religion and political culture in the thought of mussolini
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Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,Vol. 6, No. 3, 395–406, December 2005
ISSN 1469-0764 Print/1743-9647 Online/05/030395-12 © 2005 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14690760500317776
Religion and Political Culture in the Thought of Mussolini
DIDIER MUSIEDLAK
University of Paris X, NanterreTaylor and Francis LtdFTMP_A_131760.sgm10.1080/14690760500317776Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions1469-0764 (print)/1743-9647 (online)Original Article2005Taylor & Francis63000000December [email protected]
The very statement that religion occupies an important dimension in the thoughtof Mussolini constitutes a kind of paradox. It is indeed well established thatMussolini, as a leader of the Socialist Party until his eviction from the PSI inNovember 1914, was not only a socialist, but an atheist into the bargain. Conse-quently, everything seems to conspire to preclude a conception of politics inwhich we would find a religious point of reference.
In fact, as Emilio Gentile has already shown, the young Mussolini neverthelessconceived his political activity as being very close to religious practice. It there-fore needs to be defined in terms of a political doctrine which drew on the sacredand was expressed as an act of faith. This expression of faith is linked to the idiomof the secular religions born with the advent of mass society.
Below, I look first at the conditions of this new definition of political culture.Then, I consider how this religious vein was reincorporated by Mussolini intofascist political doctrine.
Political Space and Religious Space in the Shaping of the Young Mussolini
Throughout his formative years, the definition of socialism as an expression of areligious faith remained a constant in Mussolini’s thought. But it was especially inthe course of his stay in Switzerland between 1902 and 1904, when the youngMussolini was confronted with one kind of European culture, that the future Ducebegan to elaborate a mythology capable of controlling the masses. The phenome-non is linked to the process of the sacralisation of politics which had been devel-oping in tandem with modern democracy, particularly since the FrenchRevolution. Other stages in the shaping of Mussolini – his spell in the city of Trentas secretary of the Socialist Section, then his return to Italy after 1910 – confirmthis as the source of his inspiration.
The Swiss Stay
This Swiss interlude from 1902 to 1904 seems of more fundamental importance toMussolini’s intellectual formation than does the inheritance he had received fromhis native Romagna as passed on to him by his father, Alessandro.1 The mutation
Correspondence Address: Didier Musiedlak, 56 rue Michel Ange, 75016, Paris. Email: [email protected]
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of his ideas is bound up first of all with the milieu in which he lived during thisperiod. His cultural horizons widened abruptly as a result of his move fromRomagna to the cosmopolitan setting of the great Swiss cities. During this period,Mussolini perfected his French and began to learn German, which became indis-pensable when he spread his propaganda in Bern from March 1903 onward.2
Indeed, it was in Switzerland that Mussolini became aware of the importance ofculture in the revolutionary movement, and of the necessity of adapting it inorder to confront the crisis which was shaking all Western societies.
Only once he was outside Italy did Mussolini become versed in the big anthro-pological debates of his time. The newly acquired knowledge led to his renewedquestioning of the nature of Man. By the time he left Switzerland in 1904, theyoung Mussolini had gained an essentially biological perception of the world. Itprovided him with a justification of materialism. This was the first great turningpoint in his development.
His conversion comes to light on 25 March 1904 in the Lausanne maison dupeuple, where he was pitted against the evangelical minister Alfredo Tagliatela ina debate on the proposition that ‘God does not exist: science proves that religionis an absurdity, is actually immoral, and is a disease among men’.
Examination of the registers of the university library of Geneva allows us togain a better understanding of how the young Mussolini prepared himself for thismeeting. What he read in the library in the course of March (specifically between2 and 24 March) is particularly illuminating; so too is what he read in April, in theimmediate aftermath of the debate. Without going into detail, the evidence on thispoint is unambiguous. With the exception of the dominant figure of the Marxistphilosopher Antonio Labriola, Mussolini manifestly preferred reading thinkersused mainly by the Right, whom he got to know through social Darwinism andGerman philosophy, to the great authorities of classical Marxism. The works heconsulted are mainly examples of an anthropology whose guiding principleswere inequality, the question of the selection of the species, and decline. Theworks of Ludovic Stein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Alfred Fouillée and even Eduardvon Hartmann predominate.3 All the works he consulted works furnish evidenceof an engagement with the death of God and with religion of a traditional kind.
The texts he read in Geneva in 1904 share another characteristic: they all posequestions about the foundations of morality. This issue was broached by Mussoliniat least three times, in connection particularly with major works by Jean-MarieGuyau and Nietzsche. Guyau’s L’esquisse d’une morale sans obligation ni sanction [ASketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction] had been published in 1888;Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil had been written in the winter of 1885–86 and hisOn the Genealogy of Morality in 1886.
What the sources used by Mussolini have in common is that they make moralitydependent on psychology, physiology and biology within a framework ofevolutionist thinking dominated by the figure of Herbert Spencer. In the spirit ofmaterialist claims and in opposition to the creationists, this was capable of beingintegrated into socialism. But so abstract a framework went far beyond the anti-clerical tradition of the Romagna, because it inserted anti-clericalism into anapparatus which had scientific pretensions. By the time he left Switzerland,Mussolini was a convinced disciple of scientific materialism.
Of course, the second contribution his Swiss stay made was to his conversion toMarxism. On his arrival in Switzerland, Mussolini knew precious little about it.With the exception of the Communist Manifesto, he had read nothing by Marx.4 For
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Religion and Political Culture in the Thought of Mussolini 397
him, a greenhorn in the subject, Marxism was – to adopt his own expression – aworld populated by ‘deities’.5 Like many Italian socialists, he knew practicallynothing of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht or indeed most of the German theo-rists. It was thanks to the Russian émigré Angelica Balabanoff, who had decidedto settle down in Switzerland in 1902, that Mussolini began to get acquainted withMarxist doctrine. He was introduced to it in the course of their encounters inLausanne in March 1904, at the time of the anniversary of the Paris Commune.The influence of Angelica Balabanoff was decisive, and came as a real shock to therough-hewn young provincial. No doubt he was impressed by this young woman(she was then 26 years old), who was both solidly grounded in Marxist cultureand had enjoyed an international university education – something he lacked.The debt he owed to her was immense, as he was later to confess to Yvon DeBegnac.6
It was also during this Genevan period that Mussolini began to learn thebasics of Marxist doctrine by means of his own reading. The analysis of hislibrary loans in Geneva confirms that it was indeed Antonio Labriola’s interpre-tation that initiated him into Marxism. In Labriola’s essay Le matérialismehistorique, Mussolini was able to find a key to reading with which he wasalready very familiar. The importance it attached to social psychology in thehistorical process allowed him to establish a bridge with his reading ofthe French and German authorities discussed above: to ‘naturalise’ history, asLabriola put it, by according an autonomous role to the representations but alsoto the actions of men.7
It was in this spirit that he committed himself to the revolutionary syndicalistmovement. Indeed, he pronounced against the reformist line of the Italian SocialistParty defended by F. Turati and L. Bissolati. He took a clear position in favour ofthe Revolutionary Trade Union activists who had begun to organise themselves inthe course of the Congress of Imola in 1902. From 2 September, the group had itsown organ, L’Avanguardia Socialista. It is indicative of his commitment that from 25October 1903 Mussolini became the review’s Swiss correspondent.
From the outset, Marxism and revolutionary syndicalism coexisted inMussolini’s mind. He placed Marx, Engels and Kautsky together in the samepantheon as Georges Sorel.8 Mussolini was introduced to Sorel’s positions for thefirst time on 21 June 1903 by L’Avanguardia Socialista when the review publishedL’Avenir socialiste des syndicats in Italian. What he found there was confirmation ofa central tenet: the superiority of culture. But there he could also read of howimmense the task assigned to the proletariat was. It was certainly necessary tobuild a new world, but what Sorel emphasised was above all the moral energywhich must animate it, and he compared the proletariat’s mission to that of a newchurch. It had to respond to the moral disaster provoked by the decline of thebourgeoisie, and to do so above all at the level of values, of what Michael Freundcalls a new metaphysics of customs.9 Because of the prominent place it granted tomoral willpower and to energy, Mussolini was perfectly equipped to find himselfat home in Sorelian revisionism. But his knowledge of Sorel’s work was mani-festly rather cursory at this point.
Thus, in Switzerland, Mussolini had delved into the ways of scientific material-ism. He had learned about Marxism from works of Labriola and Sorel in particular.He was convinced that any revolution had to be made first and foremost in culture,and that it was necessary for the new era to radiate a new faith comparable to thefervour of the early Christians.
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The shaping of Mussolini received a new inflection from the impulse ofGerman cultural influence between November 1908 and September 1909. It madea profound impression on him.
The German Inflection (November 1908–September 1909)
Contrary to the myth, Mussolini understood three languages (French, Germanand English) and spoke two, French and German, the German with a badaccent.10 Two moments may be distinguished here. The first concerns the partici-pation of Mussolini in the debate organised with Claudio Trèves in the municipaltheatre of Forli on 22 November 1908.11 The subject was ‘the philosophy of force’.What was at issue was nothing less than delivering a verdict on Nietzsche’s workand on the central question of Wille zur Macht – the will to power. The secondmoment is linked to Mussolini’s spell in the city of Trent where, on 6 February1909, he accepted the position of secretary of the Camera del Lavoro and of the localbranch of the Socialist Party.
The November 1908 debate on the philosophy of force allowed him to resumehis ‘dialogue’ with Friedrich Nietzsche. Until that date, Mussolini had not engagedwith Nietzsche’s work directly, but with a selection of texts, or more precisely withthe representation and edition of his work by Henri Lichtenberger. It was duringhis Swiss period that Mussolini had begun to penetrate Nietzsche’s universe, firstusing the Lichtenberger translation, then resorting to the original text.12 Contraryto the impression he later sought to create, however, his access to the oeuvre itselfhad remained very patchy. The selection in French which he had read in 1898 wasessentially dominated by long extracts from Thus Spake Zarathustra. Thereafter,Mussolini had returned repeatedly to the links he had forged with Nietzsche’sideas. Margherita Sarfatti and Emil Ludwig provided the echo chamber. In aspeech he delivered on 26 May 1934 he officially proclaimed himself a follower ofNietzsche. From 1930 onward, the question of the influence of Nietzsche’s work onMussolini’s thought had been posed by Max Oehler.13
Did Mussolini consider Nietzsche as poet, as philosopher or as politician? Inthe defence of his thesis at the University of Erlangen in 1936, Gerhard Marohnpicked up on this question.14 In a third stage, the case was deepened by ErnstNolte in the 1960s.15 In the course of his enquiry, the philosopher concluded thatMussolini had situated himself between Marx and Nietzsche, but especially thathe had never departed from his revolutionary socialism. According to Nolte’sclassic interpretation, Mussolini had also been seduced by a hymn of praise toaction.
It now seems to be generally accepted that, as Gaudens Megaro had alreadynoted in 1938, Mussolini’s presentation of Nietzsche’s work added up to theassimilation of the categories in which Nietzsche thought.16 Were these ‘NewMen’, cruel and capable of strong volition, compatible with a socialist project?Certainly, the new metaphysics developed around the superman could subscribeto this quest for a new ideal, which dominated the young Mussolini’s emotionaland intellectual attitudes at a moment when socialism was, according to Renzo deFelice, in crisis. However, Nietzsche’s philosophy embedded itself in a right-wingimagination haunted by the decline and decay of the species, and by a myth ofrefoundation and redemption whose last recourse was to the idea of a primordialepoch. Because of these characteristics, Nietzsche’s work was incapable of beingassimilated by a socialist.
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Religion and Political Culture in the Thought of Mussolini 399
Mussolini’s interest in the ‘New Man’, who was to be created through thepromotion of a new culture, continued throughout his stay in the city of Trent. Inspite of its brevity (it lasted only from 6 February to 26 September 1909), thisperiod constitutes an important moment in his intellectual and ideologicalevolution. It was then that his attraction to the proponents of inequality, and tothose who saw vital forces of imperialism as the necessary condition for thesurvival of the species, became emphatic.
In the first place, it was in this period that he renewed his dialogue withevolutionist culture. The occasion was the centenary of Charles Darwin’s birth,which Mussolini marked with an article in Il Popolo (11 February 1909).17 Thisinterest in evolutionist doctrines was confirmed in the same year in the study ofpan-Germanism – Trentino as seen by a Socialist – which Mussolini began to draft atthe end of 1909. The work was published in its entirety as a monograph in 1911.18
Fragments of the text had appeared from 1910 onward. The work was in threeparts, of which the first concerned theoretical pan-Germanism.19
For this first part of the study, a close examination of the text demonstrates thatit rests principally on Ernest Seillière’s long article published in the same year inthe Revue des Deux Mondes.20 The author was not an unknown quantity. Hisnumerous works on the philosophy of imperialism had brought him an interna-tional reputation.21 In many respects, Seillière was close to that current within theFrench Right which rejected positivism, and in turn lauded natural inequality,force and the primacy of the body in the context of the will to power. His writingshad given rise to discussion in Austria and Germany, in particular by LudwigGumplowicz in the Viennese review Die Wage of August 1907, and also in Italy byScipio Sighele.22 Seillière’s personality could not but seduce Mussolini, because heallowed him to synthesise his thoughts on imperialism as a concept. The source ofhuman actions lay in man’s fundamental tendency to outward expansion inconsequence of the superabundance of his energy, and was encapsulated in theconcept of ‘will to power’ developed by Nietzsche. Imperialism was thus theanswer to a problem posed by the primitive nature of man and his environment.
So, with a set of values that were to be the exclusive property of an élite minority,Mussolini found himself on familiar ground. He picked up on the tradition ofErnest Renan, for whom the victory of Prussia was that of a certain type ofdisciplined man, a sort of ‘Vendée of the North’, led in the name of an ancient aris-tocratic and military culture at the expense of a nation beset by failing energy inconsequence of its having banished heroism.23 His approach also allowed him tocombine all this with Sorel’s positions. Sorel, for his part, did not limit the retentionof such virtues as heroism or discipline to the Germanic race, but held them toapply to all aristocracies endowed with a war culture. Finally, it was thus possiblefor him to introduce into the mix the teachings on the priority to be given to culturalfactors of the master of Italian Marxism, Antonio Labriola.
The primacy accorded to culture, no less than to the search for this New Mancapable of endeavour and of will, allows us to understand the link betweenMussolini and the current represented by Giuseppe Prezzolini in the review LaVoce. So their meeting was not a matter of chance.24 It occurred in the context ofthe maturation of Mussolini’s thought, and the difficult quest for a synthesisbetween revolutionary socialism, philosophic idealism and certain concepts stem-ming from the evolutionist school. In any case, it marked a new stage in theexpansion of his intellectual horizons.25 Here, Mussolini found confirmation ofwhat he had been thinking for years, in particular about the place in the process of
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the regeneration of man occupied by culture, and by the formation of élites. Theinnovative character of La Voce, with its critical spirit, its non-conformism and itsindependence, played a not insignificant role on the mind of a man who was ‘insearch of new characters, of new values, of New Men’. Prezzolini’s pronouncedapproval of the revolutionary trade unions, whether in respect of the generalstrike as an expression of a war culture and a new myth, or of the sense of missionSorel’s theses had devolved to the proletariat, brought a little coherence toMussolini’s thought. However, his contact with the review did not get beyond apurely personal level. It rested essentially on the rapport Mussolini had estab-lished with Prezzolini. Mussolini remained hostile, on the other hand, to any kindof nationalist imperialism.
According to his conception of the primacy of culture, the renovation of Italywas to be accomplished through a policy of spiritual regeneration rather than inan adventure of external imperialism. Mussolini was against any policy of war,limiting himself to preaching, as Seillière did, in favour of an imperialism of ‘menof letters’. Besides, Mussolini was temperamentally inclined to keep his distancefrom the idealism of the review because of the place occupied by vital energy inhis hierarchy of values, and because of his biological representation of existence.For him, Man was above all a being made of flesh and blood with all their atten-dant physiological demands, dominating but also dominated by his naturalpropensities. Thus violence remained above all ‘a physical, material, musculardemonstration’ of the human being conceived of as the holder of power.Expropriation meant ‘the elimination’ – in the physical sense of the word – of thepartisans of the Ancien Régime, since any great social transformation had to beconsecrated in the blood of men.26
His stay in the city of Trent certainly did not make Mussolini into a nationalistactivist or an irredentist. But there can be no doubt that it contributed to anchor-ing still more firmly in his mind the primacy of culture in the shaping of therevolutionary élite. At the point of his return to the countryside, his revolutionarysocialism was dominated by an idealism which was to continue to determine thedirection of his thinking until the war. But he was also strongly influenced by aright-wing universe according to which the crisis originated in spiritual decline,in the corruption of values. Intellectual and moral reform was the necessarycondition of reformation.
Mussolini was evicted from Trent for subversive conspiracies on 26 September1909. Over the next two years, between 1910 and 1912, he made every effort toforge a revolutionary identity within the socialist movement before trying tospread it on a national level. This presents us with the question as to how, duringthis period and in a context of his becoming politically active on his native soil,Mussolini perceived the world. On his return to Forli in Romagna, he took on theleading role in the periodical La Lotta di classe. What was Mussolini’s position inrelation to Marxism at this time?
According to him, Marxism could bring no theoretical solution to the problemsof the moment. On 19 March 1910, Mussolini admitted in a polemical article thatrevision was underway within Marxism, with minds as powerful as those ofBenedetto Croce, Labriola and Sorel at work.27 But barely a few months later, on 2July 1910, he wrote the death certificate of revolutionary trade unions which, inhis view, had followed the French example in becoming gangrenous by dint oftheir electioneering. He showed himself greatly concerned about Italy’s future.Mussolini broke with the representatives of the revolutionary trade unions in the
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Religion and Political Culture in the Thought of Mussolini 401
autumn of 1910, when he blamed the master, Sorel, directly. The latter was nowdenounced as a pacifist pensioner, for having gone over to the Right, to Joan ofArc – in a word, to the old order.28 In a matter of months, the revolutionary tradeunions had, according to Mussolini, been relegated to a supporting act. In thiscontext, it was more than ever necessary ‘to develop a specific culture’ at onceadapted to the actions and corresponding to the expressions of what Mussolinicalled a ‘new faith’.29 After his victory at the Congress of Reggio Emilia in 1912and his appointment to the management of the newspaper Avanti! he made arenewed attempt to win disciples of this new faith over to his cause. The FirstWorld War demonstrated to him that socialism had proved powerless in the faceof a new reality: the nation. From that point to his foundation of fascism,Mussolini pinned his hopes on a new vehicle, the ‘aristocracy of the trenches’.
After the foundation of fascism, Mussolini continued to espouse elements of theideas he had previously accumulated: the primacy granted to culture in the policyof renovation, and a conception of political experience as religious expression.
The Filiation of Fascism
A number of elements were indeed incorporated into the new vision of the worldwhich gave birth to fascism. Culture continued to occupy pride of place. Itremained what it had been in Mussolini’s youth: the organic element, facilitatingthe connection between life and politics.30 For him, any culture must be strictlyorganised to overlap with the life cycle which gave it meaning. As with Sorel, allhistory was located in culture and in the organisation of life. According to theGerman Georg Mehlis, who had stayed in Italy in the mid-1920s, it is this thatconstituted the essence of fascism.31 Mussolini and his doctrine had forged analliance with the biggest ‘cultural phenomenon of the present’ (‘Kulturerscheinungder Gegenwart’).
Mussolini found himself in harmony with a philosophical current representedby Henri Bergson, Georg Simmel and Wilhelm Dilthey, but also by Goethe,Nietzsche and especially Oswald Spengler. For all the differences between them,they shared an adherence to the principle that the phenomenon of life lay at thesource of all concepts, and that the truth was situated within a culture defined asa living organism. To return to a formulation used even by Spengler (in TheDecline of the West), the cultivated man draws his energy from within himself,whereas the civilized man does so from the outside.32 Imperialism, according toSpengler, was associated with the aggression he considered natural to Westernman. It was a view close to that adopted by the young Mussolini first in Switzer-land, then in Trent, as a result of his having read Nietzsche and Seillière. In TheDecline of the West, we also find one of the subjects dearest to Mussolini’s heart,namely an expansionist propensity lived as fate, the idea that life itself must beunderstood as an extension of the realm of the possible.
Associated with the cycle of life, the world of culture was also exposed todecline. According to Nietzsche, this amounted to a purely natural and thereforeinevitable phenomenon. According to his famous formulation in a fragment writ-ten in the spring of 1888, ‘man does not progress’.33 Socialism is the enemy of life.Great politics is only made possible once the point of degeneracy has beenreached. Linked to modernity, the process of the diminution of man had been alsodenounced by Barrès, Sorel and Maurras.34 But it was certainly Nietzsche whohad gone furthest in criticising modernity. However, he did not identify it as the
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motive force at the core of Western culture. According to Spengler, Nietzsche hadcontented himself with proposing the ‘revaluation of all values’ (‘Umwertung allerWerte’) without delving into the origins of nihilism.35
Spengler’s contribution to Mussolini’s thought during his fascist period was firsthighlighted by Renzo de Felice in 1974.36 According to de Felice, Mussolini hadbegun to acquire a direct knowledge of Spengler’s work in the second half of the1920s. Spengler had stayed in Italy in 1925, and had had a brief exchange of letterswith the Duce. But the first occasion for which we have direct evidence of Musso-lini’s engagement with Spenglerian ideas dates to 1928, when Mussolini personallytook charge of the publication in Italian of the work of a young Bavarian statisti-cian, Richard Kohrherr. In the Süddeutsche Monatshefte, the author, a follower ofSpengler, had published an essay on the fall in the birth rate. The article had beennoticed by Mussolini.37 The work appeared in Italian in the party’s own bookseries, with a double-preface – under a suggestive title (’Regression of Births: Deathof Peoples’) – by Mussolini and Spengler. Kohrherr’s demonstration of a fall in thebirth rate left its mark on the philosophy of the author of The Decline of the West.The fall in the birth rate was an obvious manifestation of the evil gnawing away atthe West. Through urbanisation and civilisation, the disease had graduallypenetrated into its very tissues, rendering man sterile, incapable of taking up thechallenge of racial renewal. Since the spring of 1927, Mussolini had at the least beenaware that Italy was affected by this trend. The West, according to the Duce, wasthus confronted with a real danger to its very survival. In his part of the Preface,Spengler had advanced the hypothesis that, in the light of this very pessimisticdiagnosis, Italy was the country best able to fight this plague precisely because ofMussolini’s presence and his pro-natal policy. But demographic recovery was notassociated in the Duce’s mind only with state policy. The manipulation of the‘birth-rate coefficient’ proposed by Spengler did not resolve everything by itself.The source of change had above all to be of a qualitative order. It was located in thevalues held by families, in this new generation forged by the fascist faith. Accord-ing to Mussolini, it was precisely this that distinguished ‘the fascist people’ fromthe other European peoples, and allowed him to pin his hopes on the possibility ofan eventual redemption.
The Duce was thus in agreement with Spengler concerning the significancewhich ought to be accorded to values. All culture was the expression of the life ofa people and represented a totality from the perspective of spiritual expression,every culture generating its own humanity with its own morality, and theirreligious and philosophical representations. Through this train of thought, ‘highculture’ was likened to the consciousness possessed by a powerful organism.
Mussolini’s interest in Spengler was, therefore, essentially dictated by hispreoccupation with the content of an anthropological revolution whose bearerwithin a totalitarian framework was fascism. Spengler’s concepts of race and ofthe primacy of culture merged with Mussolini’s own views. According to theexpression actually used by Spengler in Years of the Decision (August 1933), racewas above all an ethos, and so unconnected to the fashionable conceptions of racethen current.38 Like Spengler, and in contrast to the Nazis, Mussolini thoughtlooking back in order to rediscover biological racial unity to be impossible, sincepeoples had intermingled. But still more than Spengler did, Mussolini thoughtthat fascism made it possible to change the individual by widening the compe-tence of the state so that it could reach the heart of civil society. The idea receivedits concrete expression in the principle according to which ‘the state creates the
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Religion and Political Culture in the Thought of Mussolini 403
nation’, to quote Emilio Gentile.39 The project entailed an attempt to harnessculture in all its forms (art, religion, science) in the same way as the attempt toharness education was made.40 Race was understood voluntaristically, with avalorisation of a spiritual dimension within a European framework. In thiscontext, Italy with its model of a ‘new man’ showed the way to the other peoplesof the West. The experience of fascist regeneration thus offered Western man thepossibility not only of assuring his own survival, but of transcending himself.
The importance attached to culture is perceptible throughout the life of theregime. It is present, of course, in Giovanni Gentile’s concept of the ethical state.Fascism was above all a ‘total consciousness of life’. It was therefore hardly possi-ble to make subtle distinctions between the fascist engaged in political life, atschool, at the office or within his own family.41 In this setting, intellectuals wereseen as the guardians of values. The matter of spiritual regeneration wasdevolved to them as the heroes of a new age conceived in non-materialist terms.By participating in the restoration of culture, the intellectuals worked for theconsolidation of society. Numerous fascist intellectuals defined this spiritualunity as the central element in the process of regeneration, and the condition ofrebirth and creativity. The fascist must be capable of describing the nation inaesthetic terms. The magisterial influence exercised over the Duce by MargheritaSarfatti illustrates the real interest which Mussolini invested in culture. It was onher initiative that the task of getting l’Enciclopedia Italiana underway wasentrusted to Giovanni Gentile.42
For Mussolini, fascism could be understood only as the expression of areligious faith. The principle had clearly been reaffirmed in the article on fascismin l’Enciclopedia Italiana:
fascism is a religious concept, in which man is seen in his immanentconnection to a superior law, to an objective Will which transcends theindividual, and the student is seen as the conscious member of a spiritualsociety. In fascist politics, whoever stops at purely opportunistic consid-erations understands nothing of fascism.43
The necessity of implementing this programme had been underscored at thebeginning of the epic struggle for national unity. The phrase ‘religion of the patria’had been used by Mazzini since the Risorgimento.44 According to him, that enter-prise had lacked the aid of the masses and the definition of a faith. Yet thesewould have been essential to the consolidation of the new state, and the solemeans of assuring its moral and social unity. Therefore, the work of the Risorgi-mento was inevitably incomplete. In his past as a socialist, Mussolini had repeat-edly returned to the religious content toward which socialist doctrine must bedirected. He had neatly brought this back to mind in the context of the Congressof Reggio Emilia in 1912, where he had argued very clearly that humanity neededa credo.45 Then again, privately he had not concealed from Prezzolini that, givenhis religious conception of socialism, he felt a little out of place among the revolu-tionaries.46 Through these years, Mussolini had applied himself with a vengeanceto bringing the culture of the New Man to a triumphant conclusion. It had toemanate from an important doctrinal ‘reinvigoration’ (aggiornamento). It was, infact, only through the lived experience of the war that Mussolini came to definethis ‘reinvigoration’ – as a new humanism born in the trenches. But it was fascismthat gave a religious dimension to the movement, both on the level of squadrismo
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and in the regime.47 From the outset, fascism honoured its martyrs. On theoccasion of the death of Federico Florio, the squadrist commander assassinatedon 16 January 1922 in Prato by an anarchist deserter, Mussolini had been anxiousto remind people of what had inspired the deeds of a ‘true martyr of the fascistfaith’.48
Thenceforth, it is possible to understand the conflict which set Pope Pius XIagainst Mussolini on the occasion of the publication by Volume XIV of theenciclopedia Treccani in June 1932. A definition of fascism appeared in its index ofentries. In its original version, the entry had been written by the philosopherGiovanni Gentile. Mussolini had really limited his intervention to some addi-tions, thereby demonstrating that he shared the religious position Gentile hadarticulated.
The pride of place granted to culture in Mussolini’s representation of the worldfacilitates the reconstruction of a road which made him pass from socialism tofascism. The equivalence between life and culture was the determining influencehere. It directed his thought from the very beginning, guiding his research towardthe creation of the New Man who would begin the process of the regeneration ofvalues to meet the challenges, born of modernity, at the heart of the Westernworld. At first, Mussolini imagined that he would find the solution to this anthro-pological undertaking in socialism. But the inadequacies he believed he wasdetecting in it quickly led him to turn toward other horizons, in particular tothose opened by Sorel and Nietzsche, who believed the salvation of man to bebound up with the central question of the transformation of values. From as earlyas the pre-war period Mussolini was convinced that this renovation was essential,as witnessed by his links with Prezzolini. With the discovery of the community ofthe trenches and the values carried by the nation, the war itself allowed him tocomplete his ‘turn’ (‘svolta’). The transition to fascism did not cause him to makethe least modification to his initial questions about the transformation of man.Except, that is, in one point – and it is an important one. Henceforth, poweroffered him the means to achieve this revolution, which he wanted to accomplishin its entirety.
The passage from socialism to fascism was thus not the result of some violentchange resulting from Mussolini’s opportunism. And it cannot be linked to theexistence of a ‘third road’ neither of the Right nor of the Left, which wouldpresuppose conceptual logic in the construction of a perfectly masteredideology.
Mussolini’s culture was not the product of Risorgimento or of post-Risorgimentoculture, but the expression of a new myth, adapted to mass culture with its ritesand its liturgy. It was in the melting pot of European urban culture that Musso-lini’s world view took shape. It emerged from an explosive mixture of a socialismconceived as the expression of a faith with elements whose provenance lay in aright-wing universe obsessed with inequality, decline and condemnations ofprogress, but also with the regeneration of man. In Mussolini’s intellectual shap-ing, innovation counted for more than continuity, even though the terrain onwhich he was to bring his plans to fruition was, of course, Italy. ‘Socialist human-ism’ gave way to a new fascist anthropology. But ultimately the project stayed thesame. Fascism fancied itself as the promoter of a spiritual life, but it intendedabove all ‘to remake not the forms of human life, but its content: man, character,faith’.49 The matrix was totalitarian – in the image of the culture of the man who,for more than 20 years, was responsible for putting it into practice.
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Religion and Political Culture in the Thought of Mussolini 405
Notes
1. Milza insists on the enduring importance of the Romagna’s culture to Mussolini. He describes himas a dictateur romagnole; Pierre Milza, Mussolini (Paris: Fayard, 1999), p.v.
2. Cf. Karl Uhlig, Mussolinis Deutsche Studien (Jena: Verlag von G. Fischer, 1941), p.15.3. Examples of his reading include: 2 March 1904, Ludwig Stein, La question sociale au point de vue
philosophique (Paris: 1900); 5 March, Antonio Labriola, Essais sur la conception matérialiste del’histoire, avec une préface de Georges Sorel, trans. from Italian (Paris: 1897); 14 March, FriedrichNietzsche, Aphorismes et fragments, trans. from German and ed. Henri Lichtenberger (Paris: 1899);15 March, Alfred Fouillée, Nietzsche et l’immoralisme (Paris: 1902); 23 March, Édouard Hartmann,De la religion de l’Avenir, trans. from German (Paris: 1898).
4. Angelica Balabanoff, Ma vie de rebelle (Paris: Balland, 1981), p.66.5. Yvon De Begnac, Taccuini Mussoliniani, ed. Francesco Perfetti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), p.4.6. Ibid, p.5.7. Antonio Labriola, Essais sur la conception matérialiste de l’histoire, 2nd edn. (Paris: M. Giard, 1928),
p.122ff.8. Benito Mussolini, Opera Omnia, ed. E. and D. Susmel, 35 vols. (Florence: La Fenice, 1951–63), Vol.I,
L’avanguardia Socialista, No.64, 13 March 1904, p.49.9. M. Freund, Georges Sorel: Der revolutionäre Konservatismus, 2nd edn. (Frankfurt am Main:
V. Klostermann, 1972), pp.104–5.10. A. François Poncet, Les lettres Secrètes échangées par Hitler et Mussolini (Paris: Editions du Pavois,
1946), p.9. This opinion is shared by Fulvio Suvich, Memorie, 1932–1936 (Milan: Rizzoli, 1984), p.20.11. Mussolini (note 8), Vol.I, ‘La filosofia della Forza (Postille alla conferenza dell’On. Treves)’,
pp.174–84.12. According to De Begnac, Mussolini had started reading Nietzsche in German in January–February
1904; cf. Yvon De Begnac, Vita di Mussolini, Vol.I (Milan: Mondadori, 1936), p.283.13. Max Oehler, ‘Mussolini und Nietzsche’, Der Bücherwurm, Heft 8, 25 August 1930, p.225.14. The dissertation was examined on 28 July 1936 and published as Gerhard Marohn, Benito
Mussolini und Friedrich Nietzsche, Buchdruckerei, Silesia, No.55, 1936.15. Ernst Nolte, ‘Marx und Nietzsche im Sozialismus des jungen Mussolini’, Sonderdruck aus
Historische Zeitschrift, Heft 191/2 (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1960).16. Bernhard H. Taureck, Nietzsche und der Faschismus: Ein Politikum (Lepzig: Reklam Verlag, 2000),
p.44ff.17. Mussolini (note 8), Vol.II, ‘Centenario darwiniano’, p.8 ff.18. Benito Mussolini, Il trentino veduto da un socialista (Note e notizie), ed. A. Quattrini (Florence: La
Rinascita del Libro, 1911).19. Mussolini (note 8), Vol.XXXIII, ‘Il pangermanismo Teorico’, pp.153–61.20. Ernest Seillière, ‘Une Ecole d’Impérialisme mystique: Les plus récents théoriciens du Pangerman-
isme’, Revue des Deux Mondes LXXIX, fifth series, vol.50 (March–April 1909), pp.196–228.21. He was the author of a work entitled La philosophie de l’Impérialisme, 4 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1903–08).22. Scipio Sighele, ‘La filosofia dell’ imperialismo’, in Letteratura e sociologia (Milan: Trèves, 1914),
pp.215–35; this discussed a posthumously published collection of Seillière’s essays.23. Freund (note 9), p.21.24. Emilio Gentile, Mussolini e La Voce (Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1976).25. Emilio Gentile, Il mito dello Stato nuovo (Laterza: Bari, 1999), p.105.26. Mussolini (note 8), Vol.II, ‘La teoria sindacalista’, 27 maggio 1909, p.127.27. Ibid., Vol.III, La lotta di classe, ‘Gli ultimi aneliti’, 19 mars 1909.28. Ibid., Vol.III, ‘L’ultima capriola’, 26 novembre 1910.29. Ibid., Vol.IV, ‘Da Guicciardini … a … Sorel’, 18 juillet 1912, pp.171–4.30. George L. Mosse, The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism (New York: Howard
Fertig, 1999), p.95ff.31. Georg Mehlis, Die Idee Mussolinis und der Sinn des Faschismus (Leipzig: Verlag E. Haberland, 1928),
p.16.32. Detlef Felken, Oswald Spengler: Konservativer Denker zwischen Kaiserreich und Diktatur (München:
Beck, 1988), p.51.33. Ibid., p.160.34. Zeev Sternhell (ed.), L’éternel retour: Contre la démocratie l’idéologie de la décadence (Paris: PFSNSP,
1994), p.14ff.35. Massimo F. Zumbini, Untergänge und Morgenröten: Nietzsche-Spengler-Antisemitismus, Studien zur
Litteratur und Kulturgeschichte (Würzburg: Königshausen/Neumann, 1999), p.56.
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36. Renzo de Felice, Mussolini il Duce, I, Gli anni del consenso, 1929–1936 (Torino: Einaudi, 1974), p.38ff.37. Richard Kohrherr, Regresso delle nascite: morte dei popoli, prefazione di Spengler e Mussolini (Rome:
Libreria del Littorio, 1928).38. Gilbert Merlio, ‘Spenglers Modernität’, in Alexander Demandt and John Farrenkopf (eds.), Der
Fall Spengler: Eine Kritische Bilanz (Köln: Böhlau, 1994), p.116.39. Emilio Gentile, Fascismo: Storia i interpretazione (Bari: Laterza, 2002), p.25240. Mussolini (note 8), Vol.XXXIV, ‘Dottrina del Fascismo’, p.118.41. Giuseppe Bedeschi, La Fabbrica delle ideologie: Il pensiero politico nell’Italia del Novecento (Bari:
Laterza, 2002), p.255.42. Philip V. Cannistraro and Brian R. Sullivan, M. Sarfatti, l’altra donna del duce (Milan: Mondadori,
1993), p.370ff.43. Mussolini (note 8), Vol.XXXIV, ‘Dottrina del Fascismo’, p.118.44. Gentile (note 25), p.5ff.45. Mussolini (note 8), Vol.III, 18 July 1912, ‘dall’Avanti!!’, p.174.46. Mussolini to G. Prezzolini, 20 July 1912; cf. Gentile (note 24), p.56.47. Gentile, Il culto del Littorio: La sacralizzazione della politica nell’Italia Fascista (Bari: Laterza, 1993).48. Mussolini (note 8), Vol.XVIII, ‘Vincolo di sangue’, Il Popolo d’Italia, pp.12–13.49. Mussolini (note 8), Vol.XXXIV, ‘Dottrina del Fascismo’, p.121.
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