-Caveat Lector-
Italian Fascism: An Interpretation
<cont'd>
This leads us to the ideas of Roberto Michels.[44] Michels
formulated a hypothesis known as the Iron Law of Oligarchy.[45]
He believed that there would necessarily and inevitably be
competition among elites for political control of all states.
Political leadership is then recognizable only in small groups,
fragments of society, never in larger organizations. Leadership
is always in the hands of the few who compete with other small
groups for control. Stated simply, society requires organization;
organization requires leadership; and leadership in inevitably
oligarchic. To Mussolini, this meant that Mosca's politicized
fragments of society were nothing more than oligarchic groups who
were competing for power. The socialists, the anarchists, the
communists and the fascists were all oligarchies. The competition
was necessarily accompanied by violence. The most prepared and
the most violent would win. The fascists had to be ever vigilant
because no victory was final. The competing fragments of society
were always waiting in the wings, ready to rotate power to
themselves. Hence, another of Michels' laws comes into play.
Because of the threat to the oligarchy in power from other
potential rivals the ruling elite becomes obsessed with the
maintenance of power rather than the application of programs.
If the proposition that action and thought should always go
together was to have meaning the fascist party had to both
maintain power and develop programs. Without power, programs were
useless. Without doctrine, the maintenance of power was nothing
but an exercise in futility. Mussolini theorized that the threat
of an opposition party ready to seize power would stimulate
fascism to increasingly superior acts on behalf of the state and
its people. Without the agitation of a bit of sand inside its
shell the oyster does not produce a pearl and its value is nil.
Violence is necessarily produced by an irrational act, but,
then, fascism was an irrational ideology. It was not an ideology
of violence, but it was a doctrine that found violence useful.
The violence was to be directed at its enemies. Both fascists and
their enemies were predetermined to use violence or fail.
The revolution, since it involved only competing elites, was
superimposed on society from above. Fascism rejected completely
the Marxist doctrine of whole class struggles as we saw above
following Mosca. Thus the idea of a mass revolution, a popular
revolution involving the masses of men rising up spontaneously
from below, this was unthinkable in fascism. All revolutions were
elitist and involved only small fragments of all classes. By many
standards, these titanic struggles could not be called
revolutions since they presume the seizure of the state by the
few, classically called "coups d'etat." The bulk of the fighting
would be done in the underworld of society, much like two giant
sea monsters fighting in the depths who only occasionally surface
enough to show us that a struggle is going on.
Fascism never claimed that it would necessarily win all such
struggles the way communism claimed inevitable and final victory.
The determining features of nature offer only determined
struggle, not determined outcome. No fascist victory was
necessarily final. While fascist states could cause by their own
efforts final victory, they could as well by errors of omission
and commission cause the battle to be lost.
Since no victory was final, violence would never disappear
in the state. Violence was the means to come to power and it was
the means of most successfully maintaining power. Violence was
seen to harden the individual. Life after fascism was not to be
the proverbial bed of roses. Fascism promised neither a millenium
nor utopia.
The heart and soul of fascism was the corporative state.
Its great concern was the syndicalist organization of industry
through the worker-management cooperatives. This was and remains
its most exportable element. Mosley recognized this in Great
Britain. Few other fascists have seen this fact. The racist
fascism of contemporary fascism is more kindred to Nazism than to
fascism, and even it has generally lacked a basic understanding
of Nordic "volk" and Aryan racism.
Footnotes
[1] For a good general treatment of the roots of fascist thought
see, J.L. Radel, "Roots of Totalitarianism", New York, 1975. See
also, John H. Hallowell, "Main Currents in Modern Political
Thought", New York, 1950, pp. 521-617; S.J. Woolf (ed.) "European
Fascism", New York, 1968, especially Hugh Trevor-Roper's
"Phenomenon of Fascism"; also Eugen Weber, "Varieties of
Fascism", Princeton, 1964, and M. Halperin, Mussolini and Italian
Fascism, Princeton, 1964.
[2] More than any other ideology, fascism openly acknowledged its
roots. Mussolini's speeches are flavored with quotations from
intellectual giants of the nineteenth century. Such quotations
are not footnoted, but no real effort was made to conceal the
sources either.
[3] Hegel's influence on Italian philosophy is often understated.
Few if any Italian writers openly expressed their indebtedness to
Hegel, but Gentile was especially influenced by Hegelian
concepts.
[4]See the Report to the Grand Council of Fascism included
herein.
[5] See Radel, op. cit., pp. 78ff.
[6] See Alfredo Rocco, "The Political Doctrine of Fascism" in 223
"International Conciliation", 1926.
[7] See the flow chart provided in Radel, op. cit., p. 92.
[8] See S.J. Woolf, "Italy" in Woolf (ed.), op. cit., p. 60.
[9] See flow chart in Radel, op. cit., p. 93.
[10] See Woolf, op. cit., p. 58.
[11] There were four "quadrumvirs", leaders, along with
Mussolini, of the March on Rome. They were elected for life to
the Grand Fascist Council.
[12] Mario Palmieri, "The Philosophy of Fascism", Chicago, 1936.
[13] See Benito Mussolini, "The Political and Social Doctrine of
Fascism" in 306 "International Conciliation", 1935; see also his
"Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions", Rome, 1935.
[14] On Gentile we have his own "Genesis and Structure of Society
"(trans. H.S. Harris, Urbana, 1960), and Harris' book, "The
Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile", Urbana, 1960.
[15] These are the facts of fascist accomplishment admitted even
by its severest critics.
[16] This is a constant theme of Mussolini's speeches from the
early 1930s on.
[17] See Hallowell, op. cit., pp. 592-93, Sabine, op. cit., pp.
863-64 and Woolf, op. cit., p. 41.
[18] See especially Radel, op. cit., pp. 66f.
[19] The influence of "pre-scientific" thinkers is greater than
one might imagine for we are victims of Marx's criticism of them
as being unscientific. Many were quite influential in regard to
the development of European doctrines including fascism. Note
Desjacques, Babeuf, Blanqui, Proudhon, Saint-Simon, Fourier and
others.
[20] Georges Sorel (1847-1922) authored "Le Proces du Socrate",
1889; "La ruine du monde antique", 1890; "L'avenir socialiste des
syndicats", 1900; "Saggi di critica del marxismo", 1903;
"L'illusion du progress", 1909; and "Reflections on Violence",
(trans. T.E. Huhne, New York, 1914), this latter being of
greatest concern to us.
[21] See J.P. Mayer, "Political Thought in France from Sieyes to
Sorel", London, 1943, and Hallowell, op. cit., pp. 458-63.
[22] The "Italian" conception of Hegel really begins with
Benedetto Croce (1866-1952). Croce was a major philosopher of
international reputation. Mussolini would have liked to have had
Croce write a theory of fascism, but Croce refused to have
anything to do with the fascist state. Nonetheless, Mussolini
allowed Croce to continue his liberal-democratic writing without
interference. Unlike many other Italian intellectuals, Croce was
neither harrassed nor forced to emigrate. See Croce's obviously
Hegelian philosophy in his "Philosophy of the Spirit", 1917, or
in his "Aesthetics", 1902.
[23] See Croce's "Philosophy of the Spirit and his History: Its
Theory and Practice", (trans. Ainstre; New York, 1921).
[24] See William N. Loucks, "Comparative Economic Systems", New
York, 1952, and H.A. Steiner, "Government in Fascist Italy",
London, 1938, for good explanations of the corporate state.
[25] See Sabine, op. cit., pp. 638-47; see the explanation of the
dialectic in G.R.G. Mure, "An Introduction to Hegel", Oxford,
1940; or W.T. Stace "The Philosophy of Hegel", London, 1924,
especially IV, part 2.
[26] See Radel, op. cit., pp. 47ff. Claude Henri de Rouvroy,
Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) wrote "Reorganization of
Europe", 1814; "The Industrial System", 1821; "Catechism of
Industrials", 1824; and "The New Christianity", 1825.
[27] See Rousseau's "Social Contract", especially Book II, parts
i and iv.
[28] See the Fascist Labor Charter, included in this book.
[29] See Derek Beales. "The Risorgimento and the Unification of
Italy", London, 1971, and A. Gramsci, Il Risorgimento, Turin,
1949.
[30] Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) is covered well in Radel, op.
cit., pp. 38ff. Radel attributes the fascist idea of the unity of
thought and action to Mazzini. He attaches great importance to
Mazzini as a necessary forerunner of fascist doctrine.
[31] See Woolf, op. cit., for a good general treatment of various
European fascisms. The essays in his book include treatments of
Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Roumania, Poland, Finland,
Norway, Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal. See also Hans
Rogger and Eugen Weber (eds.) "The European Right: A Historical
Profile", Berkeley, 1964.
[32] See Colin Cross, "The Fascists in Britain", London, 1961.
Mosley's principal work is "The Greater Britain", London, 1932.
[33] See S. Andreski's "Poland" in Woolf, op. cit., pp. 167-83.
[34] See Z. Barbu's "Rumania" in Ibid., pp. 146-66.
[35] See H.R. Trevor-Roper, "The Phenomenon of Fascism" in Ibid.,
pp. 18-38. See also Christopher Seton-Watson, "Fascism in
Contemporary Europe" in Ibid., pp. 337-353. See also Eugen Weber,
"Varieties of Fascism", Princeton, 1964, and Ernst Nolte, "Der
Faschismus in seiner Epoche", Munich, 1963.
[36] Leo XIII, "The Condition of Labor," usually cited by its
Latin title, ""Rerum Novarum"" issued 15 May 1891. A convenient
English language source is Gerald C. Treacy and William J.
Gibbons (ed.) "Seven Great Encyclicals", Paulist fathers, 1963.
[37] Pius XI, "Reconstruction of the Social Order" more commonly
known by its Latin title, ""Quadregismo Anno"", issued 15 May
1931, included in Treacy and Gibbons, op. cit.
[38] Atheistic communism was again rejected by the Church in
stronger language in an encyclical issue by Pius XI, "On
Atheistic Communism" known by the Latin title, ""Divini
Redemptoris"", issued 19 March 1937, included in Treacy and
Gibbons, op. cit.
[39] This is one of the principal topics of Alfred Rosenberg,
"Myth of the Twentieth Century", Munich, 1935. See also the
English language commentary on Rosenberg, A.R. Chandler,
"Rosenberg's Nazi Myth", Ithaca, New York, 1945.
[40] There is an obvious comparison with Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679), "Leviathan", wherein Hobbes writes on the third type
of body, the body politic, the highest and most complex body, the
state. Hobbes developed a substantial analogy between a human
body and the state.
[41] It is important to understand that within all ideological
party doctrines the role of the party as the carrier of
legitimacy is vital to the existence of the party. This was true
in Nazism. It is emphasized to the extreme by all branches of the
communist party.
[42] Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941) wrote "Sulla teorica dei governi e
sul governo parlamentare", 1884; "Elements of Political Science",
1896, which was revised several times and is known in English as
"The Ruling Class", New York, 1939, and "Storia delle dottrine
politiche", 1932.
[43] See James H. Meisel, "Pareto and Mosca", Englewood Cliffs,
1965, and his "Myth of the Ruling Class", Ann Arbor, 1962. See
also a discussion of Pareto and Mosca and their respective
relations to fascism in Radel, op. cit., pp. 66ff.
[44] Roberto Michels wrote "Political Parties", 1915, which
developed the Iron Law of Oligarchy, his thesis being that
leadership is always oligarchical and that such oligarchies
cannot be prevented by any devise, including constitutional
limitations.
[45] See Chester C. Maxey, "Iron Law of Oligarchy" in Joseph
Dunner (ed.) "The Dictionary of Political Science", New York,
1964, p. 270.
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