Fascism, communism and totalitarianism

Résumé du document

"Fascism was the first mass-mobilizing development dictatorship that provided a frank, complete, and relatively coherent rationale for totalitarianism." Actually, Mussolini's doctrine of delayed industrialization was the first to openly affirm "the reality of production and the reality of the Nation." Contrary to any Marxist revolution, Fascism claimed nationalism and totalitarianism as part of the developmental process, and they decided to maintain the class structure as preserved as possible. What we want to do is to show how this Regime can be conceived as paradigmatic of the other Revolutions the last Century encountered. First, we will detail the historic and cognitive features of Italian Fascism. Then we will study its ideological foundations. And finally we will determinate how far Italian Fascism can be applied to the other revolutions as paradigmatic.

Extraits

[...] Why would these systems want to extend their borders? First They feel that advanced industrial countries have much better/lethal weapons and therefore feel a need for strategic depth to protect their homeland. For instance, Fascist Italy was enclosed in the Mediterranean see between the Strait of Gibraltar, controlled by England, North Africa, colonized by France, and the Suez Canal owned by these two powers; England even had military bases on Malta. Secondly, they are very inefficient and wasteful systems; they thus consume resources in giant leaps and bounds. [...]

[...] What bounded syndicalists and nationalists after the war was not only the insistence on the nation, but also the rejection of Marxist positivism. “Corradini was convinced that moral sentiments and philosophical convictions served a critical function in the progression of historic events”[v]. Plus, they both rejected ‘democracy, compromise and negotiation deflecting the promise and damping the ideal tension productive of myth.”[vi] That is what Mussolini appealed to during his raise to power and his government. When Mussolini came to power, the so-called ‘Manchestrian state' remained relatively moderate: the control over the society was minimal. [...]

[...] Rocco, Economia Liberale, Economia Socialista, et Economia Nozionale L. Garuccio, Le tre eta del fascismo [xii] A.J. Gregor, Mussolini's Intellectuals, p [xiii] AJ Gregor, The face of Janus, p.169 [xiv] AJ Gregor, The face of Janus,, p175 J. Gresci, Introduction: Concept of Right and Left, p.3 [xvi] AJ Gregor, The face of Janus, p.175 [xvii] W.W. Rostow , The Stages of Economic Growth. [xviii] K. Marx, The Capital, book Part 3 [xix] S. Courtois (et alii), The black book of communism : crimes, terror, repression S. [...]

[...] Plus, although in the winning camp, Italy encountered what was then called a ‘flawed victory': almost none of its requests -especially the ‘irredant territories'- was accommodated by its fellow allies. As a consequence, many Italian intellectuals claimed their country was humiliated. Even the Marxist syndicalists changed their phraseology from a ‘proletarian class' to a ‘proletarian state', dominated by the Western powers. The Nationalists insisted on the difference between Italy and the ‘Occident', on the glorious past of Italy and on the will to rebuild a “Third Rome”[iii], appealing to recover a far Golden Age. [...]

[...] During the same period Gentile pressed on this idea to the hybrid of what we call now totalitarianism. These concepts were to be widely spread and applied as a national ideology after the big turn of 1925, advocated by Gentile's follower, Ugo Spirito. The first step was to acknowledge that one's perception of the reality (natural sciences included) is embedded in socially constructed schemes –language, classifications etc. Therefore, all human beings are the products of the social mood they grew up in. [...]