Mussolini had always opposed parliamentarianism. His conception of social
change, political organization and rulership was consistently elites. As early as
January, 1915, with the organization of the interventionist Fasci d' Azione
Rivoluzionaria ,Mussolini spoke of a resolute minority of men, animated by a sure
consciousness of the national interest, invoking in the masses a state of being that
would conduce to the fulfillment of collective purpose”.
Already in May, 1918, Mussolini had called attention to the hierarchy of productive functions that characterized the productive life of the nation. Neither
proletariat nor bourgeoisie constituted politically meaningful designations. From the
vantage point of the nation there were only categories that performed productive
functions, and these could be designated productive classes to specify one particular
role in the system of interlocking roles that constituted national life. It was that
unitary life, the life of the nation, which led Mussolini to speak of the "coincidence of
interests " that united workers and employers and made possible their collaboration
in a program of accelerating overall economic productivity.
Fascism's Conception of the State
This basically Hegelian, or neo-Hegelian, conception of the state constituted a novel element in developing Fascist doctrine. For a considerable period of time, Mussolini had no specific conception of the state. As a socialist he had grappled with a problem, but there is considerable internal evidence which indicates that his conceptions remained
confused and sometimes contradictory. We do know, for example, that for some time
Mussolini was influenced by philosophical individualism and its implicit anarchism.
He himself indicates that until 1908 he remained under the influence of Nietzsche and
Max Stirner. Under their influence he seemed prepared to maintain that the
individual enjoyed some kind of moral privilege vis-à-vis any organized aggregate of
men. He seemed to argue that the only law binding upon the individual was a law
which the individual laid upon himself. He specifically committed himself to opposing
submission to laws having any other origin. Yet, by 1908, he was prepared to admit
the real theoretical difficulty in defending such a position. In his essay on Nietzsche
he was prepared to grant that for Nietzsche the state was a system of "organized
oppression at the cost of the individual". But he went on to indicate that Nietzsche's
conception of man as a beast of prey necessarily involved a conviction that man as a
predatory beast was a denizen of an organized community. Without such a supposition effective struggle would be impossible and no conquest could be secured.
The moral idea which Mussolini applauded at twenty-one was one in which the
activity of the individual was governed by the moral concerns for the solidarity of
mutual interests and reciprocal obligations of the community of which he was a
member. Such a conception involves the nation of a state which is a moral union of
individuals
The Doctrinal Development of Fascism after 1925
After 1925, as a consequence of a number of circumstances, Fascist doctrine
became increasingly standardized; its arguments more tightly developed and its
implications more apparent. First and foremost, prior to 1925, Fascism existed in a
state of perpetual crisis. After the first impact of the March on Rome, the opposition
to Fascism regrouped and undertook a debilitating war of attrition against
Mussolini's rule. But more threatening was the disorder that prevailed within the
ranks of Fascism itself. Fascim had been a spontaneous and disorderly growth. Fasci
had organized in all the major cities of North Italy around local popular leaders.
These men, while nominally subordinate to the control of the central offices of the
movement, were in fact condottieri with personal followings. They launched
campaigns, quasi- military, organizational, and propagandistic at their own will and
discretion. Any policy decision by Mussolini was likely to be compromised by the
independent activity of any or all of the local ras (as the local leaders were called). It
was with this undisciplined Party that Mussolini seized control of the state. For
almost two years thereafter Mussolini continued to promise an end to Fascist
violence, and yet the violence persisted. The Party threatened to fragment into
factions, and expulsions from its ranks were not uncommon. With the murder of
Giacomo Matteotti by Francists in June, 1924, the entire political situation became
critical. For six months, the Fascist government trembled. Finally Mussolini forced
the issue. Fascism emerged dominant over the opposition and Mussolini rapidly
became absolute master of the Party. On January 3, 1925, after his control over the
Party became secure, Mussolini proclaimed that Fascism, and Fascism alone, will rule
the nation.
After that date, Fascism could speak without equivocation. Its doctrine could
be articulated without qualifications and without tactical reservations; but, as we
have seen, this is not to suggest that the doctrine of Fascism had not long since taken
on the specific features that were its own. Fascism, from the foundation of the Partito
Nazionale Fascista in 1921, gravitated around a hard core of concepts that had
crystallized into a political doctrine of considerable specificity. In the weeks before
the slaying of Matteotti, Mussolini could, with justification, maintain that Fascism
had a program "based upon a unitary principle, based upon a classic conception of
the state", radically different from that of liberalism. After thr resolution of the crisis
which followed the death of Matteotti, Fascism was free to embark upon a massive
program of social revolution, a program accompanied by explicit vindications and
anticipated in its doctrinal commitments as early as 1919.
Coupled with these political events was yet another circumstance which
conduced to the rapid maturation of Fascist doctrine. Once ensconced in power,
Fascism attracted to itself the allegiance of a company of men of substantial
intellectual caliber. Immediately upon its advent, Fascism drew upon the services of
men of international reputation such as Giovanni Gentile, Corrado Gini, and Roberto
Michels. Once Fascism became secure in its rule these men were joined by spokesmen
of varied scholary and scientific disciplines, each contributing in some measure to the
finalisation of Fascism's doctrinal rationale.
What is interesting and instructive is that irrespective of the diversty of
contributions, o collection of themes and concepts remained remarkably persistent
and substantially unaltered. Fascist doctrine, after 1921, retained a surprising degree
of theme and content persistence. Elements of doctrine were amplified and
arguments were reformulated, but given the number of individuals who contributed
to its articulation the doctrine remained significantly resistant to substantive
alteration. In practice, Fascist social and political ideas took on institutional and
technical forms of various kinds, but the supportive rationale which subtended them
remained constant. The doctrine, like all social and political doctrines, contained a
statement of purposes and arguments understood to sustain those purposes. The
doctrine did not contain technical procedures for the realization of ends. The
realization of ends was understood to involve a range of problems outside the interest
and competence of social and political doctrine.
By 1927, a number of full-fledged doctrinal expositions of fascism became
available. The theoretical and normative commitments to which these expositions
gave expression remained esentially unaltered throughout the Fascist period. What
emerged was a systematization: the result of general andrudimentary ideas regularly
and consistently applied as a conceptual frame of reference to the interpretation of a
body of facts to afford the occasion for the satisfatory explanation of those facts and
successful prediction of forthcoming and relevant facts, and consequently a guide to
practical orientation. We cannot be concerned with the truth status of the
interpretation, the explanation, and the success of such derivative predictions. Our
restricted concern is with the systematization itself, the emergent social and political
philosophy which attained maturity with the fully explicit synthesis of Gentilean
idealism and Fascist political doctrine that took place in 1932.
Here the focus of attention will be directed to a summary outline of Fascism's
mature social and political doctrine. Whether it achieved the rigor which could
qualify it as social and political philosophy is an academic question. The distinction
between the mature social and political doctrine and Gentile's idealism is introduced
here only for ease of exposition. Fascism, after1921, was essentially compatible with
Gentile's "Actualism", largely because of historic and intellectual circumstances.
Gentilean idealists, nationalists, and national syndicalists all accepted a common core
of doctrinal elements- and by 1921 Mussolini himself had introduced Gentile's
conception of the stato etico into Fascist doctrine. The differences that obtained were
the consequence of the evident sociological biases of nationalism and national
syndicalism. Gentile's analysis was irreducibly normative and philosophical. The
conclusions arrived at were, nonetheless, essentially compatible. The differences will
be specified in the treatement of Gentile's contribution to Fascist ideology.
The Mature Doctrine of Fascism
Fascist theorists, repeating one of Mussolini's convictions, maintained that every social and political doctrine revolved around a specific conception of man and society. If this is true, Fascism's doctrine gravitated around a normic conception of man and society which Fascist theoreticians themselves variously charecterized as "organic", "solidaristic", or "communalistic" in order to distinguish it from the liberal coception to which Fascism was intransigently opposed. Before the advent of Fascism, both syndicalists and nationalists referred to their general conception of man and society as " organic" ;that is to say, society was understood to constitute a system, an integrated network of recurrent norm- governed interpersonal behavior patterns, coprehensive and differentiated enough to be self- sufficient with respect to the functional equirements of its members, and capable of long- term persistence. The individual was understoo to be a functioning component of a self-regulating social system. He was conceived as a determinate person only insofar as he assumed functions within the structure of relations which preceded his role occupancy and which would persist beyond it.
For Fascists to speak of a social system, of integration, of norm governance,
and of pattern persistence implied the existence of a central and sovereign agency of
control and regulation: the state. Thus, in one of the early systematizations of Fascist
doctrine, Giovanni Corso could maintain that "society, law, and state are inseparable
notions. The one is intrinsic to the other:. In 1935, Stefano Raguso insisted that even
the "simplest community of men is inconceivable unless sustained by an active
principle of organization [and] ... this principle of organization consists in the
subordination to a sovreign, political power".
This relationship had already been systematized in 1927 by Corrado Gini, who
was a member of the commission studying constitutional reform after Fascism's
accession to power. He describes society as "a system normally found in evolutionary
or devolutionary equilibrium possessed of the capacity of self- conservation and re-
equilibrization" which finds its highest expressioo in the modern state.
Fascist doctrine inherited many conceptions from the sociological traditions of
prewar Italy, but it was the conception of the state, which became central to Fascist
thought only in 1921, which gave Fascism a specific and determinate character of its
own. Thus, Fascists indicated that while the people, sustained by the group building
sentiments to which we have alluded, constitute the content of the state, the state is
formally defined by its political and juridical functions. Fascists held that, technically
speaking, any form of ordered, autonomous associated life was animated by a state.
The state is "any society or community of men held together by a political nexus".
The formal element in the state is its sovereign political and juridical power. The
state "is the creator of an order, through the medium of law, or norms, that reduces
all the component entities to unity and coordinates all activities to a common end".
The state is the ultimate repository of force to which all other must, in the final
analysis, appeal for regulative sanction.
Fascist theorists like Panunzio recognized that organized associations within
the state had the capacity to issue rules and regulations governing their collective
membership, but they held that such rules and regulations were effective only if they
were directly or indirectly sanctioned by the state. That is, it was recognized that
association would follow interests, real or fancied, that provided the grounds of
identification among men. The imposing rise of economic organizations, specifically
the syndicates, was ample evidence of that historic reality. Sects, clubs, cooperatives,
cultural association- all constituted interest-fostered, rule-governed association
within the state. All were autonomousinsofar as they were capable of governing their
own internal organization by the promulgstion of procedural and substantive rules.
The state might not, for whatever reasons, exercise its sovereign right over them.
Organizations might continue to function on the strenght of their own capacity to
sanction their members. Nonetheless, Fascists insisted, the state is the sole and
ultimate source of imperative sanction since the stae has the exclusive right to the
regulation of the use of force. In effct, Fascism rejected the thesis that there was any
limit, in principle, to the state's political and juridical sovereignity. The state was
"integral", "totalitarian". Fascism conceived no interest-economic, educational,
religious or cultural- as falling outside its purview. Tere was, consequently, no private
as distinct from public interest. This idea found doctrinal expression in Mussolini's
aphorism: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, and nothing against
the state".
If the term community has as its reference a number of individuals whose
behaviour is governed by a normative order, and if the state provides the ultimate
sanction that sustains theorder, the state is then understood to constitute
an underlying and essential social reality that is coextensive and coterminous with,
and logically prior to, the community. If that community is a nation- a community
having a common history and culture, that manifests itself in shared, stable, and
habitual preferences and pririties that permit members to share more intimately with
each other a wider range of communication than with outsiders- then the nation and
the state are, in some critical sense, conflated. In speaking of the state per se one
refers to the normative order, and in speaking of the nation one speaks of the
collection of living individuals whose behaviour exemplifies that order.
The political formula, Costamagna maintained, was a stenographic and
sometimes elliptical formula which exressed the ultimate moral basis upon which the
legitimation of power of a political class rests. Recognition, on the part of the political
mass, of the legitimacy of rule entitles the moral obligation of obedience to rule.
Moreover, the political formula provides the hierarchy of values which order the
moral universe of the individual. The politica formula provides the content of
imperatives and their normative force as well. In terms of the doctrinal language of
Fascism, the nation was construed to be the real and the ultimate source of all that
was valuable and valued in the individual. The nation was understood to be essentially
a norm-governed community. The state was the ultimate source of sanction which, in
making the norms operative, made the nation a realiy. In this fashion the state and
the nation are identified with the expression "stato-nazion". Since the normative
system is the constitutive moral substance of the people that constitute the content of
the nation-state, the state and the people are identified with the expression "stato-
popolo". Since the prevailing normative system is the product of a series of creative
acts on the part of historic political elites, and the contemporary political elite is
charged with the responsability of sustaining and perpetuating that system and
educating the masses to its responsabilities, that elitr organized in a unitary party and
that system can be identified with the expression "stato-partito". What results is a
convenient set of substitutions that permits the nation to be identified with the state,
the people and the party. This, in essence, is what Fascism mean by an "integral
political system", or totalitarianism. In effect, what was implied was an identification
of the ultimate real interests of the nation, the state, the party, and the individual,
however divergent their apparent interests. Since the state and the party were
effectively identified with the wilol of the man, Mussolini, was via the substitutions
above indicated, identified with the nation. It was this identification which
charecterized Mussolini's leadership as "charismatic"; the Duce was conceived as the
"living and active incarnation" of the nation. This conception of charisma entered
official Fascism doctrine, for Michels identified the Regime as " charismatuc
government", and the official Party manual of 1936 maintained that " the
'charismatic' theory of the national society has found, in reality its first full
realization in Fascism".
The Fascist Synthesis
Fascist doctrine was largely Mussolini's own product. Some os its elements
were vital constituents of Mussolini's social and political thought as early as 1904. As
he gimself indicated, however, these elements had themselves been constituents of
other political or intellectual traditions. The three princical doctrinal sources of the
Fascist synthesis are the antiparliamentarian sociological tradition of Gumplowicz,
Mosca, Pareto, the radical syndicalist tradition of Sorel, and the nationalist tradition
of Corradini. A common provenience and a constellation of historic circumstances
bruoght these traditions together in Fascism. What was lacking was a principle of
unity, a concept which would articulate these elements into a defensible rationale.
That unifying concept was the Gentilean notion of the state; and with its adoption
Fascism became the first frank totalitarian movement on the twentieth century.
The doctrine of Fascism rests upon the moral priority of the nation and the
state as its moral substance against which all other values are relative. Since this is th
case, we have notdealt with the varying and various institutions thruogh which the
integration of economy was affected. The institutional structure of the Corporative
State is far less significant than the hierarchy of values which provided its rationale.
Fascists early made it plain that they would use whatever methods proved effective in
their effort to integrate the economic, intellectual and political life on the nation into
one infrangible unity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cohen, Carl, Communism, Fascism and Democracy: The Theoretical Foundations, New York, Mac Graw-Hill, 1997
