THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS of FASCISM Author(S): G

Home , Roman salute, Statolatry

THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM Author(s): G. A. BORGESE Source: Social Research, Vol. 1, No. 4 (NOVEMBER, 1934), pp. 458-485 Published by: The New School Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40981399 . Accessed: 31/01/2015 16:56

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The New School is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Research.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM

BY G. A. BORGESE

1 he firstand second rules of reasoning,as formulatedby New- ton and repeatedby popular physicistsdown to the present,read as follows:"We are to admitno morecauses of naturalthings than such as are both true and sufficientto explain their appearance. . . . Therefore to the same natural effectswe must, as far as possible,assign the same causes. As to respirationin a man and in a beast; the descentof stonesin Europe and America; the light of our culinaryfire and of thesun; thereflection of lightin the earth, and in the planets."Such rules are valid forhuman as well as for natural history,and thereforethe reasons that explain Italian fascismmust be good, at least in theirmain outlines,for German fascismtoo, and vice versa,or theyare not reasonsat all. Attemptshave been made,both fromthe politicaland fromthe economic approach, to establish the fundamentalcharacter of thisnew typeof political organization.It has been said that Ger- man fascismis a revoltagainst the injusticesand humiliationsof the Treatyof Versailles,a revulsionof defeat.But thisinterpreta- tion does not account for the birth of fascismin its countryof origin,Italy, a countrywhich had won the war more smashingly thanany other of the combatants,utterly destroying her hereditary enemy,the Austro-Hungarianmonarchy, and acquiringa frontier of a perfection,geographical, ethnical and military,unparalleled in continentalEurope. To be sure she failed in gettinghold of that zone of the Dalmatian mainland,opposite to her coast and inhabitedalmost wholly by Slavs, which the Allies had formally grantedher; but she won Fiume, whichshe herselfhad promised to Croatia, and she took definitepossession of Rhodes and some otherGreek islandsoff Asia Minor, of which her occupancyhad hithertobeen consideredmore or less temporary.It is also true

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 459 thatshe did not share,as largelyas her sacrificesentitled her, the tough and bony Africanand Asiatic prey, improperlyalthough magnificentlycalled the "colonial booty." In this she suffereda disillusionmentpartly due to the selfishnessof her partnersand partlyto her own lack of colonial purpose.Also she feltthat Eng- land and Francewere blindly stubborn in contestingwith her even some raggedreadjustments of bordersaround her sandyor rocky Africanterritories. But such minor failures,even supposingthat they injured real interestsmore than feelingsof pride, cannot make a defeatout of a victory.Neither can theyjustify the na- tionalisticslogan, "Italy won the war and lost the peace." Among someItalians a feelingof defeatarose and graduallyincreased during the years1919 and 1920; but it was a matterof feeling,not of fact,and it was a consequence,not a cause, of the fascistand pre- fascistmentality which later swept the country. For theiremotional purposesthese Italians wanted a feelingof distress,and theygot it. Happy warriors,totalitarian victors, exist only in the jealous imaginationof competitorsor, less frequently,in the case of nations as well as in that of individuals,in the self-sufficiencyof a delicatelybalanced and moderatemind. If the imperfectionor, as it was said,the mutilation of the Italian victoryexplains fascism, whyhad notfascism risen earlier and elsewhere,after other partially unsuccessfulvictories? Why did it not rise immediatelyafter 1918 in France,who had lostboth the main issuesof her victoryas conceived not only by inflamednationalists, but even by cautious patriots,and was unable to get eitherthe Rhine frontieror the Anglo-Americanguaranty of her safety?Why did it not rise in England,who saw, as an indirectbut promptconsequence of the triumph,Ireland driftingaway and the ties of the Empire loosen- ing?Or evenin America,which did not acquire anyterritory worth mentioningand, ratherstunned, lost her money?This is indeed no worldof justice,no Kingdomof God; and the destinyallotted to the Italian nation,jammed as it is in a poor and narrowterri- tory,is inferiorto the claimsshe maybase not only on her historic grandeurbut on the actual ambition of her living children to

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 460 SOCIAL RESEARCH collaboratein the workof human civilizationand to pluck, also, some deservedfruits of human happinessfor themselves. But even admittingthat this feeling of inferioritywas bound to growmore insistentafter the passion and sacrificeof war, and in spite of its positiveresults, why did it findits expressionin fascismand not in a subspeciesof communismor, as reason seemed to suggest,in a politicalplan whichwould somehowhave made Italythe leading power in Geneva? Italy was, as she is, the strongestamong the feeble and the feeblestamong the strong.Her universalbackground and ambition mighthave gained forher the positionof leader of the minor and proletariannations of Europe, to balance with theirhelp the "Mightyof the Earth/'opposing the greatpowers when necessary and pushing them toward a sincere submissionof their shrewd policyto theirlofty principles. Italy mighthave made it her mis- sion to revivethe inspireddemocracy of Mazzini, adapting it to changed circumstances;to translateinto European concreteness the idealismof Wilson; to quicken the pace of historytoward the next goals: a federation,political and economic,in Europe, and a consortiumin the colonies,with the "open door" and equalityof rights.Certainly such a role would have been much less appealing to particularisticvanities, but proportionallymore satisfactoryif the aim were real justice and - why not?- real business.This plan mighthave been conceived,and it was indeed conceivedby some Italians of those days; it was, or seemed to be, at the same time wise and great. Perhaps it mighthave won the support of America,but it did not please the Italian mind and heartof those days. Not only did it appear Utopian to the mind; much more important,it was distastefulto the heart.And fascismcame. What Walter Lippmann wrote about Russia and America is equally true for Italy and Germany,and for any countryat any time."It is certainthat men musteat; it does not followthat they can eat onlywhat the cook choosesto provide. /. . It was certain thatafter the breakdownof Czarismthere would have to be a new regimein Russia. . . . Yet it was not certainthat it had to be the

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 461 regimeof theFive Year Plan. That wasthe dinner the cooks hap- penedto providefor hungry men. After the collapse of 1932-1933 a New Deal ofsome sort was imperative.But not everythingthat has been dealtout was imperative.That has dependedupon the temperament,the prejudices, the quick judgments of the dealers."1 Therewas no Italiandefeat, and thereis no reasonto believethat defeat,either imaginary or actual,either Italian or German,had to be followedby fascism.Turkey and Russiawere severely and unmistakablydefeated, but theyresorted to Kemalismand communism,which were indeed dictatorships, but ofquite a different brandfrom fascist dictatorships. Whatmatters, in each of these cases, is the mental and sentimental backgroundof "cooks and dealers."

It is eveneasier to disposeof thepurely economic explanations thatare customarilygiven of thephenomenon of fascism. Marxism,at leastas a prophecy,collapsed long ago; so everyone asserts.But Marxianconcepts and formulaestill hang, each on itspeg, in thewardrobe of popular mental apparel. They are com- fortableand readyto wear.Hence the interpretationof fascism as theangry self-defense ofcapitalism against the communistic and socialisticmenace. But whythen did it not appearin Poland or Rumaniaor the otherstates bordering on Bolshevism;why did it notappear in Franceor in anyother country where capitalism is reallystrong and socialismis moreor lessmilitant? It is not a simplematter to explain,on purelyeconomic grounds, why the chosenland of fascism,its Meccaor Bethlehem,had to be Italy, wherecapitalism was comparativelyweak, and wherein 1922an agonizingsocialism, which had neverbeen verymuch alive, ex- pressedwhat strength it had onlyin rhetoricalstrikes, compared towhich the recent events in San Franciscoand Minneapolisor in the Americantextile strike could be consideredas full fledged revolutions. The answerusually given is thatbecause capitalism was weak, »Lippmann,Walter, The Methodof Freedom(New York 1934)p. 24-5.

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 462 SOCIAL RESEARCH it had to relyon violence; becausesocialism and communism,after some yearsof foolishthreats, had provedineffective, the time was rightfor revenge. Anotherattempt at explanationwhich has recentlybecome fa- miliaris thatthe middle classes were impoverished in Italy,ruined in Germany;they had to startsomething. Why this something; and whywas it theywho had to startsomething, and not the peas- ants and workers?Were peasantsand workershappy and wealthy in Italy and Germany?Or, again, the middle classes in Italy and Germanyhad had nö sufficientexperience of freedom;therefore theycrushed it. In otherwords: these middle classeswere ruined,and theywere victors;they were strong,and theywere weak; theywere strong enoughto crushfreedom and theother classes; they were not strong enough to compromisewith the other classes and to maintain freedom. All thesemay be truths.But theyexhibit a quality of neutral, compensated,pendulum-like truth that has nothing,or verylittle, to say.

There certainlywould be no fascismif the war had been followed by the miracleof a peace satisfactoryto everybody.There would be no fascismif therehad been no communism.Looking at a European map one visualizesa fascisttrench or wall, a black stripefrom Sicily to the Baltic shore,which in a wayseems to pro- tectthe world of Westerncapitalism against the otherworld, the worldof communism;it looks like a broad dike; or, to strainthe rightof metaphorfurther, it resemblesa scar throughwhich the capitalisticflesh reacts against the revolutionarywound. The ex- istenceof an outer zone, fromthe Balkans to Finland, does not impairthe validityof the simile.These minorstates, often also of veryrecent origin, are a softersurface on whichan irritatedreac- tionwas less to be expectedand would have been less definite. A conceptionof thissort may appeal to theimagination and may contain,although symbolically, a partof the actual reality.A part

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 463 of realityis also containedin the viewsthat emphasize the results, politicalor economic,of thewar. But theseare the crude materials of fascism;they are far fromgiving its specificnature and spirit. They explain thatsome kind of reactionmight have occurred,or mustoccur, that the European bodywas bound to get a fever;they do not explain at all whyand how and wherethat particular kind of reactionhad to occur,why that particular kind of feverhad to befallthose nations. For long centurieshistoriography was almost totallypolitical. It dealt withtreaties, with great men and theirambitions and be- liefs.Then came the Marxistreform, and historywriting became economicsand the class struggle.If we want a more completeand truthfulinsight into human events,the intellectualand emotional elementsof thoseevents need to be takenmore largely into account. They are not always economic interestsin disguise; much more often,on the contrary,the economic interestsare embodiments and materializationsof intellectualjudgments or prejudices and of emotional drives. When the logical analysishas been pushed to its conclusionone realizesthat the specificelements of fascismare of a mental and sentimentalnature; theyare the ideal and emotionalbackgrounds of "cooksand dealers";and onlythrough these, as throughcommon denominators,is it possible to attain an interpretationof fascism and of itsissues that is equally adequate forItaly and forGermany. Of course,these ideas and emotionsembodied themselvesin the politicalrivalry of statesand in the economicclass struggle;what happened firstin the mind found its way into the factsof mass history.But it happened firstin the mind.

This mentalpedigree reaches far back. Included in it are Machia- velli and the Florentinehistorians of the Renaissance with their bittercontempt for the idealism of words and forunarmed prophets, and theirelaboration of the conceptof the state as might.Over- looking analogous tendenciesin the Greek sophists,many were theirforerunners among the writers of theearly Renaissance. Croce

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 464 SOCIAL RESEARCH quoted complacently,many years before the fascistrise, the story of Messer Ridolfo da Camerino,as related by Franco Sacchetti. His nephew,after having studied law fortwelve years at Bologna, came to visithim. He asked,"And whatdidst thou do at Bologna?" The young man answered,"My Lord, I have learned reason." Then MesserRidolfo replied,"Thou hast spent thytime ill. Be- cause thou shouldsthave learned force,which is worth two of the other." But, nearerto us and withan incomparablymore decisive effect, we have,early in thedecline of theeighteenth century, the German Stormand Stress,with its appeal to violence and passion and its uprisingagainst reason and rule. Lessing,in his Laokoön, had opened thepath to thewilderness, substituting in the appreciation of poetrypassion and expressionfor the classicalcriteria of order and beauty,of "noble simplicityand calm grandeur."He had also most resolutelyasserted that if man had to choose between the possessionof truthand the researchfor truth, he should preferthe research;the effortis betterthan the goal - a propositionthat included in itselfmuch more explosivestuff. The revolt,far beyond the conception of Lessing,was one against both classicismand Christianity.Naturalism and nationalism, primitivismand extremeindividualism, hero worshipand pessimism,all theseideas and othersconnected with them were born, so to speak,all togetherin a bundleat thevery outset of the eighteenth centurywhich, afterhaving built up an intellectualsystem of reason,universality and humanhope, distilledalso the intellectual by-productswhose slowlyincreasing accumulation was finallyto overwhelmthe resultsof the constructivework. Of course the intentionsof the forerunners,often involuntary, did not alwaysin- clude the necessityof the consequences;Lessing and the Stürmer und Dränger,for instance, were inspiredby a loftydesire for freedom and justice. But in the later disintegrationof European thoughtthis moral background was forgotten,and thenude appeal to violenceand expressioncame to the fore. Nationalismhas proved to be one of the main ingredientsof

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 465 fascism.In a wayit is ofcourse related to patriotism,to theselfish- unselfish,tender and proudfeeling that obviously and almostin- stinctivelyattaches every human being to his nativeplace, be it hamletor metropolis,parish or continent.But in anotherway it is a feelingor emotion quite recent, and of a quitedifferent quality, and inexplicablewithout the philosophicissues which it presup- poses.One of themis naturalism.Assuming, as even Bergsonas- sumes,that nature's purpose was to organizemankind in separate groupformations, each eventuallyfighting the others (much the sameas amongsome arthropods, especially ants) , no doubtseems to be leftthat nations, as theyappear organized in modernstates, obeynature's purpose at its best.Their perfection,if it cannot be tracedback to religiousmission or to purityof race,lies in the unityand exclusivenessof language. Generally speaking, one may saythat a nationis therealm of a (literary)language: an entity deeplysignificant for romanticism and itsmystic worship of words. Whatevermay be thepartial origins that modern nationalism can traceto the ancientworld and to Hellenism,comparatively few have realizedthat its patterncame, through the Bible,from the Jews:a groupformation, ideological, racial and linguistic,un- paralleledin itsself-sufficiency andself-awareness, thereal paradigm ofany modern nationalism, especially German. This moderncon- ceptionof nationalism pretends to be equallysuperior to thenar- rowexclusiveness of the ancient city or of the mediaeval commune, andto the abstract emptiness of internationalism and supernational- ism.It hasoften been repeated that the individual and the universal findan unsurpassabledialectic synthesis in theidea of thenation; thatthis is the fieldwhere nature and reasonmeet. To overstep itsboundaries into universalism, is not only Utopian, it is unholy, becausethe nation is constitutedby nature, and nature is holy. At the rootof thiserror is the romanticbelief that nature is supreme,instead of beingan environmentwhose opposition the humanmind, if it so chooses,must overcome. If universalismis judgedbetter, nature, or the imaginednature, cannot be strong enoughto standagainst the better choice of human will.

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 466 SOCIAL RESEARCH Anotherphilosophic and emotionalissue implied by nationalism is mere individualism.If an individual who lacks a feeling of superioritycannot attain it throughhis personalpower or mind he can alwayshave recourseto a collectivedevice. He may fancy himselfas belongingto the highestpossible human group forma- tion,and thereforea shareholderin thiscorporation of superiority. If the capital of the corporationis boomed,so also is his personal share.Indeed, formost people, thisgain may be had in ordinary timeswith very little personal effort, and forthe majorityof intel- lectualsand politicians,who are oftenthe most excitedabout national primacy,without effort or riskeven in extraordinarytimes. This is the obvious connectinglink betweennationalism and ego- tism; an egotismmore easily fed than any other kind, since any individual belongingto the chosen people, whoeverhe may be, is unquestionablychosen and superiorfrom the momentof his birth.Nationalism and fascismpraise themselvesas authorsof a new ethicsof dutyand hierarchy;but on the otherside theystart by conferringa birthright,and a big one, upon all the members of the nation,building out of it a totalitarianaristocracy, which is a synonymfor demagogy. There is a storyof theEmperor Charles V who, beforea littlecrowd of littlenoblemen greedy for advance- ment,lifted his rightarm and jokinglydecreed, "Estote comités omnes"- "I make all of you counts."The nationalistdictator on his balconyor podium,lifting that same armbefore the big crowd, earnestlydecrees, "Estote principes omnes" - "You are all chiefs."

In the meltingpot of fascismare naturalismand individualism, as they are combined in the spiritual chemismof nationalism; ne9-Machiavellianismand Stormand Stress;ideal of the totemand of the "folk" and hero worship (fromSchiller's Räuber to the pioneersor even to the gangsters,and in the otherdirection from Plutarchto Napoleon and even to General Boulanger); aesthetic privacyof aristocraticfeeling and herd-likecompactness of demagogy;operatic picturesqueness of conspiracies(from Ku Klux Klan onward) and equally operaticthrill of parades and processions;

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 467 appeal of the pastand revolutionarythrill toward an unknown future;philosophic - chieflyFichtean and Hegelian - "nationola- try"and statolatry;philosophic anarchism; and manyother more or lessromantic substances. Their prolongedenumeration would be as easyas futile:a matterof course,and a matterwithout end. Indeed,the success of fascism among middling cultured middle classesand lowerintellectuals is mainlydue to the thoroughness and criticalindifference with which it has madeand stillmakes a concoctionof all the possibleelements of modernculture; who eatsof it eatsa bitof everything. To quiteuncultured people, like theproverbial peasant or shepherd,it has nothingto say;neither has it anythingto sayto real minds,which want a criticallyclean food.But for the numberless people who thriftily carry on beyond intellectualstarvation and notup to intellectualplenty, it means a lot.It meanstheir daily spiritual meal. In thissense, much more thanin an economicone, it maybe said thatfascism, wherever it is allowedto come to power,is the creedof the lowermiddle classes. The completenesswith which any spiritualneed, degraded to emotionalappetite, finds satisfaction within the frameof fascism is,one maysay without irony, admirable. But thisachievement is not thework of a singlegenius. It was not a singlegrammarian whofrom classicism developed pedantry; it is nota singlefanatic whofrom a religionderives a superstition.Fascism is firstof all a degradationof romanticism,both cultural and political.It is not a revolution,as oftenboasted, but an involution.This transfor- mationwas of coursecollectively produced. Such wide disintegra- tioncould never possibly have been the exploit of one singlehero. It mustbe grantedthat the bacteria of the disease have circulated sincethe beginningin the blood of romanticism,a body which neverenjoyed a singlemoment of wholly healthy consciousness. Examplesof the stupendous,although instinctive, skill with whichany spiritual requirement of romanticmentality is trans- latedinto purely emotional impulses can be pickedup at random. How farcan fascismbe Catholicor pro-Catholic,following the

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 468 SOCIAL RESEARCH path of romanticpro-Catholicism? Certainly not in so far as Ca- tholicismincludes elementsof Christian ethics or any kind of supernaturalbelief; but the pomp and luxury of the ritual is coveted and emulated,the pyramidalsymmetry and loftinessof the hierarchyand organizationis admired as the grandestarchi- tectureof history.Therefore the attemptat imitation.It is beyond doubt thatthe model forthe fascistpolitical systemwas found in the Roman church.The dictatorhas the positionof the Pontiff; everypronouncement of truthand everyappointment of officials emanatesfrom him. He is, at least in theory,secretly elective; the electoral,and somehowconsulative, body is the Grand Council, an equivalentto the Consistoryand Conclave.The Roman church contributedalso the supportof its Syllabus,a grimcondemnation of criticismand reason,which did not lack couragenor, as became clear aftera while,a remarkableamount of success. Further,how faris fascismProtestant? As faras Protestantismcan be interpreted,by thosewho like such interpretations,as the dis- ruption of ethical codes and the foundationof any ethical im- perativein the spontaneityof any individualgenius, or grace,or passion: whence the self-sufficientethics of the brigand, of the tyrant,of the pioneer,of the poet, of the hero, of the saint. How far is it democratic?As far as democracytoo has its grandeurof ritual and ceremonies:crowds, well orderedmass demonstrations, plebiscites,parades. How far is it socialist?As faras socialismim- plies the conceptof struggle(i.e.* fighting, sport) and as faras the MarxistManifesto of the Communistparty denies "eternal truths such as freedom,justice, etc.," and stripsaway the Platonic attire in which for millennia the harsh realityof hungryinterests has hidden. How far is it martiallyinclined? As far as war can be foughtwith fifes and drumsand words- fordown to the present, and one hopes into the future,its zeal forwar does not reach for weapons more deadly. How far does it care for peace? Certainly not in connectionwith any educationof the people to feelingsof peace, whichis the onlyway of reallyfostering peace, but as faras speechesin behalfof peace may attain the sheer beautyof Real-

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 469 politik and of Machiavellian tricks.Even in minor appearances, how far is the Roman salute Roman? Was it really the salute of the Roman citizen,or of theslave? This does not matter,especially for Germans.It is beautifullydramatic; it is proud and strong; it looks like an exerciseor even, eventually,like the threatof a straightblow; in any case it impliesa displayof energy. This provesindeed to be the constantsubstance under the flow of fascistappearances: the romantic cult of energy- or violenceor passion- transferredif not into real historicdeeds at least into a ritual performance.Hitler says, "We think with our blood": a mottowhich might well have been adopted by the primitivetragic hero,such as Lessing conceivedhim, or by any leading character of the Stormand Stressliterature. Hence the fascistevaluation of revolutionand war. There have always been revolutionsin human history;but theywere consideredby moralistsand historians as sad necessitieswhich it would have been wise and lucky,if possible, to avoid; and the theoryof revolutionas the loveliestand mostadmirable of humansocial expressionsis thoroughlymodern. The Christian,especially the Protestant,experience of conversion and grace, which is a kind of individual revolution,gave the mightiestimpulse to this conception, whose vigor increased throughcontributions flowing from various philosophic, scientific, political and literarysources. The lurid glamorof modern revo- lutionsfrom the Englishto the Russian,but especiallythe French, added a fantasticsuggestion which- worked decisively on emotional complexes.Finally in the footstepsof Nietzscheand Sorel came the fascistswith their idealizationof revolutionas such, Revolution an sich. Strangelyenough, both fascistcountries, Italy and Ger- many,know in theirlong past much more of riots and local up- heavals than of real revolutions.Italian fascismwas fromthe very beginningapproximately legal and was immediatelylegalized; the rise of Hitlerismwas legal throughout.But only to a superficial observationmay it seem strangethat fascismupholds thingsthat lie outside of its historyand its nature.On the contrary,it quite belongsto fascistmentality to thirstfor waters that do not flow.

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 470 SOCIAL RESEARCH As forwar, there have been warsenough in human history;and fascism,either Italian or German,has hithertofought none, not even civil war. But fascism,for the firsttime in human history, has erectedan altar to the god War. "Fascism,before everything, in what generallyconcerns the futureand developmentof the humanrace, and leavingaside any considerationof actual politics, does not believe eitherin the possibilityor in the utilityof per- petual peace. It thereforerejects pacifism, which masks a disavowal of struggle,and a cowardicebefore sacrifice. Only war raises to theirmaximum of tensionall human energiesand imprintsa seal of nobilityon the peoples who have the virtueto face it. All the other¿rials are but substituteswhich nevermake a man face the alternativeof life and death. Any doctrine,consequently, which moves from the presupposedpostulate of peace, is foreignto fascism;and no lessforeign to thespirit of fascism,even if accepted forwhat utilitythey may have in some particularpolitical situa- tion, are all the internationalstructures and leagues (tutte le costruzioniinternazionalistiche e societarie) which, as history demonstrates,may vanish in thin air as soon as sentimental,ideal and practicalelements rouse to stormthe heartsof nations." So wroteMussolini under the captionFascism in the 14thvolume of the EncyclopediaItaliana, in 1932; and thistheory has oftenbeen proclaimedby him and his followersin other but similarwords, and has been widelyechoed by Hitler and Hitlerism.Peace can be - accepted,must be acceptedsome times- alack! too manytimes but as a factof existence,an unavoidablesad necessity.The ideal conditionof humanlife is battle. Could one imaginea moreromantic suggestion? "Venez, orages désirés."One sees the Wagneriangod Thor arousingwith his ham- merthunder and hail. And, since thisstate of mind is purelyemo- tional and imaginative,it would be of littleuse to advance objec- tions.Is it reallytrue that human life is so miserablybereft of noble trialsand dangersthat war, if it did not exist,ought to be invented? And is it truethat the maximumof human tensionis reachedonly in war?Goethe, who has his shareof responsibility,however mod-

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 471 erate,in themaking of thismentality, wrote nevertheless the superb self-epitaphof theman who desiresadmittance to the Islamic paradise, a "Paradise under the shadow of swords/1in spite of never havingbrandished a sword."Denn ich bin ein Menschgewesen - und das ist ein Kämpfersein" ("Because I was a man, and that means to be a warrior"). The knight-errantor professionalcon- dottierewho rode self-determinedfrom duel to skirmishmight have boastedabout the alternativeof life and death; so may the volun- teer,although not in everycircumstance. But the democraticcom- pulsory enlistment,which the anti-democraticfascism has not hastenedto discard,has sharplychanged things; and the poor devil of a soldierwho has to chargeagainst the enemy'smachine gun if he does not like betterthe rifles of thefiring squad, does not facean alternativeof life and death but a choice betweenprobable death and certaindeath. If, however, an alternativeof lifeand deathis an inescapabletest for human nobility,why not the firetrial or sim- ply a mortalduel as soon as any boy (or girl) comes of age? Such systems,among other advantages,would have the recommenda- tionof economy.Certainly, it can hardlybe denied thatthis theory of war forwar's sake, of war as one of the finearts, climbs a peak of human ingenuity.Whereas people of olden times fought,or had the illusion of fighting,for their gods or for their homes, people nowadaysought to fightbecause war is beautifuland supreme,the sportof sports.If such is reallythe fascistfeeling about war,peace is safe; and theirbattles, as theycall them,will ever be those,often salutary, which they fightno differentlyfrom com- munistsor democrats,to drain marshes,to improvecrops, to have trainsrunning on time,to exterminateflies, or to macadamizehigh- roads. Now and then may occur a murder or a purge, like the GermanSaint Bartholomew'sof June 30th; but thisis no war,since thereis no alternativeof lifeand deathfor murderers or murdered. Whetherwar in human historyis due to fateor to human guilt mayremain an open question; but neverbefore, in threethousand yearsof Western civilization, was anyserious attempt made to inter- pret war as nice and jolly, a sword dance, and the best pastime

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 472 SOCIAL RESEARCH mankindmay enjoy. To be sure, Mussolini has more than once quoted Heraclitus,"the melancholy solitary of Ephesus,"according to whom"strife is at the root of all things,"and Hitleritesassume thatall pre-Socraticphilosophers were also pre-Hitlerites.But, to saynothing of the fact that they are not usuallyadept in thedifficult fieldof pre-Socratic philosophy, the fact must be takeninto account that Socraticand post-Socratic,not pre-Socratic,philosophy gave the decisive imprintto ancient thought,and that the attitude towardwar of pagan poetryand philosophywas scarcelydifferent fromthat of the Jewish prophets and of theChristian disciples. The oldestmonument of Mediterraneanliterature, the Iliad, knowscer- tainlythe emotional"joy of battle,"but defineswar, even in its firstpages, as "the evil war" (pólemoskakós) , and aims at forgive- nessand peace. The Aeneid is characterizedthroughout by a long- ing forpeace; and Christianity,at least theoretically,could only deepen thislonging. Even the EmperorCharlemagne of the Chan- son, thoughnot recognizablya dastard,tears his beard when the Angel bringshim the news of anotherwar thathas to be started; even in the grimNibelungenlied, Etzel and all the other heroes would,after all, preferpeace, if peace wereonly possible. No doubt, strifeis at theroot of all things;but the inferencethat therefore the mutualkilling of man by man is metaphysicallynecessary - indeed, thatwar is therichest cream of spiritualexistence - is just a soph- ism of the meanestsort; as if on the premisethat water is a neces- saryfactor in humandiet someone were to drawthe conclusion that ocean wateror boiling water,being supremelywaters, make the bestdrinks for human meals. Only in veryrecent times, with the "revoltof passion,"has the cult of war grownup; forwar is passion.Napoleon, with his start- linglyvisible glory,embodied the ideal far betterthan Schiller's imaginaryrobbers or the schoolmaster'sexcerpts from Plutarch's heroic biographies.Goethe in his Euphorion,half Byronic,half Stormand Stress,knew how to translateinto song the scorn of pacifismthat had alreadybeen formulatedin plain prose,several decades earlier,by Moeserand others:

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 473 "Dream ye the peacefulday? Dream, then,who may! Warl is thecountersign: Victory,word divine."

Althoughthe Chorusobjects: "Who peace and unity Scorneth,for war's array, With impunity Slayshis hope ofa betterday."

On the crestof the same wave foamedSchopenhauer's pessimism, and, as a deductionfrom Schopenhauer, came Wagner'smusic and controversialwriting. Wagner is the genius who gave fleshand blood to themost expressive of modernmyths: Siegfried as a demi- god ofirrationalism and ofadventure for adventure's sake. Wagner, too, combinedGerman self-deification with anti-Semitism, a tend- ency which never before had shown the tremendousemotional swingwith which Wagner was able to endow it. Later Gobineau and otherscarried the tendencyforward with the tale of Germansuperiority, founded substantially on nothing but the thrillingpamphlet in which the Roman historianand oratorTacitus transferredthe traditional Arcadia, begemmed with the virtuesof earlypatrician Rome, to the Germanwoods: a Uto- pian republic which he contrastedwith the corruptionof the Roman Empire. Then came Darwinism,with the strugglefor existenceand the survivalof the fittest;then pragmatism(and, whynot, Christian Science, and, whynot, theosophy, and any kind ofoccultism) placing imagination and will above truthand reason. Meanwhile Nietzsche- the grandeststorm on the horizonof human thought,as Andler aptly said - placed the cage of the "blonde wild beast" on the meadow where Rousseau's innocent savage used to play on his reed pipe. Is it necessaryto repeatthat these philosophies and artsand these intellectualheroes, major and minor,are not,each and all, directly

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 474 SOCIAL RESEARCH responsiblefor fascism? That a full enumerationof the elements would be interminable:that the genealogicaltree of fascismis as leafyas a weepingwillow? The disintegrationof European thought fromthe decline of the eighteenthcentury to the dawn of the twentieth- a disintegrationwhich did not impair,and even occa- sionallystimulated an astoundingwealth of creativeenergy - took many directions; and fascism gathered from every direction whateversuited its requirements.It skimmed,one maysay, antho- logically,the romantic and post-romanticmentality, quite unpreju- diced in the choice of details,provided theymight be arranged along the main line of fascistimpulsion. This consistsin a stren- uous and, in spiteof the multiplicityof appearances,a verycoher- ent oppositionto any formof rationalismand Platonismin the interpretationof history;and, therefore,especially an opposition to the latestconcrete experiment in rationalidealism: progressive democracyas it was conceivedin thephilosophies of the eighteenth century.Further, fascism consists in the rejectionof any fixedgoal or permanentaim, in the beliefthat change is substance,passion is virtue,force is right; or, for those who like concise definitions, fascismconsists in thesubstitution of theidea of powerfor the idea ofjustice. Any other definition misses its proper intention; it would not touch what is specificin fascismand what is common to all brandsof fascism. As forfreedom, fascism takes equitably into account- and not contradictorilyat all - both extremesof the post-romanticdisinte- gration:the super-individualistic, anarchic, solipsistic extreme, and the reactionary,obscurantist, herd-like opposite. The tyrant,or hero,is free,so faras the Supermanor Stirner'sEinziger can want to be free;hence, his rebellionagainst any law thatmight be im- posed on him,League of Nationsor internationalcodes. But slaves are slaves.Chains, forged either by churchor stateor in the under- worldof conservativeethics and complexes,are equally good; for how could He be free,had He no slaves? All thatprecedes is tantamountto sayingthat fascism, if it were a real thing,could claim the gloryof being the mostdeeprooted

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 475 involutionor revolutionin the course of our civilization,"the grandeststorm that ever burston the horizonof history";subvert- ing both the Christianteaching of love and the classicdoctrine of permanentjustice; as its ultimateachievement looming a bifront Janus,one face Antichrist,the other Antiplato. But is it a real thing?Has it outgrownthe literary,musical, aesthetic cradle where it was nursedwith slogans and leitmotiveìTrue, therehas been some castoroil, some blood, a few concentrationcamps, a little, perhapsnot so little,suffocation. There is also a good deal of talk about the corporatestate; as if a corporationor any otherkind of institutionalorganism were even conceivableso long as His power, the omnipotenceof the despot,is totallyuncontrolled. But what will such historicscenery look like fromthe heightof the future, say in a hundredyears, if fascismdid not go further?More chron- icle than history;wavy outline, no mountain range; all in all a postwarneurosis, and an epigonic output of literaryaftermath. Mostof it stillexists only in speech,journalism, song, cheer, adver- tising,broadcast. Public utteranceby word of mouthand the circu- lationof the dailypaper, this unavoidably democratic tool, is man- aged as a weapon against democraticthought; a paradox which, morethan anything else, bares the weaknessof the system.No fascistdictator has yetopenly proclaimed his divine,or, at least super- human right;no fascistdictator has retiredfrom the profanemob behind the walls of an Escurial. A really anti-democraticbelief oughtto requireno less than this. Far away,almost imperceptible from the distanceof the future, thetom tom of EmperorJones fades into the jungle of nothingness.

But whateveris real in fascism,little or much,could neverhave come to theworld, if the intermarriage of ideas,related in the fore- going pages, had been celebrated only in ideal beds, which are sterile.Not a singleprophet, during more than a centuryof prophe- cies,analyzing the degradation of the romantic culture, or planning thesplit of theromantic atom, ever imagined anything like fascism. There was, in the lap of the future,communism and syndicalism

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 476 SOCIAL RESEARCH and what not; therewas anarchism,and legitimism,and even all- papacy; war, peace, deluge, pan-Germanism,pan-Slavism, Yellow Peril,signals to theplanet Mars; therewas no fascism.It came as a surpriseto all, and to themselvestoo. One mayimagine all the possibleinterrelations of ideas and all theirthinkable results, one of whichundoubtedly was fascism,al- thoughoverlooked by prophets;but such resultsare bound to re- main mere day dreams, ambivalent or plurivalenthypotheses, unlesssomeone comes and graftsthe livingshoot of a real volition upon the sterilestock of the imagination.This is the finalissue in history:personality. No collectiveexplanation, either economic or dialectic,can dispensewith it. Why did not fascismarise in Russia? Because, the answerruns, the componentsof Russian culture were Czarist mysticismand mysticcommunism; there you have the resultantin communistic Czarism,or Bolshevism.Why not in the United States?Because, here also theanswer is at hand,her youthfulsturdy innocence pre- servedher fromboth major diseasesof sophisticatedEurope: the tuberculosisof eager pessimism(Schopenhauer) and the syphilis of megalomania (Nietzsche). But whydid it not arise in France,where teachers of obscurant- ismand hatred,from de Maistreand beforeto Maurrasand Daudet and after,had been quite a college?The sabre rattlingof General Boulangerdid not impale even a mouse; Jacques Lebaudy died as emperorof Sahara; Coty,the Corsican of the twentiethcentury, died a shorttime ago as a perfumer;and the Pretendersare charm- ing gentlemen. England too had her share,a largeone, in the disintegrationof romanticism,mainly in the aestheticand literaryfield, although not withoutencroachments on theneighboring fields of ethicsand behavior. But Oscar Wilde did not set himselfup as Prince of Wales; and if it mustbe grantedthat, had fascismconquered Eng- land, Irish sophistryand Popish revivalwould have found in fas- cismits good sides,nonetheless G.B. is stillonly G.B. and G.K. still wearsno mitre.

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 477 Finally,why did not fascismappear firstin Germany?We have of late heard an American sage utter the judgment that fascist mentalityis un-German.This is no doubt inaccurate;no doubt a large majorityof the intellectualelements of fascismhad their fatherland,primitive or adoptive, in Germany.But fascismdid not,however, spring up firstin the furrowwhere Fichte or Hegel, Wagneror Treitschke,Gobineau or Chamberlainor Bernhardior Spenglerhad sown; neitherdid corporatism,in spite of Adam Müller and Othmar Spahn. It was a long, wearisomeway from the beerhall putsch to the plebiscites;and even the firstputsch was startedseveral months after the marchon Rome. Why thendid fascismarise firstin Italy?Because Italy had had her share,with Vico and Giobertiand others,and finallywith the Pope of the Syllabus,in the shapingof neo-reactionarydoctrines? This share had not been decisive,and had lacked the rhetorical spell appealing to the masses.Because Italians had not been long enough accustomedto politicaland intellectualfreedom? This is, as alreadyemphasized, generic for many nations,not specificfor Italy. Because, more than any othernation, they had been accus- tomedthrough two thousandyears of world empireand universal church,across dramatic peaks and valleysof majestyand misfor- tune,to loftinessof politicalimagination, and at the same time to the mostdejected renouncementof personalityin public life and to the mostdaring experimentalversatility in political thinking? This is a betterreason. They were prepared to accept anything strangeand new, particularlyif the noveltypromised somehow to revivethe hereditarycomplex of Roman superiorityand to check the stubborn,although scarcelyreasonable, complex of modern inferiority.They were also hereditarilyready to give up their personalrights that a collectiveimagination might thrive. But this too would have remaineda theoreticalreason, had the Man not come.A hundredMachiavellis cannot breed a singlePrince. The Man was not the Marquis and ProfessorVilfredo Pareto, about whomwe have alreadybegun to hear much idle talkin this country.Pareto was a ratherdifficult nobleman, who transferred

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 478 SOCIAL RESEARCH the loathingfor plebeians that saddened his genteelblood into a ratherconfused and pretentioussystem of aristocraticpessimism. Much of what is good in his work is a plagiarismor unavowed borrowingfrom the Italian jurist Mosca, who had alreadydiscov- ered that groups and elites,not undifferentiatedmasses, are the makersof history.Many details,especially in footnotes,are strik- ing; and theyare oftenthe fruitof an originaland rich scholarship (even if at times a bit whimsical), especially in ancient history.Much of what is bad is the inadequate and positivistic ambition to classifyhuman historyas a kind of natural science (vide Taine) , nay,as a branchof mathematics.Nobody ever read him exceptin indexes,abridgments or book reviews,or in brows- ing. It is oftenreported that Mussolini,when a young wanderer in Switzerland,attended some of his classes; probablyan oppor- tunity,unusual withhim, fora rest. The man of destinywas Gabriele d'Annunzio: a greatpoet, so faras his greedinessfor life allowed him greatnessin poetry,and a real man of action,so far as his poeticftalent allowed him real action; a Bryonraised to the nth power.Now an old man, grum- bling behind the walls of his freakyEscurial, the Vittorialeon the Lago di Garda, he was once a phenomenonunique in history:a poet who meant what he wrote,and lived, if not up to his full success,at leastto his fancy.He had collectedin one singletrough all the distillationsand drippingsof the romanticwitch-kitchen: titanismand sadism,voluptuousness and despair,Nietzsche and Verlaine,Mona Lisa and Yseult, La Belle Dame sans Merci and the Holy Virgin,the saintlinessof the peasant'sfamily, the pious silence of the cloister,the beautyof slaughter,of fire,of tyranny, of treachery,of bravery,of Rome, of sacrifice.Everything that is fascistis in his volumes,and variousother things that fascism later dropped.Early in the new centuryhe had carvedthe line, "Arma la prorae salpa versoil mondo" ("Arm the prow and sail toward the world"), which,incidentally, is rathera bewilderingsailing direction.Certainly a genius,even if he had only written.But he did more than that; he acted. As war came, he went warring,an

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 479 individual warfareincomparably more strikingthan Byron's in Greece. He foughthis own war, indeed as a potentatestrictly allied to the King of Italy, but choosingwhatever gallant enter- priseon land, in air, on sea, suited his taste,and totallyignoring any other disciplineor obligation; a self-determinationunprece- dented except perhaps in Orlando Furioso or in Don Quixote. Even the militaryrank thathe adopted, Commandante,although apparentlyborrowed from the navy,was, in more or less secret intention,the literal translationof the Roman Imperator. As peace, or at least armistice,came he was heard saying,"I smell the stenchof peace." Shortlyafter at the head of a handful of people, althoughmeeting no militaryresistance, he seized a city, Fiume, challengingthe wrath if not the guns of all the Great Powers,and therehe settled,a Signoreand monarch,like a con- dottiereof the Renaissance.There he inventedor perfectedevery- thing: salutes,speeches from the balcony and choral cheersfrom the crowd assembledunderneath, rites, processions, oaths, trans- valuation of Faustismand perhaps of Mephistophelianism,into a mysticismof action. Even corporatismhas rootsin d'Annunzio's love of the beautyof guilds in the mediaeval Italian communes, where everybodybelonged to an "art/*which is, in a way, the equivalent of sayingthat everybodywas an artist.It is an effect of this leaning far more than it is an enactmentof Müller's and Spahn's highbrowspeculations, a derivativefrom syndicalism or a loud echo of what, more modestlybut more successfully,had been achieved a generationearlier in democraticAustralia and New Zealand under the compulsoryArbitration Act. A year or so latersome shellshotsof the Italian regularforces drove him from Fiume; he withdrew,undisturbed, to his fancifulVatican on the Lago di Garda, wherea real warshipwith real guns lies, far away fromany water,on the hills of the poet's estate,and mightsome daysail anew towardthe world. A failure,when compared to the promiseof dreams;but a huge achievementin the difficultrealm of things.If d'Annunzio,some twentyyears earlier,had conquered the jeunesse dorée and the

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 480 SOCIAL RESEARCH naive youththrough little more than his admirablepoems and his smartriding on horseback,now, giving evidence that "anything is feasible" (or almost), he sweptall thelower and middleemotional strataof the country.Other experiencesof the same kind loomed in thememory of therace: Caesar,Columbus, Napoleon, Garibaldi in the grandstyle; Cola di Rienzo at about the level of d'Annun- zio; the adventurers,from the Renaissanceto Casanova and further,in the woodland of irresponsiblepioneering. Perhaps this feelingthat history is inventive,that the worldof realityis plastic and obedientto a strong,creative hand, belongsto Italians more than to othernations. The deed of Fiume aroused many hearts. Could philosophyhave dikedthe land againstthe wave of mystic activism?Philosophy had enjoyedgreat popularity in Italy during the firsttwo decades of the twentiethcentury; and the authority of BenedettoCroce, a greatthinker and scholar,had not been con- considerablyimpaired by his pro-German,or neutral,attitude at the startof the war. Some tendenciesof his ethical and aesthetic tasteentitled him, in a way,to claim the nationaloffice of an anti- d'Annunzio. But Italian neo-idealism,either in the shape con- ferredon it by Croce or in the variantof Gentile- who, in fact, joined the Fascistparty as earlyas 1924- had, and still has, no fundamentalobjection to nationalismand fascism.It asserts,in the wake of Hegel, that"all thatis rationalis real,and all thatis real is rational";if so, is not nationalismreal? Is not fascismreal - so far as it is a reality?And how,possibly, can reason,or philosophy,op- pose them?Besides, this philosophy is impregnatedwith a consider- able amountof beliefin the state,and in the national stateas the highestpossible attainment and the broadestpossible community throughwhich the individualis allowed to come in contactwith the universal.It expressedalso, indefatigably,a bitterdislike of Mazzinianism,democracy, freemasonry and of anykind of abstract, Utopian,"eighteenth century mentality." The shortautobiography which Croce composedon the eve of the Italian interventionin the war, in 1915, is veryinteresting in the candor with which he confesseshis slowness,almost sluggishness, in politicalcuriosity and

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 481 interestat the beginningof his career.There was an approach to socialism,followed by a quick disillusion.The only constantele- ment in his political temperamentfrom adolescence onward had been a feelingagainst the liberal and democratic"rhetoric," and an aversionto the abstractthinking of the "eighteenthcentury mentality."He had raised,or createdfrom nothing, the reputation of a writer,Alfredo Oriani, now canonizedamong the prophetsof nationalfascism. In his mostbrilliant if not mostsuccessful book, Philosophyof the Practical,he had inserteda shortbut eloquent defenseof the Holy Inquisition,which was "reallyholy." Approxi- matelyat the same time he warmlyintroduced to Italian readers GeorgesSorel and his "Reflexionssur la violence." This was a big event.The Italian jeunesse dorée and the honestfanatics - often formersocialists and syndicalistsof extremevehemence - did not have to botherany more about the intellectualquality of the sug- gestionsof violence that came fromthe poet d'Annunzio. Sorel's pamphlet,with Croce's preface, stamped the seal ofserious learning on theirpassions; philosophy,so theyfelt, legitimized poetry. In the followingdecade Sorel was far more popular in Italy than in France,and he liked Italyvery much: an experimentalzone where, perhaps,the toilsome nail work of this misanthropescratching nervouslyon the facade of contemporarycivilization might help to bringabout some crumblingworth the while.. In the municipalelections of 1914 at Naples, Croce headed the conservativeparties, Fascio dell' ordine,against the leftistblock. At the startof the war he was pro-Germanor neutral; he never agreedwith the interpretationof thewar as makingthe worldsafe fordemocracy. This war had to him no ideal meaningat all. Cer- tainlydialectic thinking is difficultand noble,and in thevery many thingsthat Croce wroteand said about politicsand historyin the makingthere was evera kernelof truth;but dialecticaction is im- possible. Hamlet may talk and sink, Fortinbrasmust choose. So faras Croce was a Fortinbras,directly concerned in action,he had to choose; and at the verydecisive moment, which was the close of thewar and the immediatemorrow of war,he chose to put all the

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 482 SOCIAL RESEARCH weightof his workon theside of nationalismand pre-fascism.The eighteenthcentury mentality of Wilsonians and Mazzinians was necessarilyhateful to him; he had alreadyannounced the death of socialism; he minimizedthe League of Nations; he scorned the idea of "State as justice," again and again upholding the state as force;he stressednational differences, such as thosebetween "Eng- lish and Russians,Italians and Croats,Christians and Turks*'; he ultimatelydecided that politics cannot "be treated as ethics, whereaspolitics (this is the plain truth) is politics,just politics, and nothingelse but politics;or, if you wantme once more to re- peat the tenetand comparisonthat are dear to me, the moralityof politicsconsists wholly and onlyin being excellentpolitics, as the moralityof poetry,whatever the incompetentsmay say, consists uniquelyin beingexcellent poetry/'1 In the followingyears, under fascism,he has writtenmuch finer things, some of themquite beau- tiful;he has steadilydrawn nearer to theideas of Europe as a unity and of politicalfreedom, though not yetgiving an adequate philosophic definitionof this latteridea; he certainlybelongs more to the futurethan to the past,for a man belongswhere he has most sufferedand hoped. In firmnessinspired by personalpride and by disinterestedconviction he withstoodand withstandsfascist threat and fascistboycott. He has helped as no one else has to build a bridgebetween the generationsof the intelligentsia.This is very good forthe future,although it does not entirelymake up forthe past. During the fascistrise Croce's philosophyand attitudesdid not,to be sure,contribute an impulsecomparable to d'Annunzio's; but neitherdid theypresent any real obstacle.Overstating, as usual, thingsmoderately true, fascists claim him as one Qftheir forerunners and assumethat he, not they,took the wrong turning.

Now the apple hung ripe,ready for the strongquick hand that would stretchto pluck. There was, somewherein the huddle, the hand of Mussolini. He had learnedfrom Lenin and MustaphaKemal thatthe coup 1 Pagine Sparse, Serie Seconda (Naples 1919) p. 258 and passim.

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 483 d'étatwas possiblealso in contemporarystates. Indeed, both these coups d'état were towardthe left,in the supposed main direction of history;but d'Annunziohad taughtthat anything is feasible (or almost) withno matterwhat intellectualor emotionalstuff. Mus- solini was an anarchistand an artist.Endowed, no doubt,with an exceptional and exceptionallywell trained ability for handling human passions,he shared also the natural inclinationthat such abilityusually carrieswith it: the inclinationto preferpassions easierto handle.At theclose of the war he was at a crossroads.Had his intellectualbackground and his moral belief been rocks of steadfastness,he would have turnedto the road on the left;toward socialismand Mazzinianism,toward proletarian, progressive, scien- tificallyinspired revolution or reform;there lay all thepassions and cravingsof his feverishlystaring youth. This choice offeredchances of failure,very many of them;and someof real greatnessin history. But his adventurousand mixed reading could not possiblyhave bestowedon him an intellectualsupply better than the sophisms and trahisonsde clercswhich he relishedevery day, nibbling the famedbooks of his time;he personallywent so faras to supposethat Einstein'srelativity means that there is no real truthand that everythingis just relative.After hesitations, the contentof power grewmeaningless before his need of power. On the oppositeroad therewere nationalisticemotionalism and the fear of the owner classes;all thathe had despisedand hated.But theywere the forces at hand, under high pressure,ready to start,while the socialist thronghad proved helpless. He was an anarchistand an artist, and the temptationwas too strong.He reachedfor the next oppor- tunity.He got it. Probablyhe is sometimesrestless, and dreamsof a secondchance.

Hitler, fundamentally,is nobody. He learned,in turn,from Mussolini the lesson that everything is feasible (not almost), thata reactionarycoup d'état is thinkable even afterthe Reformationand Kant; thatindividual pioneering is possibleeven in the heartof Europe,

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 484 SOCIAL RESEARCH He merelytranslated, engrossing it, Mussolini'ssystem back into the German language in which- though until then lacking im- pulse to action- it had been firstconceived. The differences,such as themuch talked of difference in attitudetoward the Jews, depend on objectivecircumstances, not on the intentionsof the leaders. Hitler is onlythe shadow of Mussolini;but sucha broad one that it seemsdoubtful if many sun raysfor autonomous development are still leftto Italian fascism.For the time being Mussolini,the cre- ator, already looks like the precursorof Hitler, the imitator:a destinyallotted to manysuch geniuses. In the economicfield, and seen in the mostfavorable light, fascism,either in Italyor Germany,has facedthe crisisneither better nor worsethan communisticor democraticcommunities have. If so, whatis theuse of fascism?In the internationalfield, the clashes betweenMussolini and Hitler seem to indicatethat it is extremely difficultfor fascismto build a new internationalsystem. Should Mussolini,in thedesire to evade the Hitler shadow,be driveninto the path of liberal England or of democraticFrance, that would implysome consequencesfor his futurein Italy; since,in the ulti- mate issue,foreign policy and domesticpolicy are interdependent. Is the alternativewar (which,as Mussoliniquite recentlysaid, witha quotationfrom Proudhon, "is of divine origin")? Who can wage it, or wherecan it suddenlyexplode fromthe patientlyac- cumulatedheap of explosivematerial? Or is the alternativerevo- lution?Or slowdisintegration and gradualmerging in theordinary fluxof things?Such queries maybe leftto fortunetellers.

There are, beyonddoubt, positive and creativeelements in fascism. First,the appeal to energy (althoughenergy must know its aim,and theaim mustbe a good one) . Second,the appeal to social order and discipline (although the basis of this order must be shifted,and the aim must be collaborationamong freelyordered nations,not war,which is the worstof disorders). Third, the criti- cismof democracy and parliamentarianismin theirdecay (although a betterdemocracy, not despotism,must be theinference) .

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF FASCISM 485 Fourth,and best of all. Italyand Germanycame last, not yet two thirdsof a centuryago, into the row of modernnational states. Theywere immature. Fascism is givingthem the inner experience ofstruggle and characterthat France and Englandhad in thelate MiddleAges, and Americain theCivil War. Much of Germanyis stilla storageplace for the pious safekeeping of mediaevalmemo- ries;Italy is stilla peninsulajutting from the ancient world into thenew. Involuntarily, but at highestspeed, fascism is burningin bothcountries all thematerial of thepast: personal and, dogmatic authority,monarchy and church,classic and romanticpedantry, daydreamingand involutedintroversion. From fascism both na- tionswill emerge,soon or late,renovated, quite Europeanand modern,and makersof Europe.

Forthe rest, the conclusive words are in Milton'sParadise Lost, XII, 95 if. Tyrannymust be, Thoughto theTyrant thereby no excuse. Yetsometimes nations will decline so low Fromvirtue, which is reason, that no wrong, ButJustice, and somefatal curse annex'd, Deprivesthem of theiroutward liberty, Theirinward lost. . . .

It has also been said,"Deeds, not words." But it mustbe said, "Words,not deeds." It wasfirst sinned in theMind. In thebeginning was the Word. Mind and Wordmust make it up. The intellectualsof thenew time,philosophers and poets,must reject sophistry and lies; they mustthink in termsof righteousnessand truth,and of united Europe,which is thenext stage in thedevelopment toward unity of humaneffort. They must not feel ashamed of feeling like prophets; and theymust cultivate the endurance and selflessnessofprophets. Theydo notneed to see a betterworld if they,"immovably cen- tred,"keep working toward it.

This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 16:56:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions