Benito Mussolini: “The Doctrine of Fascism”

About the Author

Although various Fascist officials seem to have reviewed and commented on drafts in development, two main authors wrote this essay. The credited author was Benito Mussolini, certainly a key contributor, who approved the final draft. The other, and probably the greater contributor, was Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944), a major figure in Fascist intellectual and political circles. He founded the Enciclopedia italiana in the mid-1920s and directed the project, where this statement of Fascist doctrine was first published.

Gentile taught philosophy at several important Italian universities and was one of Italy’s most prominent intellectuals. Originally he was a follower of Italy’s famous philosopher Benedetto Croce, but the two eventually parted company. (Croce came to oppose Fascism.) Gentile joined the Fascist Party in 1923 and for the next six years held several significant positions in both the party and the government. These posts included his service as a senator and as a member of the Fascist Grand Council. His influence ended when he publicly opposed Mussolini’s formal understanding with the Vatican, as confirmed in the Lateran Treaty of 1929. He then went into semiretirement from public office, though he was active in the development and publication of the encyclopedia. He reappeared in public in 1943 when he supported the new republic after the deposition of Mussolini that year. In April 1944 he was shot to death by anti-Fascist partisans. Gentile opposed the idea of individualism and believed in both nationalism and a strong corporate state. He referred to an “ethical state” (a term that appears in the essay on Fascism). That entity, as he described it, would be the basis of law. People should seek to fit themselves into the state instead of cultivating individualism.

Despite Gentile’s prominent role in writing this essay, Mussolini’s name appeared in the byline—the only article in the entire Enciclopedia that bore the name of an author. Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) was named after the Mexican revolutionary Benito Juárez. His father was active politically, and Mussolini himself showed an interest in politics, particularly agitation, at an early age. His early political beliefs seem to have contained elements of anarchism, Socialism, and Marxism in various mixtures at different times and in what appeared to be contradictory ways. Later commentators would remark that expressing inconsistent opinions on issues was a consistent characteristic of Mussolini in particular and Italian Fascism in general.

Before World War I, Mussolini worked at several occupations. He taught school in Italy, worked in construction in Switzerland, and for a very short time held a job as a newspaper reporter and eventually an editor for political journals. He served in the army during World War I and was severely wounded in 1917, after which he again became a political editor. In 1919, in Milan, Mussolini founded the Fascist Party. Three years later, as the result of a coup known as the March on Rome, King Victor Emmanuel named him prime minister. In 1940 Mussolini declared war on France, beginning the war that would end his government in 1943 when Italy surrendered. Captured by anti-Fascists in 1943, he was rescued by the Germans and set up as the ruler of a fictitious state comprising German-occupied Italy. He was then captured by partisans and executed on April 28, 1945.