Syndicalist A.O. Olivetti maintained, the Fascist state had invented the economic system surpassing both socialism and liberalism. Its first clause r… - R. J. B. Bosworth

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.

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.

As I explore Mussolini’s personality, his power, its effects and its limitations, I became convinced that the Duce was not just the first modern dictator but also, far better than Hitler, the personage against whom to measure the very many tyrants who dominated so many countries in Europe between the wars and, in the developing world, then and thereafter. In more complex parallel, Mussolini also bore some comparison with Stalin and his later epigones in Eastern Europe, who, in apparent oxymoron ruled as national communists.