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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 ra… - R. J. B. Bosworth
" "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.
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About R. J. B. Bosworth
R. J. B. Bosworth FAHA, FASSA (born 1943) is an Australian historian and author, and a leading expert on Fascist Italy.
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Alternative Names:
Richard James Boon Bosworth
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Richard Bosworth
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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).
Whereas Hitler believed fundamentally and literally in racist science, Mussolini might often sound hard-line, and certainly regularly spoke up for murder. Yet, equally, he remained capable of skepticism, cynicism, intellectual analysis, doubt, contradiction, confusion, sullen bafflement, all positions that the ‘science’ of ‘terrible simplifiers’ condemns and refutes. Whatever else he was, Mussolini was not an ‘other’, unrecognisably distinct from contemporary or even present-day politicians and executives.
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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.
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