On 4 July before an audience at the ‘new town’ of Aprilia, [Mussolini] excoriated what he rudely called ‘the great demoplutocracies’; they were, he a… - R. J. B. Bosworth

Syndicalist A.O. Olivetti maintained, the Fascist state had invented the economic system surpassing both socialism and liberalism. Its first clause ran: ‘the Italian nation is an organism having a purpose, life and means of action superior to those of any individual or groups who are part of it.’

[Mussolini’s] most ambitious article for La Lima was a lengthy review of Marx on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death. Here Mussolini celebrated the father of socialism as an activist, as one who was simultaneously ‘scientific’ and realistic. Marx, he wrote with fervour, had demonstrated conclusively that ‘a class will never give up its privileges unless it is forced to do so.’ He had proven without a doubt that ‘the final struggle will be violence and “catastrophic’” because capitalists would certainly not surrender without a bitter fight.

In 1919 a nationalist general concluded bitterly that, when confronted by the ‘test of war’, Italy had demonstrated that ‘no one governed it.’