R. J. B. Bosworth Quotes

Mussolini was a fervent internationalist. Nevertheless, despite his Marxist orthodoxy and despite the fact that the processes of the nationalisation of the masses were feebler in Italy than in the countries to the north, a notion of Italian identity seeped into his words and actions.

In 1918 [Mussolini] had coined the slogan: ‘the man who never changes his mind… is a blockhead’… None the less, this early Fascism did often sound radical, even ‘socialist’, in everything except its foreign policy and reading of contemporary history (both in Italy and in Russia). In June of 1919, for example, the fasci maintained that they wanted the voting age lowered to eighteen (Mussolini had frequently talked about youth bringing zest to anything Fascists might do)… Other initial fasci aims were the institution of an eight-hour day, minimum pay, participatory democracy on the factory floor and improved state insurance for workers. Landowners should be obligated to cultivate their land and any fields that were not utilized productively should be handed over to peasant cooperatives, with a preference for those run by returned soldiers… The fasci favoured progressive tax and the punitive review of war contracts and profits, as well as the seizure of the goods held by religious houses.

When the national transport system was tested a few years later by the Second World War, the Fascist railways showed little advance on the Liberal ones and the transport of goods, especially south of Rome, remained a serendipitous affair.

Fascism, with its habitual use of the language of aggression—not for nothing did Mussolini regularly rejoice in his own savagery, seeing himself as a cat who walked by itself at night ready to scratch, claw and kill—deeply tinctured such thoughts and assumptions. Yet Fascism did not by itself create its bleakly Darwinian view of the functioning of the international system.

Other, mostly richer Italians dealt with the meaning of life under the dictatorship in a more straightforward manner. What might be termed their everyday Mussolinism was, however, scarcely based on a literal application of Fascist totalitarianism. When their actions are reviewed carefully, it becomes plain that they by no means reliably believed, obeyed or fought, despite the regime slogan–credere, obbedire, combattere–insisting that they should.

As Archduke Franz Ferdinand made his way to Sarjevo, Mussolini remained an extreme socialist, committed to pulling down the Liberal order in the interests of world-spanning revolution. The outbreak of the war did not at first alter that situation. However, by September 1914, the attachment of the editor of Avanti! to the official line of neutralism was crumbling. In October, Mussolini broke from the [Socialist] party, proclaiming that, although still a believing socialist, he was certain that the cause of social overturn could be better hurried by war than by Italy remaining at peace. Mussolini thus joined the ranks of the interventionists, a motley crew in terms of political background, although the great majority nourished a deep belief in their intellectuality and self-importance.

If ever a word was in the air, then in Italy around the time of the First World War, it was ‘Fascist.’ Fascista, Fascismo, Fascio: each turned up on numerous occasions and in diverse settings. Doctor deputies, endeavouring to be a pressure group, formed themselves into a Fascio Medico Parlamentare as early as 1906.

The regime may have hoped that its land reclamation policies would attract the greatest acclaim but plenty of other public works figured into Fascist policy and propaganda. The national railway system was a cherished part of the project of bonding Italians, all the more because Farinacci had been prominent in pushing railwaymen early into a Fascist union.

Whereas once the movement had flirted with feminism, now Mussolini required that female organizations focus on charity, ‘to the exclusion of any political action which must be left exclusively to the party.

A historian tabulated 16 rival groups who, earlier in 1919, had been using the word fascio to describe themselves. Ranging from anarchists to restless bourgeois university students, these ‘fascists’ had nothing in common except their name.

Bolshevism [Mussolini] knew, was not really a Jewish phenomenon and the manifestations of anti-Semitism in current-day Hungary could not be applauded. Yet, he reckoned, such responses should not astonish. Even in Italy, where ‘anti-Semitism is unknown and we believe will never be known’, Zionism was a troubling development. It was to be hoped that ‘Italian Jews continue to be smart enough not to encourage anti-Semitism in the only country where it had never been.’

As the elections were being held, he published in Gerarchla a disquisition on Machiavelli. He had, he remarked, just re-read the Florentine writer's corpus, although, he added modestly, he had not fully plumbed the secondary literature in Italy and abroad. Machiavelli's thought was, Mussolini announced, more alive now than ever. His pessimism about human nature was eternal in its acuity. Individuals simply could not be relied on voluntarily to 'obey the law, pay their taxes and serve in war'. No well-ordered society could want the people to be sovereign. Machiavelli’s cynical acumen exposed the fatuity of the dreams of the Enlightenment (and of Mussolini’s own political philosophy before 1914).

On 4 July before an audience at the ‘new town’ of Aprilia, [Mussolini] excoriated what he rudely called ‘the great demoplutocracies’; they were, he added flatly, the ‘enemies of Italy’. The new tone of exasperation in his words worried members of the Italian establishment, but Mussolini, taking his temerity one step further, now told Ciano (of all people) that the ‘defeatist’ bourgeoisie needed to be brought into line by a ‘third wave’ of Fascism.

To the dismay of some ras, Mussolini suddenly announced that he wished to frame a deal with those socialists who might be willing to treat, especially with their trade unionist wing, end the social war burning through the countryside and, by implication, look to the formation of a grand coalition of new mass parties and organizations in order to overthrow the liberal system, be it embodied in parliament in Rome or in the institutions of civil society.

In June 1914 the newshound Mussolini was to the fore in playing up the social disturbances known as ‘Red Week’, at the peak of which revolutionaries, stirred up by the socialist conference at Ancona in April, attempted full-scale insurrection. As a historian of Liberal Italy portrayed it evocatively: ‘Local dictators proclaimed republics, the red flag was hoisted above town halls, taxes were abolished and prices reduced by decree, churches were attacked… landlords’ villas sacked, troops disarmed and even a general captured.