Roberto Vivarelli

7/22/2019 Roberto Vivarelli

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Interpretations of the Origins of FascismAuthor(s): Roberto VivarelliSource: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), pp. 29-43Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2938524 .

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Interpretations f the Originsof Fascism*Roberto VivarelliScuola Normale Superiore,PisaTwo preliminarywarningsare in orderbefore I turn to the subject of thisarticle. The first concerns the word "origins." As is rathercommon withwords, "origins" can have more than one meaning. In the present article Iwant the term to be limited to the actualcircumstancesowing to which thefascist phenomenoncame to life. Only by studying these circumstances, Ibelieve, can we graspthe realnatureof fascism. Fromthe very beginning,forexample, the relation between words and deeds among Mussolini and hisfollowers was very peculiar, and words were used not to state any firmconviction, nor to outline a definite political programbut, rather,to arouseemotions that would generate support for a changeable line of action.Language,thatis, was used by fascists not as an instrumentof persuasionbutas a means of deception. As a result, the fascist movementfromits inceptionpresented itself as a purely political phenomenon-that is to say, as amovement created for action which acquirednational relevance throughaskillfully executed plan ending with the seizure of power. But when inOctober 1922 Mussolini became Italy's prime minister, his contemporarieshad no ideaof whatwas in storefor them.Therewas no suchthingas a fascistblueprintfor government, simply because fascism was not an intellectualmovementwith anythingcomparableto a doctrine;and, in fact, among thefascist rank and file one finds at that time the most bizarre and variedcollection of people. Consequently-and this is my second warning-theoriginsof fascism must be studiedin situ, namely,in Italy, andthey mustbeunderstood irst of all within the context of Italianhistory.Such a statementmightappeara meretruism were it not thatin most currenthistorical studies,andparticularlyn the English-speakingworld(indeeda very largearea), dueto sheerignoranceandsubsequentmisrepresentationtalyhas beenpractically

* This is the revised version of a paperpresentedat the InternationalConferenceon Fascism, National Socialism, Antisemitism, Holocaust:Links, Interactions,Dif-ferences, Tel-Aviv, Bar Ilan University, December 11-14, 1989.' See the pertinentremarks n Gilbert Allardyce, "What FascismIs Not:Thoughtson the Deflationof a Concept,"AmericanHistorical Review 84 (1979): 378-85. Butthe deceptive characterof fascism had been beautifully caught in Thomas Mann'sMario und der Zauberer(1930).

[Journalof Modern History 63 (March 1991): 29-431? 1991 by The Universityof Chicago. 0022-2801/91/6301-0002$01.00All rightsreserved.

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30 Vivarelliexpelledfrom thehistoricalmap of modemEurope.2Such anexclusion exactsa price andbrings certain results,one of which is the incapacityto understanda good deal of what went on in Europe duringthe last two centuries; and itcertainly preventshistorians romgraspingthe realityof fascism. Fascism, atleast in its origins, speaks Italian;and in orderto understandwhatfascism wasandhow it came to life one mustfirst restoreItaly to the place it has occupiedin the history of modem Europe.

The very novelty of fascism and the fact that, when Mussolini gainedpower, nobody knew where Italy was going made it very difficult forcontemporarieso understand he fascistphenomenonandto interprett. Since1923, however, there have been a series of attempts from various quartersmaking use of a variety of perspectives. I will easily resist the temptation oreview them all, not only because it has already been done3 but also becausefor a historical understandingof fascism most of these interpretations,advancedbetween 1923 and 1945, areof no help. I prefer, first, to emphasizethose workspublishedbefore 1945 which, in my opinion, madea significantcontributionto the history of the origins of fascism and still deserve to beconsidered; second, to see how the question was presented from 1945 onduringa new phase of study;and finally, to suggest a revised point of viewgrounded in a more accurate historical perspective, the result of belatedwisdom and a number of new studies.Among the works published between 1923 and 1945 the first whichdeserves our attention is Luigi Salvatorelli's Nazionalfascismo, whichappeareda few months after the March on Rome.4 Thoughit is a collectionof articles, it also contains a perceptive introductionin which Salvatorellistresses very convincingly the relationship between the type of nationalismthatpermeated he mentalityof a so-calledpiccola-borghesiaumanistica andfascist ideology. Salvatorellidefined nationalismas an e'tatdesprit rather hanan accomplished political doctrine. This anticipated the more extendedillustrationof Italiannationalism o be found some years later in the pages ofa fascist but nevertheless great historian, GioacchinoVolpe. Volpe, in fact,

2 Here I am not so much thinkingof the state of Italianstudies in English-speakingcountries, which is another story, but of the way Italian history is treated, ormistreated, n generalworks concerningthe history of Europe. See, e.g., with regardto the workby NormanStone, E. Galli della Loggia, "Da Oxford, con approssimazio-ne: I numerisull'Italia," La stampa (Turin), June 10, 1986.3 Renzo De Felice, Le interpretazionidelfascismo (Bari, 1969).

4 Luigi Salvatorelli, Nazionalfascismo(Turin, 1923).



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Interpretationsof the Origins of Fascism 31will group the differenttrendsthatcompoundednationalismunderthe label of"vario nazionalismo italiano."5Salvatorelli was writing when no one yet knew what directionMussoliniwas going to take. Two years later,after the Matteottiaffair, a fascist regimewas established that bore the unmistakable features of a dictatorship. Thisexperience dispelled many doubts about the nature of fascism and manyillusions, still held up to that time by contemporaries, that Mussolini'smovementwouldproveto be compatiblewith thetraditionof the liberal state.Now, with the cards on the table, Mussolini's break with that traditionwasclear. After political liberties were officially brushed aside people could nolonger pretendnot to know what it meant to be a fascist. Therefore, in theirconsciences if not in public, all citizens were compelled to take sides; and,since open political oppositionsoon became impossible, one of the ways totake sides against fascism was to write about it. In a few cases this was doneindirectlyeven by some who remainedin Italy. More commonly, however,andmoredirectly,the origins of fascism were investigated by those who hadleft Italy after 1925. Let us consider in chronological order the mostsignificantworks on this subject produced after 1925.The firstof these works is GaetanoSalvemini's TheFascist Dictatorship inItaly, published in 1927 and 1928.6 Salvemini was already a well-knownhistorian,a professorat the Universityof Florence, who was forced to leaveItaly in the summerof 1925. Fromthattime until his returnafterthe end ofthe war he set himself the task of debunking the active work of fascistpropagandists. In contrast to the false image they were creating, Salveminiwanted to expose the true face of fascist Italy to internationalpublic opinion.Forhis denunciation o be effective it hadto be believed, so it was crucial thathis chargesbe clearly motivated and supportedby solid documentation.As aprofessionalhistorianhe was well equippedto satisfy both these conditions.In fact, in a numberof writingscovering many aspectsof Mussolini's policy,Salvemini was the first studentof Italian fascism to use scholarly standardswhile confrontinghis topic. The resultsare still of the utmost interesttoday;but herewe must limit our attention o those worksconcerningnot the wholehistory of Italian fascism but simply its origins. This is the subject ofSalvemini's TheFascist Dictatorship in Italy, where one finds a full accountof the developmentof fascism from the foundationof the first Fasci in 1919up to the 1925 turnof events. From the very lively picturehe paints, threeelements emerge to form the frameworkof Salvemini's interpretation.The

5 G. Volpe, Italia moderna, vol. 3, 1910-1914 (Florence, 1952), pp. 274-313.6 Gaetano Salvemini, The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy (New York, 1927; London,1928).



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32 Vivarellifirst is fascist violence. Over and over again, through the painstakingrecollectionof a number of episodes, Salvemini shows that fascist violencewas not simply the by-productof a harshpolitical struggletaking place in aperiod of intense emotions; it was, instead, systematic brutalitywhose aimwas to reduceevery opposingvoice to silence, leavingno room forany formof open dissent. The second element concerns the figureof Mussolini, whoSalvemini reveals as a cynical opportunistand a shrewd demagogue ex-tremelyskillful in manipulatingwords andin presentinga different image ofhimself to each audiencehe faced, as well as the main sponsorof violence,which he recognizedas a most effective political weapon. The thirdelementof Salvemini's interpretation oncerns the behavior of the ruling class and,more particularly,of the people in government.It is Salvemini's contentionthatthe secret of Mussolini's victory lay in the benevolentattitude owardhismovementby whichthe various ministers n office madepossible its advance.Salvemini was urgedon in his denunciationby immediatepolitical reasons,namely,the need to warnWesterncountriesagainstthe dangerof fascism byrevealingthe truenatureof Mussolini's dictatorshipand its brutality.At thesame time he had also grasped some of the basic elements of a criticalinterpretation f fascism, to which we will return ater.7

While outside of Italy most attention could concentrateon the fascistphenomenon n itself, in Italyone could approach he questionof the originsof fascism only indirectly. Therefore it was more prudent to turn one'sattention o the historyof the Italianliberal statewith the implicitpurposeofseeing what the relationwas between the liberal state and fascism and whatinternalreasons, if any, had contributed o thecollapse of liberalinstitutions.Two classic worksalong these lines werepublishedas early as 1927 and 1928by Gioacchino Volpe and Benedetto Croce.8 While they are primarilyhistoriesof Italy from the unification to the eve of the war, both works alsocontainimplicit interpretations f the originsof fascism. From Croce's pagesit would seem that fascism stems fromthe crisis producedby the war and thatit had no direct connections with liberal Italy. This is why it has been saidrepeatedly hat in Croce's view fascism was a mere parenthesis n the historyof Italy. In contrast, for Volpe fascism appearsas the accomplishmentof aprocess that had its roots in the ItalianRisorgimentoand thatwas supportedby whoever favoredItaliannationalism,from the time of unificationuntil the

7 On Salvemini's interpretation f fascism, see RobertoVivarelli, "Salvemini e ilfascismo," inAttidel Convegnosu GaetanoSalvemini:Firenze 8-10 novembre1975,ed. Ernesto Sestan (Milan, 1977), pp. 139-56; and Nicola Tranfaglia, "GaetanoSalvemini storico del fascismo," Studi Storici 29 (1988): 903-23.8 G. Volpe, L'Italiain cammino:L'ultimocinquantennio Milan, 1927); B. Croce,Storia d'Italia dal 1871 al 1915 (Bari, 1928).



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Interpretationsof the Origins of Fascism 33Great War. Neither of these two works, however, was of much help forunderstandingn concreteterms the reasonswhy the Italian liberal state hadmanifested so many signs of weakness afterthe war. The man who in thoseyears more directlyset out to answerthatquestionwas a well-knownstudentof economics, Luigi Einaudi. As the editor of the Italian section of theCarnegieFoundationseries on the social and economic historyof the WorldWar, in 1933 Einaudi publishedthe concluding volume of his section, Lacondotta economicae gli effettisociali della guerra italiana.9 Here he clearlypresentsthe factors which, accordingto him, made the Italian iberalstate tooweak to stand the many tensionsof the postwaryears. It is somewhat ironic,I might add, thatthe meaning of Einaudi'swork, thoughunderstoodperfectlywell by the fascists, was not understood at the time or even later byantifascistsor by the scholarlyworld at large. This work does not appearinbibliographieson the originsof fascism. Nevertheless, in Einaudi'spages wedo find an answer to that question-one that in many ways, althoughformulatedin very different terms, is similar to the answer that a youngAmericanscholarof Middle-European rigins,AlexanderGerschenkron,wasto give a few years later about Germany in his Bread and Democracy inGermany.'0On the grounds of very direct experience as a student of theItalianeconomy, Einaudi too pointedout the close relation between econom-ics and politics and the fatal political consequences for liberal institutionsproduced by the recourseto protectionism n 1887. Einaudi was convincedthat, in grantingprivileges and in favoringa nationalisticpolicy, that turn toprotectionismhad somehow sealed the unpopular haracter f the Italianstate,which had actually given up being the guardianof individualrightsand thepromoterof the general interest. And, according to him, those perniciouseffects made it impossible for the liberal state to standthe test of universalsuffrage and free elections after the end of the war."Einaudi's work appeared n 1933-a year in which, with Hitler's ascen-dancy, the power of fascism was expanding. From that moment on, thehistoryof Europeentereda most dramaticstage. It is against this settingthatone must understand heimportanceof whatis still one of the majorworksonthe originsof fascism, La naissance dufascisme: L'Italie de 1918 a 1922, byAngelo Tasca (under the pen name of A. Rossi), published in Paris by

9 Luigi Einaudi,La condotta economica e gli effetti sociali della guerra italiana(Bari, and New Haven, Conn., 1933).'0 Alexander Gerschenkron,Bread and Democracy in Germany (Berkeley, 1943)." Fora close scrutinyof the way Einaudi came to formhis judgment, see RobertoVivarelli, "Liberismo, protezionismo, fascismo: Per la storia e il significato di untrascurato iudizio di Luigi Einaudisulle origini del fascismo," in his Ilfallimento delliberalismo: Studi sulle origini del fascismo (Bologna, 1981), pp. 163-344.



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34 VivarelliGallimard n 1938.12 Tasca'swork is writtenin a terse and brilliantprose. Itis very detailed, yet it goes straightto the issues Tasca intends to single out.It provides a well-documented picture of Mussolini's rise to power in1919-22 and draws succinct but vivid portraits of the main dramatispersonae. All this would be enough to give it an outstanding place in theliteratureon the origins of Italian fascism; but Tasca adds to this a highlyoriginalcontributionconcerning the Socialist party's role in makingMusso-lini's victory possible. In particular,he points out the responsibility of thatsocialist currentcalled "massimalismo," whichhadalreadygainedcontrol ofthe party in 1912 under Mussolini's leadership and which became anoverwhelming majority after the end of the war. In so doing Tasca wasopeningthe way to a new line of researchwhich, on the one hand, called forcloser attention to the impact of the Russian revolution in Italy and to thereasons for thatimpact, butwhich, on the otherhand,remindedevery carefulreaderthatin Italy the most extreme version of socialism had prevailedlongbefore Russia even stirred. This fact by itself opens up a very bafflingquestion, namely, how revolutionarysocialism could prevail in Italy in spiteof liberal institutions.Shortly after the publication of Tasca's work the tragedyof the war fellupon Europe, leaving no room for historicalspeculation. In 1942, however,from safe Americanshores Salvemini traceda new picture of the origins offascism in his "HarvardLectures." 3 In this work, which remainedunpub-lished for a number of years, Salvemini recast his previous interpretation,makingmore room forthetraditionalpolitical forces thatcontrolled he liberalstate and adding the crown and the church to those culprits who sharedresponsibility for Mussolini's victory. Thus the question was raised onceagainof the relationbetweenliberalItalyand fascism and, moreprecisely,ofthe substance of the liberal state beyond its appearances-that is to say, thequestion of the actual working of its institutions and the quality of theliberalism professed by its ruling class. In this way the whole politicaltraditionof Italy was placed in question. Salvemini was not alone in thisconcern. One year later, in 1943, and in a revised edition in 1944, LuigiSalvatorelli published an importantessay, Pensiero e azione del Risorgi-mento, which is quite relevant to our subjecteven though it appearsto dealwith a previousperiod.'4 In reviewing the moral and intellectual forces thatpromoted Italy's unification Salvatorelli reexamined Italian political tradi-

12 A. Rossi [Angelo Tasca], La naissance du fascisme: L'Italie de 1918 a 1922(Paris, 1938).13 G. Salvemini, The Origins of Fascism in Italy, ed. and with an introductionbyR. Vivarelli (New York, 1973).14 Luigi Salvatorelli,Pensiero e azione del Risorgimento (Turin, 1943).



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Interpretationsof the Origins of Fascism 35tions, pointingout that a genuine liberalismhad indeedexisted. His intentionwas to look at the past in order to understand he present:to see whetherfascism representedcontinuityor disruption n relationto the ItalianRisorgi-mento. His answer was unequivocal: the Italian Risorgimento had beeninspired by a liberal tradition of moral and intellectual values that firstnationalismand then fascism had rejected. Thereforefascism deserved to becalled "Antirisorgimento."The question Salvatorelliwas leaving wide openwas, Why hadthatliberaltraditiongradually ost groundandeventually beenoverturned?

This, roughly,was the situationat the end of the Second WorldWar. If wenow turn to the new phase of study thatopened up in 1945 and went on forabouttwenty years, it is notablethat, all in all, very little attentionwas paidto the worksjust mentioned.Salvemini's workswere totally ignoreduntil thebeginningof the 1960s.l5 Perhapseven more significantis the fate of Tasca'swork. An Italian edition of his book did appearin 1950 in a revised andenlargededition, and with a long and most importantpreface.16 In it, Tascaexplained in greatdetail the reasons for his particularconcern with the roleItaliansocialism hadplayed in pavingthe way to fascism, and he pointedouthow tragic it had been for the history of Europe that during the SecondInternational ocialism had turned its back on democracy. In Italy in thoseyears this line of reasoning was bound to meet with more rejection thanagreement, and, ironically, when in the middle of the 1960s Tasca's workreappearedwith another publisher and started circulating in an alreadydifferentsituation,thatimportantprefacewas left out, deprivingthetext of anessentialcommentary.7 The fact is thatrightafter thewarthe prevailing rendamong Italian students of contemporary history was influenced by theCommunistparty,which was imposingboth a highly doctoredversion of itsown historyand an interpretation f the origins of fascism thatwould fit intoa very narrowscheme of class struggle.And if theevidence did nottally withthesetwo accounts,then theevidence had to be eitherdistortedor suppressed.Forcedinto this sort of straitjacket,an interpretationf the originsof fascismcould not go very far. Of course there are some exceptions to this dispiritingpicture. In 1950, for instance, in Paris, Federico Chabod delivered some

15The Italiantranslationof both TheFascist Dictatorshipin Italy, andthe so-calledHarvardLectures, appeared or the firsttime in G. Salvemini, Scritti sulfascismo, acuradi R. Vivarelli (Milan, 1961), vol. 1.16 A. Tasca, Nascita e avvento del fascismo (Florence, 1950), the preface onpp. ix-lxxvii.17 A. Tasca, Nascita e avvento del fascismo (Bari, 1965), con una premessa diRenzo De Felice.



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36 Vivarelliremarkable ectures on contemporaryItaly in which he also dealt with theorigins of fascism.18 But the original mimeographedcopy of this work had avery limited circulation,and anItaliantranslationappearedonly in 1961, afterChabod's death.9 Anotherimportantwork was Storia d'ltalia nel periodofascista, by Luigi Salvatorelli and Giovanni Mira, published in 1956.20However, both of these works treatedthe whole historyof the fascist period,and thus theirattentionto the problem of its origins was necessarily limited.For a real shift marking the beginning of a new investigation based on acritical scrutinyof published and unpublishedsources we must wait for the1960s. But this new direction was anticipated in 1956 by Nino Valeri'sbrilliant book Da Giolitti a Mussolini.2' Valeri was a lavish man who,particularlyn the last part of his life, did not havethe patienceto sift the vastamount of material with which any studentof modem times is confronted.However,he did have a real knack for finding the most significant documentin any huge file, and he had a perceptive mind. His book puts together,chapterby chapter,a short discussion of some very basic questionsconcern-ing the origins of fascism, and it includes a relatedappendix of documents.The discussionis not thoroughandthe documentation s sparse-but Valeri'sremarks are priceless. Above all, by using Giolitti and D'Annunzio asreference points, he brilliantly succeeds in showing how incompatibleGiolitti's frame of mind was with the culture expressedby D'Annunzio, forwhom words did not have and were not intended to have any relation toempirical reality. In so doing Valeri made a great contribution to ourunderstandingof Mussolini's success, not so much because of Mussolini'sdependence on D'Annunzio, which is an open question, but because heshowed how a generation rained n D'Annunzio'sprosecould easily swallowfascist propaganda.Valeriwas, in addition,the firststudentof fascism to useand reveal the importanceof documentskept in public archives.About tenyearslaterValeri's lesson beganto produceconsistentfruit.Withthe publicationin 1965 of Renzo De Felice's first volume of Mussolini'sbiography,22 new trend n the historiography f modernItaly got underway,reopeningthe whole question of theoriginsof fascism on the groundsof freshand much more extended documentation.One can disagree with De Felice'sinterpretation nd with a number of his particularstatements-as, in fact, I

8 Federico Chabod, L'ltalie contemporaine, Conferences donnees a l'Institutd'etudes politiques de l'Universite de Paris(Paris, 1950).'9 Federico Chabod,L'Italia contemporanea(1918-1948) (Turin, 1961).20 Luigi Salvatorelliand GiovanniMira, Storiad'Italia nel periodofascista (Turin,1956).21 Nino Valeri, Da Giolitti a Mussolini: Momenti della crisi del liberalismo(Florence, 1956).22 Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il rivoluzionario, 1883-1920 (Turin, 1965).



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Interpretationsof the Origins of Fascism 37still do.23 But no srenous tudentcan neglect to take into account the materialthatDe Felice has presentedhere for the firsttime, and for this we must begratefulto him. Other researchershave followed De Felice's lead, reviewingthe years during which fascism emerged and came to power by studying newpublishedas well as unpublishedsources. For our purposesit will suffice tomention Paolo Spriano, who, having studied the socialist movementin Turinand the occupationof the factories, wrote a soundly revised history of theCommunistparty;24BrunelloVigezzi, whose painstakingworks on the years1914 and 1915 cleared up many crucial questions about Italy's entryinto thewar (a topic closely related o the originsof fascism);25and myself, who in thesame years producedthe first volume of a large piece of research (still in themaking) on the origins of fascism.26 Since then a number of othermono-graphic studies have appeared, dealing with local history as well as morecircumscribed opics, that have significantly increased our factualknowledgeof the circumstances under which fascists came into power. To review thisvast literature,however, would lead us astrayfrom the purposeof this article,which is to draw some broad conclusions about the shape of our currentinterpretation f the origins of fascism.

* * *In an attempt o rescueit fromthe undeservedneglectinto which it seems tohave fallen, I would like to startmy reevaluation y calling attention o anessayby Hugh Trevor-Roper,"The Phenomenonof Fascism," which appeared n1968.27This important iece of researchdoes not deal simply with Italybut aimsto shed somelighton theEuropean ackground gainstwhich,in Trevor-Roper'sopinion, the whole fascist phenomenonmust be placed for a properunderstand-ing. As in most general interpretations,ome particularpoints are factually

wrongand some particular tatementsare questionable.Nevertheless,Trevor-23 See my review of De Felice's work, "Benito Mussolini dal socialimo alfascismo," Rivista storica italiana 79 (1967): 438-58.24 Paolo Spriano, Socialismo e classe operaia a Turin dal 1892 al 1913 (Turin,1958), Torinooperaia nella grande guerra (1914-1918) (Turin, 1960), L'occupazio-ne delle fabbriche: Settembre 1920 (Turin, 1964), and Storia del Partito comunistaitaliano, vol. 1, Da Bordiga a Gramsci (Turin, 1967).25 Brunello Vigezzi, L'Italia difronte alla prima guerra mondiale, vol. 1, L'Italia

neutrale (Milan and Naples, 1966), andDa Giolitti a Salandra (Florence, 1969).26 R. Vivarelli, Il dopoguerra in Italia e l'avventodelfascismo (1918-1922), vol.1, Dalla fine della guerra all'impresa di Fiume (Naples, 1967); a reprintof this workunderthe title of Storia delle origini delfascismo: L'Italia dalla Grande Guerra allamarcia su Roma, along with a second volume, will come out at Bologna in 1991; athird and final volume remains to be written.27 Hugh Trevor-Roper,"The Phenomenonof Fascism," in European Fascism, ed.S. J. Woolf (London, 1968), pp. 18-38.



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38 VivarelliRoper'sessay drawsa clear and useful distinctionbetweenthetwo componentsof fascist ideology-namely, clerical conservatismanddynamicnationalism-and, above all, it makes the importantpointthat,like the graftof a shootuponolderstock, fascism gainedits strength rom a long tradition f reactionagainstliberalism ndthatantiliberalism as indeedatitsverycore.Now, if we arereadyto accept this view-and the more I study the history of fascism the moreconvincing I find it-we are confronted with another question, one thatTrevor-Ropereft asidebutone thatis.neverthelessquitecompelling.Once werecognize n the historyof Europeprior o 1914the presenceof a basic conflictbetweena liberal radition nd tsenemies;andoncewe knowthatafter1918 thatconflict s revivedby theemergenceof fascism-so that f we painta picturewitha broadbrush rom the FrenchRevolution o the Second WorldWarwe can seethe continuityof a politicalstrugglearound iberalism-then the questionthatbegs an answer s, Whathappened o thisconflict as a resultof the First WorldWar? n otherwords,whatwas the meaningof thatwarwithregardo the conflictbetween liberalismand its enemies?Some years ago an Americanhistorian,Arno Mayer,wrote a book whichintended to show that in Europe the Ancien Regime persisteduntil 1918.28While Mayer's thesis may be overstated, his book is a valuable reminder hata numberof aspects pertainingto the Ancien Regime still existed in Europearound1914 andthatmost of those aspectswere actuallywiped out by 1918.But if this is so-if the First World War marked the end of the AncienRegime-then a reconsiderationof its ideological meaning is in order. It istime, I believe, that we recognize in the years 1914-18 the dramaticconfrontationof two basicallydifferent deasof the state which hadfacedeachotherall throughthe nineteenthcentury. It is time we recognize thatbeyondthemanylies of warpropaganda,andin spiteof thepersonalfeelings of manyactors, Wilson's and his followers' contention that the Entente war was acrusadefor liberalismcontaineda basic truth.This ideological dimension ofthe warstill awaitsits historian, al-thought was expressed in manydocumentsof the tinm,some in favorof the liberalstateandothers against it. Among thelatter I would like at least to single out that most impressive manifesto ofGermanconservatism, Thomas Mann's Betrachtungeneines Unpolitisehen.Mann'swork, it seems to me, still belongs to a conservativepoliticaltraditionstartedby Burke, which in Germanytook a very originalturnin the nameofwhat F. Meinecke called a "konservativerNationalstaatsgedanke.'29What-ever directionthis traditiontook and whatevernew garbit adopted, the fact

28 Amo Mayer,ThePersistenceof the OldRegime:Europeto the Great War NewYork, 1981).29 F. Meinecke, Weltburgertumund Nationalstaat (Munich, 1962), chap. 12,pp. 244 ff.



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Interpretationsof the Origins of Fascism 39remainsthat until the war it still rested on very solid religious, intellectual,and political foundations, and it was part and parcel of a ChristianEurope.And yet with regardto this traditionMann'sBetrachtungenconstituteda realSchwanengesang:by the end of the war the very framein which it was formedhad been smashed. We do not pay sufficientattention,it seems to me, to thefact that the collapse in 1918 of the last vestige of the Ancien Regime impliedalso the end of traditionalconservatism. From 1918 on no political powercould be justifiedany longer in the name of God. As a result, antiliberalismwas strippedof any religious or intellectual frame, with the result that anyreactionagainstthe liberal state was actuallyreducedto sheerviolence. In thename of what traditional principles could fascism move against liberalinstitutions?Furthermore, f at the end of the war liberalism and its twinbrother,democracy,had carried heday whatchance was there for its enemiesto rekindle the fight? And who could these enemies be once the AncienRegime was gone forever?True, in EasternEurope the war had opened theway to a communistrevolution otallyalien to liberalism;butcommunismwasequallyalien to traditional onservatism,and so an alliancebetweenthese twobranchesof antiliberalismwas inconceivable. Nevertheless, communism didplay a crucial role in stirringup a new wave of reaction against the liberalstate, reviving an old fearof socialism which had its roots in 1848 and 1871.And if until the war antiliberalismhad taken a strong stand against theprinciplesof 1789, after the war the new targetwas soon the revolutionof1917 -a shift thatmade anenormousdifference, since presentingtheconflictas a civil warprovideda new battlegroundn which the use of violence couldeasily bejustified. Signs of this new wave of reaction, in which antiliberalismis now disguised as antibolshevism, are already visible by 1919 in manyEuropean countries. Only in Italy, however, did the new conflict betweenliberal and antiliberal forces involve from the very beginning the wholenationalcommunity,giving rise to a true fascist movementwhich would soongain power. That is precisely why, as I saidbefore, in orderto understandheorigins of fascism one must turn to Italy.The opening sentence of Salvemini's "Harvard Lectures" is worthrecalling: "Of the three European countries now under dictatorial rule,Russia, Italy, andGermany[Salvemini was writingin 1942], Italy alone hadformerlya democratic form of government."Therefore it was only in Italy,Salvemini reminds us, that dictatorship followed the collapse of long-established liberal institutions. Consequently, in studying the origins offascism the first question that requires an answer is why this collapseoccurred.30 It hasto be ruledout-and this is the firstpartof the answer-that

30 I havediscussed this point in the introduction o Ilfallimento del liberalismo(n.11 above).



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40 Vivarelliin Italy the collapse of liberal institutions was mainly due to fascism.Mussolinidisplayed anuncommonshrewdness n turning o his advantageanyweakness of the democraticsystem; in so doing he certainly aggravated hesituation. But the reasonsfor that weakness arequite independentof fascismand must be explainedindependently.One of the most common explanationshas been, and at times still is, thatthe general instabilityof the system was due to the war.In shakingtraditionalvalues, in upsettingthe political andsocial order,the warhad created-it hasbeen said-a revolutionarysituation, which in Italy had particularlyseriousrepercussionsboth because of the way the country had entered the war andbecause of diplomaticproblemsafter its end. This is all very well, but suchan answerneglects to considerproperlytwo facts. The firstis thatin Italy,aswell as in the rest of WesternEurope, the end of the war actually opened theway to democracy.In Italythe firstfree elections withuniversalmale suffragewere the elections of 1919. The second fact is thatthe Italianpolitical systemwas alreadyon the verge of a crisis before 1914 for reasons which obviouslyhad nothingto do with the war.A secondexplanation or thecollapse of liberalinstitutionshas been thatinItaly those institutions were seriously shakenby the attackof revolutionarysocialism. As we may remember, this is precisely the answer advanced in1938 by Angelo Tasca;andit certainlycontains a largeamountof truth. More'recent studies have confirmed Tasca's thesis in general terms. On theinternational cene, Arno Mayer's Political Origins of the New Diplomacy,published n 1959, has rightly pointedout that one of the mainreasons for thefailureof Wilson's policy was the fact thatthe so-called forces of movement(namely, the socialists) had been progressively spellboundby the Russianrevolution and turned their back on democracy just when it most urgentlyneeded theirsupport.31 On the domestic scene, a vast numberof monographson local situationsas well as on generalaspectsof socialist policy during theyears 1918-22 have proved beyond any doubt how fatally damagingrevolutionary ocialismwas in upsettingthe Italianparliamentary egime andin spreadingall overthecountrythe fear of a civil war.32It is well known howwell this fear played into the hands of the fascists. And yet this is not the

31 ArnoMayer,Political Origins of theNew Diplomacy (New Haven,Conn., 1959).32In addition to Tasca's work, see, e.g., Pietro Nenni, Storia di quattro anni(1919-1922) (Rome, 1946); AlessandroRoveri, Le origini delfascismo a Ferrara,1918-1921 (Milan, 1974); Ivano Granata, "Socialismo e fascismo nei comuni delLodigiano(1919-1922)," in Movimentocontadinoe fascismo nel Lodigiano (1915-1930), a cura di B. Bezza (Milan, 1983), pp. 31-89, and Sindacato e crisi dellademocrazia:La Camera del lavoro di Milano dallo "splendore" del biennio rossoallo scioglimento (1919-1925) (Milan, 1986); and Vivarelli, Storia delle origini delfascismo (n. 26 above), vol. 2.



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Interpretationsof the Origins of Fascism 41whole story. Revolutionarysocialism was a Europeanphenomenon,and inthose years the Russian revolution stirredup emotionsthroughoutEuropeandgathereda following which would soon form the various Communistparties.But only in Italy among the main European countries did revolutionarysocialism (under the name of massimalismo) gain the leadership of theSocialist partyas early as 1912; only in Italydid the Socialistpartycome outunanimously against the war from the very beginning; only in Italy did thewhole Socialist partyline up with the Bolsheviks and, in 1919, unanimouslyjoin the Third International;ndonly in Italydid revolutionary ocialism gainvast popular support all over the country and did the Russian revolutionbecome a popular myth. All these peculiarities demandan explanation, forwhich I believe one has to go a little furtherback in the history of the liberalstate. In short, I would suggest that the success of revolutionary ocialism inItalywas mostly due to the unpopular haracterof the liberalstate. Why wasthe liberal statelacking in popularsupport?In previousworksI have alreadyaddressed hat question, thecomplexity of which cannotbe donejustice to ina few words.33Here I will limit myself to pointingout just one simple fact.On the eve of the war, when the Italiangovernment granteduniversal malesuffrage, popularfeelings remained at best alienated and often hostile to thestate. This was the situationwhen Italyenteredthe war;andthis is why someyears ago I suggested that, in contrast o Germanyand invertingFritzStem'sformulation,in Italy we can properly speak of a failureof liberalism.34Now, then, we can finally ask, What was the relationbetween thefailure ofItalianliberalismand the rise of fascism? In examining the period of historyin which we still live, it seems to me that too often we neglect to considerwhat the real revolutionof ourtimes has been. Priorto anddirectlyconnectedwith phenomenasuch as the industrialandthe Frenchrevolutions, there was,I believe, a radical change in the religious as well as in the intellectualframeworkof Europe-one thatquicklyinvolved all aspectsof publiclife andthat I think we might call a liberal revolution.35 It was precisely thisrevolutionthatintroduceda totally new idea of liberty, which soon produceddevastating effects. Due to this change the modern state is no longer areligious society-that is, a communityof believers conformingto the rules

33 See, e.g., R. Vivarelli, "Italia liberale e fascismo: Considerazionisu di unarecente storiad'Italia," Rivista storica italiana 82 (1970): 669-703.34 In Ilfallimento del liberalismo (n. 11 above), pp. 5-22. And see F. Stem, TheFailure of Illiberalism: Essays on the Political Culture of Modern Germany (NewYork, 1972).

35 Though I read it in a very differentkey, the phenomenon has been somewhatperceivedwith regardto the origins of fascism by Ernst Nolte: see Charles S. Maier,The UnmasterablePast: History, Holocaust, and GermanNational Identity (Cam-bridge, Mass., 1988), pp. 25-27.



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42 Vivarelliof the same church-as is clear if we look at thatcountry,the United States,wherethe effects of thischangehavebeen mostvisible. Andin addition o thismost radicaltransformation, very person's social stationis now exposed tothe unpredictablewind of economic change. It is the priceof an open society.Under these circumstancesit is not at all surprisingthat liberalismhas metwith very greatresistance.Nor is it surprising hatwith the gradualdecline oftraditionalvalues andtraditional onservatism his resistanceto liberalismhasfound new ways to express itself. The most notableof these new ways wasnationalism, understoodnot just as those movements in favor of nationalunificationbut also as that new aggressive drive towardnational expansionwhich grew up in Europeafter 1870 in alreadyunified countries. And in anumberof cases this new resistanceto liberalism ook the shapeof radicalism.It is rathercommon in our studies to lump togetherthese various forms ofradical reactionto liberalism, which we find abundantly rom 1890 to 1914,underthe label of fascism. This tendencymustbe firmlyresisted. I thinkthatwithregard o the historyof the liberalstate these forms of radical lliberalismare ratherephemeral, playing a very marginal role in the fate of liberalinstitutionsand in the origins of fascism. And, once again, this is preciselywhat we learnfrom the Italiancase.Indeed,priorto 1914 Italytoo exhibitednationalistic endenciesas well asa number of examples of a radical illiberalism. Nevertheless, left tothemselves, these forces never endangered he life of the liberalstate. Thosewho want to know what was wrong with the Italian liberal state can safelyleave aside these external forces and direct their attention, instead, to theinternalcontradictions hat made its institutionsunstable. The same consid-erations applyto the period after 1918. The ingredientsof a fascist reactionwere alreadyavailableat the end of the war. There was Mussolini with hisnewspaper; heFasciwere foundedin March 1919;andnationalismhadfoundin D'Annunzioa charismatic eader. However, the historyof the years 1919and 1920 in Italycan very well be studiedleavingfascism in the background.Only fromthe end of 1920 when, confrontedwith urgentsocial andpoliticalproblems, liberal institutionsproved incapableof offering viable solutions,did fascism become a phenomenonof nationalrelevance. But Mussolini'ssuccess was due to the fact that from the end of 1920 his movement wassponsoredby the forces of traditionalconservatismwith which it practicallymerged.Eventually,fascism would succeedin defeatinga liberalstatewhich,for its own reasonsand becauseof its own faults, hadalready ost all vitality.This is why Salveminiwas rightin pointingout thatthe secret of Mussolini'svictory was precisely the supporthe found in the liberal state itself.

From this storywe can perhapsdraw a general lesson. Todaywe live in aworld wherethe demandfor liberal-democraticnstitutions s rapidlyincreas-



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Interpretationsof the Origins of Fascism 43ing. The alternative o liberalismmay no longer be fascism, butwhatevernewforms it takes, the reaction to liberalism is bound tobe a brutaltyrannyquiteincompatiblewith the principlesof Westerncivilization. And yet liberalism sa very delicate plant, and in orderto work liberal institutionsrequire manyspecific material circumstances and even more spiritual and intellectualconditions. As the Italian case after the First World Warclearly shows, theformal existence of a liberal democratic governmentcertainly is not enough.Democracywas a challenge which, in 1922, Italy lost. In otherterms, in mostpartsof the world, it is a challenge still.

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Roberto Vivarelli