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Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought
Fascism has traditionally been characterized as irrational and anti-intellectual, finding expression exclusively as a cluster of myths, emotions, instincts, and hatreds. This intellectual history of Italian Fascism--the product of four decades of work by one of the leading experts on the subject in the English-speaking world--provides an alternative account. A. James Gregor argues that Italian Fascism may have been a flawed system of belief, but it was neither more nor less irrational than other revolutionary ideologies of the twentieth century. Gregor makes this case by presenting for the first time a chronological account of the major intellectual figures of Italian Fascism, tracing how the movement's ideas evolved in response to social and political developments inside and outside of Italy.
Gregor follows Fascist thought from its beginnings in socialist ideology about the time of the First World War--when Mussolini himself was a leader of revolutionary socialism--through its evolution into a separate body of thought and to its destruction in the Second World War. Along the way, Gregor offers extended accounts of some of Italian Fascism's major thinkers, including Sergio Panunzio and Ugo Spirito, Alfredo Rocco (Mussolini's Minister of Justice), and Julius Evola, a bizarre and sinister figure who has inspired much contemporary "neofascism."
Gregor's account reveals the flaws and tensions that dogged Fascist thought from the beginning, but shows that if we want to come to grips with one of the most important political movements of the twentieth century, we nevertheless need to understand that Fascism had serious intellectual as well as visceral roots.
Gregor follows Fascist thought from its beginnings in socialist ideology about the time of the First World War--when Mussolini himself was a leader of revolutionary socialism--through its evolution into a separate body of thought and to its destruction in the Second World War. Along the way, Gregor offers extended accounts of some of Italian Fascism's major thinkers, including Sergio Panunzio and Ugo Spirito, Alfredo Rocco (Mussolini's Minister of Justice), and Julius Evola, a bizarre and sinister figure who has inspired much contemporary "neofascism."
Gregor's account reveals the flaws and tensions that dogged Fascist thought from the beginning, but shows that if we want to come to grips with one of the most important political movements of the twentieth century, we nevertheless need to understand that Fascism had serious intellectual as well as visceral roots.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published November 29, 2004
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About the author
A. James Gregor
44 books40 followersAnthony James Gregor (April 2, 1929 – August 30, 2019) was a Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, well known for his research on fascism, Marxism, and national security.
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September 17, 2025
Chapter six in Gregor's book examines the philosophical basis of fascist corporatism - a project that Gregor takes as at the core of the fascist philosophic enterprise. Formulated by men like Ugo Spirito and Sergio Panunzio, it was ultimately based on the Idealism (called 'Actualism') of Giovanni Gentile (himself a disciple of Croce) -- who was Mussolini's 'official' philosopher (cp. the 1932 Dottrina del Fascismo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doct...). The doctrine is remarkably coherent and sublime.
(The use of this last word is not careless, but expresses something of the spirit of fascism; it was the Spanish fascist (Falangist), José Antonio Primo de Rivera, for example, who said that 'the shortest distance between two points is the one that goes through the stars', a typical formulation of interwar fascist romanticism. There is an account of this individual in Robert Wohl's, the Generation of 1914. I first encountered this line, btw, in the books of Henry Miller… just think of all the fascists or would be fascists who are quoted and idolized by Miller, men like Knut Hamsun, Gabriele D'Annunzio…, Elie Faure…)
The fascism of Giovanni Gentile's Actualism was fashioned in conscious and overt opposition to the liberal views of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment began with the assumption that the primary social unit was the solitary and asocial empirical individual -- the doctrine referred to by Lockeans as 'social atomism' -- from which the State (which is nothing but a legal fiction, given weight by articles of incorporation) is constructed by means of a contractual coming together of these atomic selves. Its role is simply to serve as "the night watchman". But Gentile assumed that there exists, even at the metaphysical level, a profound identity between the empirical individual and the corporate entity of relevance -- whether this be the family, the clan, the nation, the race, or (as the French Fascists would have it) 'la communité de foi'.
(From this last, one can begin to recognize why men like Pat Robertson or Ralph Reed -- why the Christian Dominionists like R.J. Rushdooney and his progeny -- including Palinism -- indeed are fascists).
Actualists argued that the collective is prior ontologically to the individual. Indeed, it is an historical fact that the social unit of human society is most probably the primitive herd, the kinship group, and that the individual only emerges from it as an autonomous actor fairly late -- in Greece, one thinks of the rise of Lyric, or of the 5th century…; in the Early Modern West, of the Renaissance (Jacob Burckhardt)…; that, as Nietzsche put it: Das 'Du' is alter als das 'Ich'. At any rate, this is the anti-Enlightenment view that Gentile starts with.
The primary existent, then, in the group -- whatever historical form that community assumes -- and the individual is only a precipitate of that group -- originally unformed, and taking on greater and greater individuation over time. He is not a given, or a self-contained monad (as liberals presume). The collectivity is antecedent, and expresses a collective will (-- this notion ultimately is derived from the General Will of Rousseau's Social Contract; it is fascinating to see how the fascists have appropriated Rousseau, since the Rousseau of the Second Discourse is so widely admired by the Left, and was read by Marx) -- which Collective Will is seen as a 'transcendental ego'. From this Transcendental Ego, the empirical individual of sense (as I said) precipitates. (Think now, once again, of the Christian Right….) But it is the community from which it precipitates that is the ground -- ontologically, cognitively, morally. The community -- and the State, which is its executive expression -- is therefore not a construction 'inter homines', but is a reality immanent 'interiore homine'. Individuals (pace Hayek) are simply not found in a state of nature; but emerge out of an organized community.
This position is rooted, astonishingly, in Gentile's Idealism: The essence of the human being (according to Gentile) is thought or thinking…. we are essentially thinkers. Therein resides our being. But neither thought nor thinking can be conceived, in any real sense, as private or individual. Thought (qua thinking) 'intrinsically' involves language (-- if you doubt this, try a thought experiment - imagine you were a dog or a plant with vision, but no language whatsoever…have never had any language at all… now think about something… ); and there ARE no private languages. Every so-called private language, like every encryption, is really parasitical on some public language. Comprehensibility itself implies common use. The criteria governing such activity (i.e., governing our activity… our CORE activity) is thus, at its very heart, collective, As there is no private language, there are no uniquely individual judgments. Thus everything we are is, at our very core, an expression of the society that 'sponsors' us. We are but a precipitate of the historical community that forms us.
If there is no private being, then neither can there be any private initiative in the true sense -- hence, no private property. It is all organic. The very distinction between 'private' and 'public' collapses, vanishes… man is, at his VERY core, political. There is nothing to him that does not belong more truly to the group from which he comes. Likewise, the distinction between ruler and ruled must vanishe -- there are not rulers -- but only a sublimely collective regime. But the regime (expressed as the State) expresses the General Will -- not the will of a collection of empirical individuals -- and the General Will may not be recognized by the multitude (of these individuals). It is rather an elite, and among this elite… the leader, alone that conceives it -- and that will express it… and mold it… and impose it….
The transformation from the fractious liberal state of the modern period to this 'organic' enterprise -- 'organic', of course, is another code-word that one should watch for… will be slow, and must be mediated. Thus the emerging consensus will establish intermediate agencies, commencing with a variety of youth and student goups, professional organizations, labor syndicates, entrepreneurial groups, that will organize social life…. thus life will be regimented in all its aspects and harmonized into the totalizing and totalitarian goals of the organic community that is being fashioned. It is in these various organizations that we take on our individuating traits -- but a posteriori -- and which thus shape our thinking, our reality… our 'us-ness' (das 'Ich'). The role of the State is thus to be pedagogical (think: fascistization), as the individuals are molded to be obedient, self-sacrificing, so as to further the ideals and aims of the community -- which is driven, however, ultimately and unfortunately, to compete, often to the death, with competing groups….
There's much more, but this gives you some idea of it. One can learn much about the Bush years by reading this material. And I say that dispassionately and without hyperbole.
Older:
(This truly is an excellent book; if anyone is looking for a concise, readable, eminently clear and yet serious account of the development and structure of fascist thought -- this is the book. In fact, it is Gregor's contention -- and one I agree with -- that it is precisely the ideas developed in these pages that informs the thought underlying the rise of resource nationalism in the 21st century. As such, this is a timely book.)
This is a outstanding book - in fact, it has a poignancy and seriousness and maturity from the opening lines. I am reading this on my new iPhone via a kindle edition -- while standing on-line at the supermarket and such -- the first ebook I've ever read -- I had no idea what I was missing...!
It also corrects a few misconceptions I had about Gregor himself. First of all, he is not an admirer, as I always thought, of Julius Evola (though I had read somewhere once that he had started out as a disciple of his) - but thinks he's a nut. No argument there. He also, interestingly, states that he does not think fascism is a plausible solution -- he seems closest now to Prezzolini, Ugo Spirito, Gentile, and Panunzio.
He believes that fascism is a movement neither of the Left nor of the Right; that it represents a revolt of the middle-class in collaboration with capitalism. Because Marxism considers this a contradiction (for Marx, as Gregor thinks it, the petite bourgeoisie is destined for extinction by the ever-increasing concentration of capital), Marxist interpretations of fascism (and their derivatives) HAVE to assume that fascism is doctrinally hollow. To refute this, Gregor goes through a collection of fascist thinkers, the Syndicalists, the corporatists, the nationalists, and explicates their thought. That they are not absurd, or inconsequential, and incoherent -- is undeniable. But fascism, even as Gregor understands it, still rests on certain primary assumptions -- the priority of the collectivity - that cannot be ignored, and Gregor's insistence that fascism is not essentially anti-modern, or anti-Enlightenment is not, in my opinion, persuasive. It also rests, the Italian variety, on a Neo-Hegelian idealism (clear in Gentile) that is a bit preposterous, in the final analysis.
When he talks about fascism, Gregor thinks about Italy, and about Mussolini - and seems to think that all the other far-right ideologies from Nazis to Berlusconi to teabaggers have nothing at all to do with it. This is preposterous, and the fly-in-the-ointment. It is a testament, however, to Gregor's genius that his work remains both fascinating and insightful and of great value DESPITE certain over-arching absurdities.
(The use of this last word is not careless, but expresses something of the spirit of fascism; it was the Spanish fascist (Falangist), José Antonio Primo de Rivera, for example, who said that 'the shortest distance between two points is the one that goes through the stars', a typical formulation of interwar fascist romanticism. There is an account of this individual in Robert Wohl's, the Generation of 1914. I first encountered this line, btw, in the books of Henry Miller… just think of all the fascists or would be fascists who are quoted and idolized by Miller, men like Knut Hamsun, Gabriele D'Annunzio…, Elie Faure…)
The fascism of Giovanni Gentile's Actualism was fashioned in conscious and overt opposition to the liberal views of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment began with the assumption that the primary social unit was the solitary and asocial empirical individual -- the doctrine referred to by Lockeans as 'social atomism' -- from which the State (which is nothing but a legal fiction, given weight by articles of incorporation) is constructed by means of a contractual coming together of these atomic selves. Its role is simply to serve as "the night watchman". But Gentile assumed that there exists, even at the metaphysical level, a profound identity between the empirical individual and the corporate entity of relevance -- whether this be the family, the clan, the nation, the race, or (as the French Fascists would have it) 'la communité de foi'.
(From this last, one can begin to recognize why men like Pat Robertson or Ralph Reed -- why the Christian Dominionists like R.J. Rushdooney and his progeny -- including Palinism -- indeed are fascists).
Actualists argued that the collective is prior ontologically to the individual. Indeed, it is an historical fact that the social unit of human society is most probably the primitive herd, the kinship group, and that the individual only emerges from it as an autonomous actor fairly late -- in Greece, one thinks of the rise of Lyric, or of the 5th century…; in the Early Modern West, of the Renaissance (Jacob Burckhardt)…; that, as Nietzsche put it: Das 'Du' is alter als das 'Ich'. At any rate, this is the anti-Enlightenment view that Gentile starts with.
The primary existent, then, in the group -- whatever historical form that community assumes -- and the individual is only a precipitate of that group -- originally unformed, and taking on greater and greater individuation over time. He is not a given, or a self-contained monad (as liberals presume). The collectivity is antecedent, and expresses a collective will (-- this notion ultimately is derived from the General Will of Rousseau's Social Contract; it is fascinating to see how the fascists have appropriated Rousseau, since the Rousseau of the Second Discourse is so widely admired by the Left, and was read by Marx) -- which Collective Will is seen as a 'transcendental ego'. From this Transcendental Ego, the empirical individual of sense (as I said) precipitates. (Think now, once again, of the Christian Right….) But it is the community from which it precipitates that is the ground -- ontologically, cognitively, morally. The community -- and the State, which is its executive expression -- is therefore not a construction 'inter homines', but is a reality immanent 'interiore homine'. Individuals (pace Hayek) are simply not found in a state of nature; but emerge out of an organized community.
This position is rooted, astonishingly, in Gentile's Idealism: The essence of the human being (according to Gentile) is thought or thinking…. we are essentially thinkers. Therein resides our being. But neither thought nor thinking can be conceived, in any real sense, as private or individual. Thought (qua thinking) 'intrinsically' involves language (-- if you doubt this, try a thought experiment - imagine you were a dog or a plant with vision, but no language whatsoever…have never had any language at all… now think about something… ); and there ARE no private languages. Every so-called private language, like every encryption, is really parasitical on some public language. Comprehensibility itself implies common use. The criteria governing such activity (i.e., governing our activity… our CORE activity) is thus, at its very heart, collective, As there is no private language, there are no uniquely individual judgments. Thus everything we are is, at our very core, an expression of the society that 'sponsors' us. We are but a precipitate of the historical community that forms us.
If there is no private being, then neither can there be any private initiative in the true sense -- hence, no private property. It is all organic. The very distinction between 'private' and 'public' collapses, vanishes… man is, at his VERY core, political. There is nothing to him that does not belong more truly to the group from which he comes. Likewise, the distinction between ruler and ruled must vanishe -- there are not rulers -- but only a sublimely collective regime. But the regime (expressed as the State) expresses the General Will -- not the will of a collection of empirical individuals -- and the General Will may not be recognized by the multitude (of these individuals). It is rather an elite, and among this elite… the leader, alone that conceives it -- and that will express it… and mold it… and impose it….
The transformation from the fractious liberal state of the modern period to this 'organic' enterprise -- 'organic', of course, is another code-word that one should watch for… will be slow, and must be mediated. Thus the emerging consensus will establish intermediate agencies, commencing with a variety of youth and student goups, professional organizations, labor syndicates, entrepreneurial groups, that will organize social life…. thus life will be regimented in all its aspects and harmonized into the totalizing and totalitarian goals of the organic community that is being fashioned. It is in these various organizations that we take on our individuating traits -- but a posteriori -- and which thus shape our thinking, our reality… our 'us-ness' (das 'Ich'). The role of the State is thus to be pedagogical (think: fascistization), as the individuals are molded to be obedient, self-sacrificing, so as to further the ideals and aims of the community -- which is driven, however, ultimately and unfortunately, to compete, often to the death, with competing groups….
There's much more, but this gives you some idea of it. One can learn much about the Bush years by reading this material. And I say that dispassionately and without hyperbole.
Older:
(This truly is an excellent book; if anyone is looking for a concise, readable, eminently clear and yet serious account of the development and structure of fascist thought -- this is the book. In fact, it is Gregor's contention -- and one I agree with -- that it is precisely the ideas developed in these pages that informs the thought underlying the rise of resource nationalism in the 21st century. As such, this is a timely book.)
This is a outstanding book - in fact, it has a poignancy and seriousness and maturity from the opening lines. I am reading this on my new iPhone via a kindle edition -- while standing on-line at the supermarket and such -- the first ebook I've ever read -- I had no idea what I was missing...!
It also corrects a few misconceptions I had about Gregor himself. First of all, he is not an admirer, as I always thought, of Julius Evola (though I had read somewhere once that he had started out as a disciple of his) - but thinks he's a nut. No argument there. He also, interestingly, states that he does not think fascism is a plausible solution -- he seems closest now to Prezzolini, Ugo Spirito, Gentile, and Panunzio.
He believes that fascism is a movement neither of the Left nor of the Right; that it represents a revolt of the middle-class in collaboration with capitalism. Because Marxism considers this a contradiction (for Marx, as Gregor thinks it, the petite bourgeoisie is destined for extinction by the ever-increasing concentration of capital), Marxist interpretations of fascism (and their derivatives) HAVE to assume that fascism is doctrinally hollow. To refute this, Gregor goes through a collection of fascist thinkers, the Syndicalists, the corporatists, the nationalists, and explicates their thought. That they are not absurd, or inconsequential, and incoherent -- is undeniable. But fascism, even as Gregor understands it, still rests on certain primary assumptions -- the priority of the collectivity - that cannot be ignored, and Gregor's insistence that fascism is not essentially anti-modern, or anti-Enlightenment is not, in my opinion, persuasive. It also rests, the Italian variety, on a Neo-Hegelian idealism (clear in Gentile) that is a bit preposterous, in the final analysis.
When he talks about fascism, Gregor thinks about Italy, and about Mussolini - and seems to think that all the other far-right ideologies from Nazis to Berlusconi to teabaggers have nothing at all to do with it. This is preposterous, and the fly-in-the-ointment. It is a testament, however, to Gregor's genius that his work remains both fascinating and insightful and of great value DESPITE certain over-arching absurdities.
November 19, 2014
The most basic task of intellectual history - especially of a reviled tradition like Fascism - and the avowed task of Gregor's book is to charitably reconstruct the original doctrines. This "Mussolini's Intellectuals" does superbly. Gregor's sympathetic account of a select group of prominent Fascist intellectuals leaves me with uncomfortably warm feelings about the Duce, which is exactly what a book like this is supposed to do. (He claims to revile Fascism, but, well, you know what Blake said about Milton.)
The book has some weaknesses, which I would attribute to a combination of (1) Gregor's clear axe to grind against the political left and (2) his odd realism about the "true essence" of Fascism. The first is evident in the anti-Marxist polemics that occupy much of the first part of the book; both are visible in a selective focus that makes it appear that there was a core of "real" Fascism - anti-racist, socialist, illiberal - which is clearly of the left. Every possible effort is made to distinguish Fascism from National Socialism, and to ally it with Bolshevism. He makes claims like "there were no Fascist biological racists," which is either a demonstration of how unhelpful this sort of realism is or just flatly false. (See Aaron Gillette's "Racial Theories in Fascist Italy" for the diversity of fascist thought on such questions.) He briefly touches upon aspects of Fascist or proto-fascist thought that would undermine his thesis - for instance, the strains of thought developing ideas of elite theory and crowd psychology - but (in what feels like a deliberate move) does not really develop them.
That said, the book is, again, highly successful as a charitable reconstruction of a tradition of political theory which is no longer extant or well known (even on the existing radical right,) and so my instinct is to recommend it on that basis alone.
The book has some weaknesses, which I would attribute to a combination of (1) Gregor's clear axe to grind against the political left and (2) his odd realism about the "true essence" of Fascism. The first is evident in the anti-Marxist polemics that occupy much of the first part of the book; both are visible in a selective focus that makes it appear that there was a core of "real" Fascism - anti-racist, socialist, illiberal - which is clearly of the left. Every possible effort is made to distinguish Fascism from National Socialism, and to ally it with Bolshevism. He makes claims like "there were no Fascist biological racists," which is either a demonstration of how unhelpful this sort of realism is or just flatly false. (See Aaron Gillette's "Racial Theories in Fascist Italy" for the diversity of fascist thought on such questions.) He briefly touches upon aspects of Fascist or proto-fascist thought that would undermine his thesis - for instance, the strains of thought developing ideas of elite theory and crowd psychology - but (in what feels like a deliberate move) does not really develop them.
That said, the book is, again, highly successful as a charitable reconstruction of a tradition of political theory which is no longer extant or well known (even on the existing radical right,) and so my instinct is to recommend it on that basis alone.
February 27, 2017
The primary purpose here is to do away with the multitude of pre/misconceptions concerning the intellectual heritage - and the purported lack thereof - of fascism. Specifically, italian fascism. The sorts of notions that fascism is just a reaction to advanced capitalism with no more to go on that an appeal to violent impulses is fairly widespread, all these years later, and even in academia, where one would hope that appraisals of more fair-minded books such as this one would be held in greater circulation.
Georges Sorel's heterodox Marxism - anti-democratic, elitist, steeped in myth, prepared for violence - is a big player in the early part of the story, finding acolytes in figures as diverse as the nationalist Enrico Corradini, to the labor syndicalist Sergio Panunzio (who would go on to have a long career as a fascist theoretician). Indeed, it is that paradoxical combination of trade union syndicalism and nationalism that comes to form, per Gregor, the fundamentals of the fascist state to emerge. A backdrop to this first part of the story - best seen in Mussolini himself, I imagine - is the extent to which many socialists came to fascism as Marx's surefire material dialectic came under increasing scrutiny upon the sudden strength of nationalism in WWI, the failures of the Bolshevik revolution, and other basic failings of his theory; e.g. Italy was hardly an advanced capitalist economy; that is to say, would it simply have to wait to be fully pauperized and taken over by more hegemonic economies to the West? Or would it find an alternate path to national modernization and regeneration? Gregor also goes into some people I hadn't even heard of like Ludwig Glumpowicz, Vilfredo Pareto, and other intellectuals and academics of the era that were basically calling into question the positivistic notions of progress, in group vs out group behavior, crowd psychology, etc. All stuff proto and early fascists were interested in.
Fascism's conceit lies in its totalizing notion of the body of the state and the state's individual bodies. Instead of class conflict, class collaboration. First, bring everyone on board with a nationalist platform that keeps the essentials of the capitalist economy. Something for everybody. Then wait for crisis to take fuller power (almost botched assassination of a socialist rival and then collapse of the economy. By the end of the 1920's, Mussolini's fascist party had fully taken control of the mechanism of the state and fully intended to bend it to his will (HIS will, mind you, one of the central tenets being, you know, Rousseau and the general will, the voice that can speak for all voices in unanimity, not rancor (like those blasted parliamentary democracies that get nothing done)).
The middle chapters thus cover Giovanni Gentile and Ugo Spirito's defense of their philosophical idealist system, Actual Idealism. The way I understood it is as Hegel's absolute idealism except that the 'absolute' is already fully present, transparent, and imminent. There's none of the messiness of trying to 'predict' history independent of volition/will to mold it as such, of feeling like a spectator to a grand facade. The individual is fully integrated into his social world. Anyway, thought is 'shared' and 'public' in a sense that seeks to overthrow all mean egoistic things and anomie in favor unity in the patrie. Spirito was the guy to spell out some of the implications for the Italian economy vis-a-vis this Actual Idealism and how he never really got to fully realize what he say as the implications of this spelling out. Indeed, the dream was something like where employers and producers would no longer represent factions who negotiated via the corporations, but would be the corporations themselves (Mussolini as pragmatic, cautious Marxist?)
Gregor really runs roughshod over the good Baron Evola, which had me lolling in parts. I don't know enough about Evola to know how fair the treatment really was or wasn't, but it did make me wonder why he'd contribute such a significant part of the book to someone he thinks is so marginal to understanding Italian fascist thought. Bottom line, don't look to Evola to understand fascism! He then finishes with his chapter on the republic of Salo, which in the spirit that I was reading this in, almost had some real pathos to it: Mussolini really wanted the best for everyone after all sort of vibe. As Gregor speaks of it, Salo was Mussolini's last chance to fully realize that implications of how he saw his idealized fascist state.
I will say that Gregor ends very tellingly on the nature of violence. Early on, we are reminded on numerous occasions that violence in fascism is never justified unless it has a higher purpose in mind. This is about where it is left throughout the book. Any/all violence tied up with the movement is not discussed. Until the very end, where he spends a good amount of time salvaging the fascist doctrine - holding it alongside liberalism and Marxism - from its undeniable violent side. And as he points out, why is it that we should so reflexively call out fascist violence and so quickly gloss over the imperialistic violence of that same period. Then again, of course, we DO. But the point is is that this was the era at that time. What would you have done at that time? What would Italy have done. Violence was in the air.
Gregor's stated goal was to show the reader that fascism does actually have an intellectual, not simply reactionary, genealogy. I would say he succeeded.
Georges Sorel's heterodox Marxism - anti-democratic, elitist, steeped in myth, prepared for violence - is a big player in the early part of the story, finding acolytes in figures as diverse as the nationalist Enrico Corradini, to the labor syndicalist Sergio Panunzio (who would go on to have a long career as a fascist theoretician). Indeed, it is that paradoxical combination of trade union syndicalism and nationalism that comes to form, per Gregor, the fundamentals of the fascist state to emerge. A backdrop to this first part of the story - best seen in Mussolini himself, I imagine - is the extent to which many socialists came to fascism as Marx's surefire material dialectic came under increasing scrutiny upon the sudden strength of nationalism in WWI, the failures of the Bolshevik revolution, and other basic failings of his theory; e.g. Italy was hardly an advanced capitalist economy; that is to say, would it simply have to wait to be fully pauperized and taken over by more hegemonic economies to the West? Or would it find an alternate path to national modernization and regeneration? Gregor also goes into some people I hadn't even heard of like Ludwig Glumpowicz, Vilfredo Pareto, and other intellectuals and academics of the era that were basically calling into question the positivistic notions of progress, in group vs out group behavior, crowd psychology, etc. All stuff proto and early fascists were interested in.
Fascism's conceit lies in its totalizing notion of the body of the state and the state's individual bodies. Instead of class conflict, class collaboration. First, bring everyone on board with a nationalist platform that keeps the essentials of the capitalist economy. Something for everybody. Then wait for crisis to take fuller power (almost botched assassination of a socialist rival and then collapse of the economy. By the end of the 1920's, Mussolini's fascist party had fully taken control of the mechanism of the state and fully intended to bend it to his will (HIS will, mind you, one of the central tenets being, you know, Rousseau and the general will, the voice that can speak for all voices in unanimity, not rancor (like those blasted parliamentary democracies that get nothing done)).
The middle chapters thus cover Giovanni Gentile and Ugo Spirito's defense of their philosophical idealist system, Actual Idealism. The way I understood it is as Hegel's absolute idealism except that the 'absolute' is already fully present, transparent, and imminent. There's none of the messiness of trying to 'predict' history independent of volition/will to mold it as such, of feeling like a spectator to a grand facade. The individual is fully integrated into his social world. Anyway, thought is 'shared' and 'public' in a sense that seeks to overthrow all mean egoistic things and anomie in favor unity in the patrie. Spirito was the guy to spell out some of the implications for the Italian economy vis-a-vis this Actual Idealism and how he never really got to fully realize what he say as the implications of this spelling out. Indeed, the dream was something like where employers and producers would no longer represent factions who negotiated via the corporations, but would be the corporations themselves (Mussolini as pragmatic, cautious Marxist?)
Gregor really runs roughshod over the good Baron Evola, which had me lolling in parts. I don't know enough about Evola to know how fair the treatment really was or wasn't, but it did make me wonder why he'd contribute such a significant part of the book to someone he thinks is so marginal to understanding Italian fascist thought. Bottom line, don't look to Evola to understand fascism! He then finishes with his chapter on the republic of Salo, which in the spirit that I was reading this in, almost had some real pathos to it: Mussolini really wanted the best for everyone after all sort of vibe. As Gregor speaks of it, Salo was Mussolini's last chance to fully realize that implications of how he saw his idealized fascist state.
I will say that Gregor ends very tellingly on the nature of violence. Early on, we are reminded on numerous occasions that violence in fascism is never justified unless it has a higher purpose in mind. This is about where it is left throughout the book. Any/all violence tied up with the movement is not discussed. Until the very end, where he spends a good amount of time salvaging the fascist doctrine - holding it alongside liberalism and Marxism - from its undeniable violent side. And as he points out, why is it that we should so reflexively call out fascist violence and so quickly gloss over the imperialistic violence of that same period. Then again, of course, we DO. But the point is is that this was the era at that time. What would you have done at that time? What would Italy have done. Violence was in the air.
Gregor's stated goal was to show the reader that fascism does actually have an intellectual, not simply reactionary, genealogy. I would say he succeeded.
June 25, 2023
I am firmly of the opinion that the best way to refute a radical political ideology is to carefully explain it in detail and at length, giving the reader/listener the chance to see just how bizarre and outlandish it is. This book does an admirable job of that for fascism.
Gregor essentially argues that Italian fascism grew out of a merger of radical anti-parliamentary nationalist and syndicalist thought in the pre-WWI era. He also spends a considerable portion of the book discussing how the ideas developed by the likes of Gentile, Spirito, Corrradini, and Mussolini himself affected the political program of the fascist Italian state during the interwar and WWII period (The chapter on Julius Evola was downright hilarious - imagine unironically being that clown).
One annoying feature of this book is that it badly needs an editor. Gregor tends to repeat himself, elaborating on points he has already made several times in previous chapters.
Gregor essentially argues that Italian fascism grew out of a merger of radical anti-parliamentary nationalist and syndicalist thought in the pre-WWI era. He also spends a considerable portion of the book discussing how the ideas developed by the likes of Gentile, Spirito, Corrradini, and Mussolini himself affected the political program of the fascist Italian state during the interwar and WWII period (The chapter on Julius Evola was downright hilarious - imagine unironically being that clown).
One annoying feature of this book is that it badly needs an editor. Gregor tends to repeat himself, elaborating on points he has already made several times in previous chapters.
April 20, 2014
Not sure I am convinced by the author's main point that fascism is 'just as rational' as liberalism or marxism from an internal standpoint-but I do take it that it is in fact a cohesive political movement whose study should consist of more than 'ermagerd irrational'.
His description and summations of the main thought of each thinker was very good and informative though. The Evola chapter was my favorite as the author was obviously no fan and hearing about that bizarre creepster's thought in an academic perspective was fascinating (and, lets face it, funny). I mean, they guy was basically a Lovecraft protagonist but who upon staring into the unfathomable non-Euclidean void said 'oh awesome-I'm gonna make a political philosophy about that.'
His description and summations of the main thought of each thinker was very good and informative though. The Evola chapter was my favorite as the author was obviously no fan and hearing about that bizarre creepster's thought in an academic perspective was fascinating (and, lets face it, funny). I mean, they guy was basically a Lovecraft protagonist but who upon staring into the unfathomable non-Euclidean void said 'oh awesome-I'm gonna make a political philosophy about that.'
December 3, 2023
This is a dense and detailed book that takes the thinkers of fascist Italy seriously and, in a way, sympathetically. Gregor, who was a professor at Berkeley, is at pains to distinguish "fascism" as a term we throw about irresponsibly, using it to describe everyone from Donald Trump to Viktor Orban, from the actual serious doctrine developed by Italian philosophers during the first decades of the twentieth century. Gregor's account of their ideas is not easy to follow. He calls many of the philosophers "actualists," a term I was unfamiliar with and admit to not grasping.
Apparently the actualists argued that the conviction that there is objective reality is illusory, and from my scanty philosophical knowledge I agree that it can't be proved. Nevertheless, I strongly believe in it. I'm not an actualist.
As Gregor made me understand it, fascism emerged in Italy as a movement intending to solve real and severe problems: essentially Italy's underdevelopment. Was extreme nationalism the only answer?
In my mind, the deep question remains. Under Mussolini, Italy was a totalitarian dictatorship. Was fascist ideology mere window-dressing and populism, masking economic interests, the people who benefitted from the regime? I'm not well enough versed in the history to address that issue, but my innate tendency is to assume that was the case. I almost always wonder: "cui bono" - Who stands to benefit?
Apparently the actualists argued that the conviction that there is objective reality is illusory, and from my scanty philosophical knowledge I agree that it can't be proved. Nevertheless, I strongly believe in it. I'm not an actualist.
As Gregor made me understand it, fascism emerged in Italy as a movement intending to solve real and severe problems: essentially Italy's underdevelopment. Was extreme nationalism the only answer?
In my mind, the deep question remains. Under Mussolini, Italy was a totalitarian dictatorship. Was fascist ideology mere window-dressing and populism, masking economic interests, the people who benefitted from the regime? I'm not well enough versed in the history to address that issue, but my innate tendency is to assume that was the case. I almost always wonder: "cui bono" - Who stands to benefit?
June 15, 2021
13/20
June 5, 2024
Probably the most important book you should read to understand what fascism is
December 15, 2024
This is a good book to understand fascism as a political theory
June 17, 2012
Brilliant exposition of Fascism's main thinkers. It's developed and coherent as any known political ideology, with deep roots in Western philosophy (idealism, Rousseau, Marxism).
August 13, 2025
"Over the life span of the regime, there were proportionately more Jews in the Partito Nazionale Fascista than there were in the general population."
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