In any event, by 1930 it was evident that Fascism, for its own purposes, would have to evolve institutions and techniques to restrict the independent… - A. James Gregor

Towards the end of the 1930s, few Fascist intellectuals denied that the social and political system put together in the Soviet Union substantially overlapped that fashioned by Fascism. Whatever distinctions were drawn, and however emphatically those distinctions were insisted upon, no Fascist intellectual failed to note the significant institutional and behavioral similarities of Fascism and Stalinism.

Mussolini's revolutionary nationalism, while it distinguished itself from the traditional patriotism and nationalism of the bourgeoisie, displayed many of those features we today identify with the nationalism of underdeveloped peoples. It was an anticonservative nationalism that anticipated vast social changes; it was directed against both foreign and domestic oppressors; it conjured up an image of a renewed and regenerated nation that would perform a historical mission; it invoked a moral ideal of selfless sacrifice and commitment in the service of collective goals; and it recalled ancient glories and anticipated a shared and greater glory.

[Italian] Fascism was a variant of classical Marxism, a believe system that pressed some themes argued by both Marx and Engels until they found expression in the form of ‘national syndicalism’ that was to animate the first Fascism.”