To what extent was Fascism in Italy a revolutionary system that totally transformed the political, economic and social structure of the country?

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"A revolutionary system which totally transformed the political, economic, and social structure of  the country."  To what extent would you  agree with this assessment of Fascism in Italy?

In 1932, Giovanni Gentile aided Benito Mussolini in writing a definition of Fascism, to be entered in the Italian Encyclopaedia.  They claimed that    “the Fascist State organises the nation, but  leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to  the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone.”[1]  Certainly this could seemingly be a definition of a “revolutionary system” when compared to the liberalism of the coalition government, but to decide whether or not Fascism succeeded in being so, or merely showing an outward appearance, as Mussolini appeared content with on many issues, one must look separately at the politics, economy, and society of Italy, before, during and after the Fascist regime.

Before October 1922, when Mussolini became Prime Minister, Italy had been administered by a series of coalition governments, due to the introduction of proportional representation after the unification of 1870.  The weak and indecisive king, Victor Emmanuel III, had felt that Mussolini and the Fascist Party posed no threat to him or the country, as they, at that time, held only 35 of the 535 seats in the Italian Chamber of Deputies.  "There was no sudden change in the system of government and state institutions; Mussolini was merely the Prime Minister of a coalition cabinet in which only four out of twelve ministers were fascists and he had to move cautiously."[2]  However, in July 1923 the Acerbo Law was passed, allowing the party with the majority of votes to attain 2/3 of the parliamentary seats.  “By a mixture of violence and intimidation, and aided by hopeless divisions amongst his opponents”[4] Mussolini achieved a majority in the April 1924 elections, thereby securing his position.  Not long after the elections, the Matteotti crisis led to widespread disaffection and “left Mussolini vulnerable, having been forced to dismiss numerous members of his entourage.”[5]  The Aventine Secession saw the opposition parties set up a rival parliament in the hope that the king would dismiss Mussolini from office, however, Victor Emmanuel feared that this would leave the way open for Communism to overthrow him, and so he allowed the Fascists to continue in power.  With all opposition gone, Mussolini had no problems in securing the power to rule by decree as “to a growing number of left and right-wing critics, democratic politics was a rotten game divorced from Italy’s real needs.”[6]  But his dreams of a completely totalitarian state could not truly come to fruition, as he stated himself, “the Fascist Revolution halted at the throne.”  And so it would appear that it was a catalogue of misdeeds by the government and the king that gave Mussolini his one party state, rather than the might of Fascism.  Although that one-party state was certainly a revolutionary ideal when put in comparison to the previous method of coalition government, by April 1943 the Italian Cabinet, under Badoglio, included Liberals, Christian Democrats, Socialists, Communists and others.[24]

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After the Second World War, Italy reverted to a true republic, in that Victor Emmanuel abdicated in May 1946, and his son, Umberto’s reign lasted only 1 month before the monarchy was abolished.  This could not be attributed, however, to Fascism as much as to Victor Emmanuel’s mishandling of  the parliamentary system and the fact that “his career demonstrates that he never really came to terms with democracy and that in his few moments of meaningful political choice he preferred to deal with the representatives of  savage reaction rather than concede an inch to the demands of the people.”[7]

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