed from Gabriele D'Annunzio's Constitution of Fiume for his ephemeral "regency" in the city of Fiume. Syndicalism had an influence on fascism as well, particularly as some syndicalists intersected with D'Annunzio's ideas. Before the First World War, syndicalism had stood for a militant doctrine of working-class revolution. It distinguished itself from Marxism because it insisted that the best route for the working class to liberate itself was the trade union rather than the party.

Related Topics:
Gabriele D'Annunzio - Constitution of Fiume - Fiume - Syndicalism - Trade union

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The Italian Socialist Party ejected the syndicalists in 1908. The syndicalist movement split between anarcho-syndicalists and a more moderate tendency. Some moderates began to advocate "mixed syndicates" of workers and employers. In this practice, they absorbed the teachings of Catholic theorists and expanded them to accommodate greater power of the state, and diverted them by the influence of D'Annunzio to nationalist ends.

Related Topics:
Italian Socialist Party - 1908 - Anarcho-syndicalists

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When Henri De Man's Italian translation of Au-dela du marxisme emerged, Mussolini was excited and wrote to the author that his criticism "destroyed any scientific element left in Marxism". Mussolini was appreciative of the idea that a corporative organization and a new relationship between labour and capital would eliminate "the clash of economic interests" and thereby neutralize "the germ of class warfare.'"

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Renegade socialist thinkers, Robert Michels, Sergio Panunzio, Ottavio Dinale, Agostino Lanzillo, Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, Michele Bianchi, and Edmondo Rossoni, turning against their former left-wing ideas, played a part in this attempt to find a "third way" that rejected both capitalism and socialism.

Related Topics:
Robert Michels - Ottavio Dinale - Agostino Lanzillo - Angelo Oliviero Olivetti - Michele Bianchi - Edmondo Rossoni

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Many historians claim that the March 23, 1919 meeting at the Piazza San Sepolcro was the historic ?birthplace? of the fascist movement. However, this would imply that the Italian Fascists ?came from nowhere? which is simply not true. Mussolini revived his former group, Fasci d'Azione rivoluzionaria, in order to take part in the 1919 elections in response to an increase in Communist activity occurring in Milan. The Fasci di Combattimenti were the result of this continuation (not creation) of the Fascist party. The result of the meeting was that Fascism became an organized political movement. Among the founding members were the revolutionary syndicalist leaders Agostino Lanzillo and Michele Bianchi.

Related Topics:
March 23 - 1919

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In 1921, the fascists developed a program that called for:

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• a democratic republic,
• separation of church and state,
• a national army,
• progressive taxation for inherited wealth, and
• development of co-operatives or guilds to replace labor unions.

As the movement evolved, several of these initial ideas were abandoned and rejected.

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Mussolini capitalized on fear of a Communist revolution http://www.thecorner.org/hists/total/f-italy.htm, finding ways to unite Labor and Capital to prevent class war. In 1926 he created the National Council of Corporations, divided into guilds of employers and employees, tasked with managing 22 sectors of the economy. The guilds subsumed both labor unions and management, and were represented in a chamber of corporations through a triad comprising of a representative from management, from labour and from the party. Together they would plan aspects of the economy for mutual advantage. The movement was supported by small capitalists, low-level bureaucrats, and the middle classes, who had all felt threatened by the rise in power of the Socialists. Fascism also met with great success in rural areas, especially among farmers, peasants, and in the city, the lumpenproletariat.

Related Topics:
Class war - 1926 - Capitalist - Bureaucrats - Middle class - Lumpenproletariat

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Mussolini's fascist state was established nearly a decade before Hitler's rise to power (1922 and the March on Rome). Both a movement and a historical phenomenon, Italian Fascism was, in many respects, an adverse reaction to both the apparent failure of laissez-faire economics and fear of the Left.

Related Topics:
March on Rome - Laissez-faire

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Fascism was, to an extent, a product of a general feeling of anxiety and fear among the middle class of postwar Italy. This fear arose from a convergence of interrelated economic, political, and cultural pressures. Under the banner of this authoritarian and nationalistic ideology, Mussolini was able to exploit fears regarding the survival of capitalism in an era in which postwar depression, the rise of a more militant left, and a feeling of national shame and humiliation stemming from Italy's 'mutilated victory' at the hands of the World War I postwar peace treaties seemed to converge. Such unfulfilled nationalistic aspirations tainted the reputation of liberalism and constitutionalism among many sectors of the Italian population. In addition, such democratic institutions had never grown to become firmly rooted in the young nation-state.

Related Topics:
Liberalism - Constitutionalism - Nation-state

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This same postwar depression heightened the allure of Marxism among an urban proletariat who were even more disenfranchised than their continental counterparts. But fear of the growing strength of trade unionism, Communism, and socialism proliferated among the elite and the middle class. In a way, Benito Mussolini filled a political vacuum. Fascism emerged as a "third way" — as Italy's last hope to avoid imminent collapse of the 'weak' Italian liberalism, and Communist revolution.

Related Topics:
Trade union - Communism - Elite

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While failing to outline a coherent program, fascism evolved into a new political and economic system that combined corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and anti-Communism in a state designed to bind all classes together under a capitalist system. This was a new capitalist system, however, one in which the state seized control of the organization of vital industries. Under the banners of nationalism and state power, Fascism seemed to synthesize the glorious Roman past with a futuristic utopia.

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Despite the themes of social and economic reform in the initial Fascist manifesto of June 1919, the movement came to be supported by sections of the middle class fearful of socialism and communism. Industrialists and landowners supported the movement as a defense against labour militancy. Under threat of a fascist March on Rome, in October 1922, Mussolini assumed the premiership of a right-wing coalition Cabinet initially including members of the pro-church Partito Popolare (People's Party).

Related Topics:
Fascist manifesto - 1919 - March on Rome - Cabinet - Partito Popolare (People's Party)

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The regime's most lasting political achievement was perhaps the Lateran Treaty of February 1929 between the Italian state and the Holy See. Under this treaty, the Papacy was granted temporal sovereignty over the Vatican City and guaranteed the free exercise of Catholicism as the sole state religion throughout Italy in return for its acceptance of Italian sovereignty over the Pope's former dominions.

Related Topics:
Regime - Lateran Treaty - 1929 - Holy See - Papacy - Vatican City - Catholicism

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In the 1930s, Italy recovered from the Great Depression, and achieved economic growth in part by developing domestic substitutes for imports (Autarchia). The draining of the malaria-infested Pontine Marshes south of Rome was one of the regime's proudest boasts. But growth was undermined by international sanctions following Italy's October 1935 invasion of Ethiopia (the Abyssinia crisis), and by the government's costly military support for Franco's Nationalists in Spain.

Related Topics:
1930s - Great Depression - ''Autarchia'' - 1935 - Ethiopia - Abyssinia crisis - Spain

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International isolation and their common involvement in Spain brought about increasing diplomatic collaboration between Italy and Nazi Germany. This was reflected also in the Fascist regime's domestic policies as the first anti-semitic laws were passed in 1938.

Related Topics:
Nazi Germany - Anti-semitic - 1938

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Italy's intervention (June 10th 1940) as Germany's ally in World War II brought military disaster, and resulted in the loss of her north and east African colonies and the American-British-Canadian invasion of Sicily in July 1943 and southern Italy in September 1943.

Related Topics:
June 10 - 1940 - Germany - American - British - Canadian - 1943

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Mussolini was dismissed as prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel III on July 25th 1943, and subsequently arrested. He was freed in September by German paratroopers under command of Otto Skorzeny and installed as head of a puppet "Italian Social Republic" at Salo in German-occupied northern Italy. His association with the German occupation regime eroded much of what little support remained to him. His summary execution on April 28th 1945 during the war's violent closing stages by the northern partisans was widely seen as a fitting end to his regime.

Related Topics:
Victor Emmanuel III - July 25 - Italian Social Republic - Salo - April 28 - 1945 - Northern partisans

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After the war, the remnants of Italian fascism largely regrouped under the banner of the neo-Fascist "Italian Social Movement" (MSI). The MSI merged in 1994 with conservative former Christian Democrats to form the "National Alliance" (AN), which proclaims its commitment to constitutionalism, parliamentary government and political pluralism.

Related Topics:
Neo-Fascist - Italian Social Movement - 1994 - Christian Democrats - "National Alliance" (AN) - Constitutionalism - Parliamentary government

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