For simplicity, throughout I will primarily use the general appellation "fascist" or "fascism" as opposed to the capitalized "Fascist" or "Fascism" which refer specifically to the Italian fascist movement as embodied in the Fascist Party. Capitalized, the term excludes other fascisms, specifically Nazism.
I'm currently reading RJB Bosworth's Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945. Bosworth is an Australian scholar who previously authored a biography of Mussolini. Mussolini's Italy was published in 2005.
Bosworth reminds us that Italy provided the world with the first fascist state, and that the word "totalitarianism" was first used to pejoratively describe Italy under Mussolini--though Bosworth curiously appears to omit reference to the etymology of the world "fascism," first used by Mussolini himself, according to Robert Paxton, to describe the movement whose leadership he was ascending to. Italy was ruled by fascists between 1922 and 1943, and portions of Italy were ruled by fascists until April 1945. Italian fascism provided a blueprint for subsequent movements that plagued Europe between the World Wars. It ruled arbitrarily, banned rival political parties, imprisoned and executed political opponents; crushed socialism, communism and independent trade unions; exhorted the virtues of the nation and allegiance to it while castigating internationalism and contending allegiances, most notably, class; and engaged in "almost constant warfare".
Geography and the Development of the Italian State
Bosworth briefly discusses the consequences of geography on the social and political life of Italy. The very north of Italy is bounded by the Alps, below which lay the Po Valley; below which extends, from the north of the peninsula to the south, the Apennine mountain range. "Outside the Po Valley and a few other plains, the Italian countryside is notoriously convoluted."
The topographical labyrinthinity of the Italian landscape presumably entailed difficult communication between communities prior to widespread adoption of telephone usage, which was presumably belated in a largely peasant society with the low density of population characteristic of such societies. And presumably this relative isolation contributed to the strength of allegiances to identities other than nationality, which Bosworth discusses.
Italian roads were non-existent or primitive in the pre-WWI period, as well as thereafter. Bosworth does not directly assign causation, but it appears implied, or fair to assume, that this resulted at least in part as a consequence of the difficulty of constructing roads between settlements sundered by the steep relief of the Alpine and Apennine mountains. One imagines that the low level of economic development throughout much, or most, of the Italian countryside was an important factor. This, in turn, presumably could be partly adduced to terrain.
Geography, then, would profoundly inhibit the development of the Italian state. Inadequate roads must have been a result as well as a cause of the weakness of the Italian nation-state. A state cannot assert its power over places it cannot get to. This is reflected in the power of criminal organizations over regions of Italy. "Each criminal group constituted a sort of anarcho-feudalist set of cells or families, better integrated into its regional society than were the agents of the national government."
In addition to these factors, the Italian peninsula provided fewer of the important minerals, such as iron and coal, that would propel other European nations to great power status.
Finally, Bosworth explains that geography had negative consequences on Italian national security. Specifically, he points to the geographical imperative of constructing Italian railway lines along the coastline, "sometimes literally along the sandhills behind the beach." Attacking navies could thus easily incapacitate Italian transport.
The Relative Weakness of the Italian State and Italian Nationalism
The states which ultimately were brought together to form the nation of Italy did so relatively late. Italian unification was not completed until 1870, although the kingdom of Italy had been declared a decade earlier. The long period of national unification--1815-1870--is referred to as the Risorgimento.
The liberal Italian state of the 1860 through the First World War period was a minor factor in Italian lives relative to states of contemporary European nations. Likewise, the fascist Italian state of the 1922 through the Second World War period was less a factor in Italian lives than the Nazi regime. While perhaps the first totalitarianism, it was not destined to be the most total totalitarianism. (Perhaps the most totalitarian state was not fascist at all: the Soviet Union.) Bosworth points to the independence in many respects of Italians from the fascist regime, “moving with rhythms and effects diverse from that of the dictatorship”, and whose histories “will be full of loyalties and perceptions that were not merely Fascist.”
The weakness of the Italian state, then, appears to be traditional. While an authoritarian government that sought--or at least proclaimed to seek--total control over the lives of its people took power in Italy, relative to contemporary authoritarian or totalitarian movements, it came up short. And in addition to being hampered in its reach by terrain and the resultant anemia of its transportation infrastructure, Italian fascism was hindered in its totalitarian aspirations by a unique feature of Italian social life: the ubiquity of tourists and an economic dependence upon the tourist industry. (And perhaps--particularly during the fascist period, a period of frenzied and intemperate pursuit of national grandeur--a psychological dependence upon the prestige implicitly bestowed upon the country by the massive influx of visitors to the nation’s historic sites.) Bosworth does not explicitly spell out the ways in which the large tourist presence affected state policy, except to say that “much tourist spending was informal, went unrecorded and untaxed and, by definition, lay outside the formal reckoning of the budget...”. The statement begs the question: exactly why was this the case? The reader is left scratching their head a bit, but presumably the state sought to avoid harming the industry upon which so many were economically dependent by leaving well enough alone. Perhaps the political base of the Fascist party was particularly involved in the industry. At any rate, “the massive tourist presence was yet another factor which subtly limited the rigour of Fascist totalitarianism and which perennially checked plans to impose a strong state in full control of Italian lives.” Perhaps also the fascist state was moved to caution by the large foreign presence, concerned that tourists might provide testimony to the outside world of brazen injustices.
From its formation in 1861 until after the Second World War Italy was a monarchy. Italy also had a bicameral parliament composed of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies in which were represented the various shades of liberalism with which the political elite identified. Liberalism dominated politically from unification to the turn of the century, when the first mass-based challenges to the liberal political establishment emerged, specifically socialism. The period beginning with the unification of the Italian state in 1870 and ending with the rise of Fascism after the First World War is referred to as Italy's Liberal Period.
Bosworth describes the Italian political system as especially corrupt and poorly representing the population. "Each parliamentarian, by definition, assumed the advantages and duties of being a patron."
One particular event discussed by Bosworth illustrates many of the predominant characteristics of the liberal Italian state in the pre-WWI period. In 1908, the Sicilian port of Messina was struck by an earthquake and destroyed. The quake killed approximately 100,000 people. "Before the earthquake, Messina had been Italy's fourth largest trading port...".
Bosworth writes of “the government’s indifference to the suffering poor” in dealing with the earthquake. The government advocated "realism". Such assistance that the government offered was directed deliberately to the middle classes and away from peasants and workers. And apparently even this assistance was quite inadequate. Bosworth writes, "When the Fascist regime took over, it claimed that the Liberals had only built 125 new edifices per annum, a replacement rate which implied that rehousing would not be complete for eighty years." “But,” Bosworth writes, “Fascism, too, lagged behind in the refurbishment of the city.”
Speaking of the attitudes of the population of the region affected by the quake toward the national government: “When recounting the sentiments expressed by the ruling class about the earthquake, it is not difficult to see why or to understand how such southerners remained impervious to cheap nationalist rhetoric about a generous and united people.” In the story of the Messina earthquake we glimpse the elitist nature of the Italian political establishment in the Liberal period, the inability or unwillingness of the Italian state to adequately provide for its citizens; and we detect factors that contributed to the relative weakness of Italian nationalism in the pre-WWI period.
Pre-WWI Italian Politics
Bosworth describes the Italy of this period as composed of disparate regions containing marked social divisions and antagonisms. Italy in this period seems to have been at the early stages of transition from an agricultural economy dominated by landowners and peasants to an economy based on industry and finance, composed of capitalists--large and small--and workers. Italy possessed all of these groups and more. And while it seems that Italy emerged from the unification process with a high degree of unity in the political arena, the post-Risorgimento period saw a fading of that political unity and a rush to the fore of long-standing, as well as newly developing, class antagonisms, which found expression in contending political movements: liberals and conservatives, but also socialists and leftists of all stripes, right-wing nationalists, and, of course, fascists.
Italy before the First World War possessed a nascent socialist movement. The Italian Socialist Party experienced a degree of success, yet its base remained fragile. The socialist movement, both inside and outside the party, was sharply divided on several fronts.
The socialist movement found expression, of course, in the labor movement. Bosworth points to the two major labor unions of the period in which socialists apparently played leading roles: the CGdL and the UIL, the latter being a group of more radical workers that split from the CGdL. “Strikes, lockouts and social violence were on the rise in Liberal Italy...”. Italian socialism was unique in the degree of its appeal to the peasantry, and they too possessed a union, Federterra.
Political Catholicism was Italy’s other developing mass political movement in this period. This seems to have been a complex movement, guided evidently by “social and financial elites,” and anti-socialist; yet commanding a following among workers by organizing the Catholic trade union, the CIL, after the war, and advocating for improvements in pay and working conditions. Their common Catholic faith seems to have unified, insofar as possible, the various antagonistic elements of Italian society which participated in the movement.
I'm currently reading RJB Bosworth's Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945. Bosworth is an Australian scholar who previously authored a biography of Mussolini. Mussolini's Italy was published in 2005.
Bosworth reminds us that Italy provided the world with the first fascist state, and that the word "totalitarianism" was first used to pejoratively describe Italy under Mussolini--though Bosworth curiously appears to omit reference to the etymology of the world "fascism," first used by Mussolini himself, according to Robert Paxton, to describe the movement whose leadership he was ascending to. Italy was ruled by fascists between 1922 and 1943, and portions of Italy were ruled by fascists until April 1945. Italian fascism provided a blueprint for subsequent movements that plagued Europe between the World Wars. It ruled arbitrarily, banned rival political parties, imprisoned and executed political opponents; crushed socialism, communism and independent trade unions; exhorted the virtues of the nation and allegiance to it while castigating internationalism and contending allegiances, most notably, class; and engaged in "almost constant warfare".
Geography and the Development of the Italian State
Bosworth briefly discusses the consequences of geography on the social and political life of Italy. The very north of Italy is bounded by the Alps, below which lay the Po Valley; below which extends, from the north of the peninsula to the south, the Apennine mountain range. "Outside the Po Valley and a few other plains, the Italian countryside is notoriously convoluted."
The topographical labyrinthinity of the Italian landscape presumably entailed difficult communication between communities prior to widespread adoption of telephone usage, which was presumably belated in a largely peasant society with the low density of population characteristic of such societies. And presumably this relative isolation contributed to the strength of allegiances to identities other than nationality, which Bosworth discusses.
Italian roads were non-existent or primitive in the pre-WWI period, as well as thereafter. Bosworth does not directly assign causation, but it appears implied, or fair to assume, that this resulted at least in part as a consequence of the difficulty of constructing roads between settlements sundered by the steep relief of the Alpine and Apennine mountains. One imagines that the low level of economic development throughout much, or most, of the Italian countryside was an important factor. This, in turn, presumably could be partly adduced to terrain.
Geography, then, would profoundly inhibit the development of the Italian state. Inadequate roads must have been a result as well as a cause of the weakness of the Italian nation-state. A state cannot assert its power over places it cannot get to. This is reflected in the power of criminal organizations over regions of Italy. "Each criminal group constituted a sort of anarcho-feudalist set of cells or families, better integrated into its regional society than were the agents of the national government."
In addition to these factors, the Italian peninsula provided fewer of the important minerals, such as iron and coal, that would propel other European nations to great power status.
Finally, Bosworth explains that geography had negative consequences on Italian national security. Specifically, he points to the geographical imperative of constructing Italian railway lines along the coastline, "sometimes literally along the sandhills behind the beach." Attacking navies could thus easily incapacitate Italian transport.
The Relative Weakness of the Italian State and Italian Nationalism
The states which ultimately were brought together to form the nation of Italy did so relatively late. Italian unification was not completed until 1870, although the kingdom of Italy had been declared a decade earlier. The long period of national unification--1815-1870--is referred to as the Risorgimento.
The liberal Italian state of the 1860 through the First World War period was a minor factor in Italian lives relative to states of contemporary European nations. Likewise, the fascist Italian state of the 1922 through the Second World War period was less a factor in Italian lives than the Nazi regime. While perhaps the first totalitarianism, it was not destined to be the most total totalitarianism. (Perhaps the most totalitarian state was not fascist at all: the Soviet Union.) Bosworth points to the independence in many respects of Italians from the fascist regime, “moving with rhythms and effects diverse from that of the dictatorship”, and whose histories “will be full of loyalties and perceptions that were not merely Fascist.”
The weakness of the Italian state, then, appears to be traditional. While an authoritarian government that sought--or at least proclaimed to seek--total control over the lives of its people took power in Italy, relative to contemporary authoritarian or totalitarian movements, it came up short. And in addition to being hampered in its reach by terrain and the resultant anemia of its transportation infrastructure, Italian fascism was hindered in its totalitarian aspirations by a unique feature of Italian social life: the ubiquity of tourists and an economic dependence upon the tourist industry. (And perhaps--particularly during the fascist period, a period of frenzied and intemperate pursuit of national grandeur--a psychological dependence upon the prestige implicitly bestowed upon the country by the massive influx of visitors to the nation’s historic sites.) Bosworth does not explicitly spell out the ways in which the large tourist presence affected state policy, except to say that “much tourist spending was informal, went unrecorded and untaxed and, by definition, lay outside the formal reckoning of the budget...”. The statement begs the question: exactly why was this the case? The reader is left scratching their head a bit, but presumably the state sought to avoid harming the industry upon which so many were economically dependent by leaving well enough alone. Perhaps the political base of the Fascist party was particularly involved in the industry. At any rate, “the massive tourist presence was yet another factor which subtly limited the rigour of Fascist totalitarianism and which perennially checked plans to impose a strong state in full control of Italian lives.” Perhaps also the fascist state was moved to caution by the large foreign presence, concerned that tourists might provide testimony to the outside world of brazen injustices.
From its formation in 1861 until after the Second World War Italy was a monarchy. Italy also had a bicameral parliament composed of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies in which were represented the various shades of liberalism with which the political elite identified. Liberalism dominated politically from unification to the turn of the century, when the first mass-based challenges to the liberal political establishment emerged, specifically socialism. The period beginning with the unification of the Italian state in 1870 and ending with the rise of Fascism after the First World War is referred to as Italy's Liberal Period.
Bosworth describes the Italian political system as especially corrupt and poorly representing the population. "Each parliamentarian, by definition, assumed the advantages and duties of being a patron."
One particular event discussed by Bosworth illustrates many of the predominant characteristics of the liberal Italian state in the pre-WWI period. In 1908, the Sicilian port of Messina was struck by an earthquake and destroyed. The quake killed approximately 100,000 people. "Before the earthquake, Messina had been Italy's fourth largest trading port...".
Bosworth writes of “the government’s indifference to the suffering poor” in dealing with the earthquake. The government advocated "realism". Such assistance that the government offered was directed deliberately to the middle classes and away from peasants and workers. And apparently even this assistance was quite inadequate. Bosworth writes, "When the Fascist regime took over, it claimed that the Liberals had only built 125 new edifices per annum, a replacement rate which implied that rehousing would not be complete for eighty years." “But,” Bosworth writes, “Fascism, too, lagged behind in the refurbishment of the city.”
Speaking of the attitudes of the population of the region affected by the quake toward the national government: “When recounting the sentiments expressed by the ruling class about the earthquake, it is not difficult to see why or to understand how such southerners remained impervious to cheap nationalist rhetoric about a generous and united people.” In the story of the Messina earthquake we glimpse the elitist nature of the Italian political establishment in the Liberal period, the inability or unwillingness of the Italian state to adequately provide for its citizens; and we detect factors that contributed to the relative weakness of Italian nationalism in the pre-WWI period.
Pre-WWI Italian Politics
Bosworth describes the Italy of this period as composed of disparate regions containing marked social divisions and antagonisms. Italy in this period seems to have been at the early stages of transition from an agricultural economy dominated by landowners and peasants to an economy based on industry and finance, composed of capitalists--large and small--and workers. Italy possessed all of these groups and more. And while it seems that Italy emerged from the unification process with a high degree of unity in the political arena, the post-Risorgimento period saw a fading of that political unity and a rush to the fore of long-standing, as well as newly developing, class antagonisms, which found expression in contending political movements: liberals and conservatives, but also socialists and leftists of all stripes, right-wing nationalists, and, of course, fascists.
Italy before the First World War possessed a nascent socialist movement. The Italian Socialist Party experienced a degree of success, yet its base remained fragile. The socialist movement, both inside and outside the party, was sharply divided on several fronts.
The socialist movement found expression, of course, in the labor movement. Bosworth points to the two major labor unions of the period in which socialists apparently played leading roles: the CGdL and the UIL, the latter being a group of more radical workers that split from the CGdL. “Strikes, lockouts and social violence were on the rise in Liberal Italy...”. Italian socialism was unique in the degree of its appeal to the peasantry, and they too possessed a union, Federterra.
Political Catholicism was Italy’s other developing mass political movement in this period. This seems to have been a complex movement, guided evidently by “social and financial elites,” and anti-socialist; yet commanding a following among workers by organizing the Catholic trade union, the CIL, after the war, and advocating for improvements in pay and working conditions. Their common Catholic faith seems to have unified, insofar as possible, the various antagonistic elements of Italian society which participated in the movement.
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