(Published in Gerarchia, 1931)
By Antonio Bruers
In a recent polemic, there was a key issue that was touched upon and which may be dealt with here without entering into the merits of the already exhausted discussions. The issue is this: what is the relationship of a revolutionary regime with the past of the nation where the revolution itself has been effectuated? Must a revolutionary regime, as a radical palingenesis, consider its action and its mission as clearly cut off from the past, or can and should it be considered tied in continuity with the previous era? There is no shortage of people who believe they can adequately respond with a simple yes or a simple no, but the question deserves to be examined in its true complexity.
First of all, before resolving the problem from the point of view of the revolution, it is necessary to clarify the values and historical laws of the nation, which here we can also consider as synonymous with the state.
The state is distinguished from individuals and entities which compose it precisely because the characteristic of its existence is above and beyond the individual. The individual as a citizen is mortal; the state is immortal; therefore the state is, or will be, an element of the continuity of the nation.
A state which does not feel itself to be the continuity of previous generations is unable to create a long and fruitful future. It is sufficient to take a cursory glance at history to realize that the kingdoms and empires which were the most enduring were the ones which had the most profound sense of origins, of tradition, and which identified and respected the laws of their ancestors.
When a great barbarian poet said of the Romans that they were building for the future, he alluded, implicitly, to a sense of historical continuity with those ancient fathers, the highest expression of which—the Law—had, in fact, as its foundation, the essential principle of conservation, that is to say tradition. Nor, to comfort the assumption, is it necessary to cite the example of the British Empire, which, even if it had no other similarities with the Roman Empire, it provides at least one certainty: that of having continuously created new laws and new customs in continuity with the most ancient laws and ancient customs.
Withholding the axiomatic providentiality of conservation, must it therefore be concluded that a revolution does not have its rights? Of course not. The summary solutions of the problem which I presented at the beginning, arise from an incorrect setting of the theme.
In reality, the problem is not to ask whether a revolution must radically deny the past—the whole past (which is absurd, because a giant Tamerlane could destroy all the monuments, all the works, all the writings of the past, but it would never be able to destroy all the human brains, in which the past exists together with spirits identical to those geological layers). The real problem is to ask what in the past must be abolished in order to make a place for the creations of the future.
In the long history of a race, of a nation, of a state, there are alternate periods of grandeur and decadence, of truth and error, just as in the same way—and, perhaps, thanks to the same law for which there exists in the sky light and darkness and the nature of spring and winter—there exists birth and death.
It can be said that the chief problem of a revolutionary regime consists in determining what precisely in the past has to be destroyed and what needs to be preserved. You can err in destroying too much, but you can also err in keeping too much. Being able to select from the mortal past and the immortal past, finding the right balance and creation, is the paragon of the statesmen who instituted a revolutionary era from their breasts. If many conservative regimes fell due to wanting to preserve too much, it is just as true that too many revolutionary regimes were unable to last due to wanting to destroy too much. These theoretical premises would be far easier if I were not using them to report a practicial application with relation to Fascism.
Fortunately for us, Fascism constitutes a clear demonstration of the mentioned historical law: it is etched deeply into the life of the nation precisely because the Duce has been able to add up and merge into it—with beautiful harmony and profound equilibrium—the various spirits which intertwined to form it, and the mentalities that are often antagonistic, as he beautifully said recently: adverse but not distant.
While in the social sphere Fascism presents users with a modern direction, in the field of national spirituality it recalls the greatness, norms and traditions of old. Not only does it not reject the Italy of Cavour and Garibaldi, but it is reconnected with it.
The fusion of the various and seemingly-opposing tendencies—imperialism and corporativism, recognition of Catholic values and the doctrine of the totalitarian state—is so fundamental so as to confuse our opponents who have not yet solved the problem of whether Fascism must be fought as reactionary or as revolutionary.
Once it is established that Fascism has not rejected the sense of continuity with the past and solidarity with previous generations, one should not conclude that it has accepted all of the past and all of the doings of previous generations. Here there is an obvious, though small, historical fracture marked by the March on Rome, and followed by a work of selection, especially sensible in their dealings with the historical period from the Risorgimento proper (1870) to May 1915, or, if you prefer, to October 1922.
Fascism constitutes a radical reaction against the spirit and forms of the Italy of Depretis, Giolitti and Nitti. This is its strength and this is its pride. But this does not mean that Fascism, while creating a solution of continuity, has repudiated all the recent past. Even when it invoked revolutionary intransigence against the so-called Umbertine regime, it must not be thought that because of this we should repudiate the whole of Italy in the fifty years before Fascism.
Because not everyone in Italy during the regimes of Depretis, Giolitti and Nitti was Depretian, Giolittian and Nittian; because even if there was timidity in foreign policy, there were also irredentists and nationalists; because even if there was a lack of a sense of expansion, there were still those brave martyrs of colonialism; because even if there was a populace which vegetated miserably on home soil, there was also the organized and conscious masses who responded to the call of material and ideal solidarity, in the name of a latent rejuvenation; and if there was an Italy finally disposed towards neutrality, there was also an Italy which knew how to impose the 24th of May (declaration of war on Austria-Hungary); because if there was an Italy which displayed the fear of hunger, there was also an Italy which responded with the March on Ronchi.
In the secular life of a state there is no reason for a total repudiation of an historical epoch, but perhaps only good reasons for the rejection of a ruling class. There is no moment in history, no matter how humble and cowardly, that is not accompanied by men who redeem—for the sake of the children—the humility and cowardice of the moment. And these are the men to whom the children should relate, these are the men whom the next generation must consider as the legitimate representatives of the nation facing the future. Fascism, rather than linger to criticize Giolittian and Nittian Italy, must devote itself to illustrating and highlighting Italy's war in Libya, intervention in the Great War, the occupation of Fiume, and the March on Rome. There is a self-depreciating history from which we must guard against no less rigorously—that of empty chauvinistic arrogance. Porro unum est necessarium: salvage and raise the presence of our consciousness, even before the presence of foreigners, the sense of the historical continuity of the state, of the nation, of the race. Machiavelli, at the very moment in which he described Italy as "without a head, without order, beaten, stripped, tearful, running", at that moment he turned to the history of Rome, that is, to the past, to tradition, to prophesy and to prepare Italy for the future.
