By Benito Mussolini
The "fronde" movement that was raised in the recent congress of the French Socialist Party was not over-valued. First of all, the French Socialist Party, despite its remarkable parliamentary representation, is not one of France's leading historical forces. It is a political-administrative organization that has little power over the masses of French people, especially the rural ones. The French electorate may vote for Blum, but they don't take his doctrines very seriously: they vote for Blum merely because they don't like the other candidates. [...]
Now, at the recent Socialist congress, some speakers have risen with the aim of undermining the Party of its many dogmatic and unrealistic doctrinal formulas, instead seeking to launch a new platform of reconciliation with the principles and institutions of the State, the Nation, authority and the youth. Very meaningful words which the Marxist vocabulary had erased from its pages because, according to their Prophet Marx, the State is nothing more than the business committee of the bourgeoisie; the Nation is a novel concept that must be overcome by the international; and authority is a principle antithetical to the increasingly "radical" or extremist claims of the proletariat.
Hearing these words being pronounced by Socialist speakers, at a Socialist congress, therefore gave rise to a certain impression and a considerable wave of comments. There has been talk of Fascism and Neo-Socialism. There have been various controversial jokes among the orthodox socialists and these Neo-Socialists or Fascists, but the situation has not developed further.
We have entered fully into a period which can be called the transition from one type of civilization to another. The ideologies of the nineteenth century are collapsing and can find no one to defend them. Is it not symptomatic of this that there are socialists tired of the socialism which had been mummified by Marxist dogma? In the same way there are democrats who no longer want to have anything to do with democracy, and liberals who believe the demo-liberal phase of Western States is over.
There are both negative and positive reasons for the decay and demise of demo-liberal civilization. The negative ones can be summed up as the evolution of capitalism into an impersonal form, which was thus in a certain sense already socialized and ready to fall into the arms of the State; in the impotence of executive power, in the arrogance of parliaments, in the classist mysticism and mythology of the proletariat.
But the new Fascist ideas, which are active in every nation in the world, would not have reached their present state of maturity without the impact of what I would call positive reasons. In order of time and importance the most significant of these has been the decennial celebrations of the Fascist Revolution. Millions of people in every country have finally seen and understood.
Many who considered Fascism an ephemeral movement within Italian politics have now started studying it seriously. All have been able to recognize—by seeing with their own eyes—the profound transformation which Fascism has brought about, not only in the material lives of the Italian people, but in their spirit.
As ever the fait accompli has spoken volumes, and the Italian example inspired in many countries near and far the urge to emulate it. The event which has placed in mortal danger all the principles of the last century has been the triumph of the Hitlerian forces in Germany. Here is another great country in the process of creating a unitary, authoritarian, totalitarian State, i.e. a Fascist one, but one which has accentuated certain features differently which Fascism was spared by virtue of having operated in a different historical context.
This is not the place to establish analogies or differences between the two regimes. The undeniable fact is that the actions and innovations undertaken by both are taking place outside any sort of demo-liberal conception of things, and that both have annihilated demo-social-liberal forces.
The very word 'socialism' would be unknown to the Germans by now if it did not figure in the very name of Hitler's party. What can be called Fascist seeds of political and spiritual renewal of the world can now be seen at work in every country, even in England. There is no doubt that even France, the last citadel in the defense of the "immortal principles", will one day soon have to raise the flag of surrender.
America itself is abandoning them. Roosevelt is moving, acting, giving orders independently of the decisions or wishes of the Senate or Congress. There are no longer intermediaries between him and the nation. There is no longer a parliament but an état-major. There are no longer parties, but a single party. A sole Will silences dissenting voices. This has nothing to do with any demo-liberal conception of things.
The appeal to the forces of youth sounds out on all sides: the nation which is way out in front, anticipating by a decade the action of other countries, is Italy. Nothing leads us to believe or make others believe that the youth who have become the ruling class of Fascist States—and therefore authoritarian, unitarian, totalitarian—will disturb the peace: it is to be predicted that they will guarantee peace to the world.
There is nothing, therefore, more interesting and dramatic than a civilization whose sun is setting, and which—amidst many mistakes, much squandering of energy, and many massacres—has left a deep imprint on history. And there is nothing more auspicious and fascinating than the glow on the horizon of a new civilization.
