Massimo Verdicchio 346 FABIO FERNANDO RIZI BENEDETTO CROCE AND ITALIAN FASCISM Toronto-Buffalo-London: University of Toronto Press, 2003. 321 pp. roce scholars, and historians of Italian intellectual history and thought, have been probably waiting for this book for a long time, and it is here now. Fabio Rizi s book on Croce and fascism, finally fills a great lacuna and sets the record straight on a very much debated and thorny issue. Although there is no doubt that after 1925 Croce was strongly opposed to the Fascist regime of Mussolini some have even called this opposition tepid (4) the question remained whether Croce s own philosophy did not pave the way for Italian fascism, whether he had been sympathetic to Mussolini s regime and even supported it initially. Rizi s book, the result of years of archival work and research, amply answers all these questions, documents at hand. With the recent publication of Croce s diaries in six volumes, Taccuini di Lavoro, to complement his research, Rizi has finally put the controversy to rest. But Rizi s book is much more. The book is also a year to year account of Croce s political activity during those difficult years and after. Written with great perception and knowledge, the book provides in-depth accounts of key events and major works written in those years, placing the whole in its proper perspective. Rizi s work spans the length of Croce s life. The first chapter accounts for the years 1866-1920, that is, from Croce s birth to his early involvement with politics, and provides a good account of the early political history of Italy and Croce s involvement in it. It is in this period that Croce s relation with the periodical Politica, founded in 1918 and published by Francesco Coppola and Alfredo Rocco, two Nationalist leaders, the latter Mussolini s future minister of justice, was mistaken as a sign of Croce s sympathy for nationalist ideology. Rizi makes clear that Croce was only doing a favour to Coppola, who was a friend, and who had assured him that this was a review of political science and philosophy, which went beyond the larger vision of the program of the Nationalist Party (32). In fact, as soon as it became evident that Politica in 1919 had become the official organ of the Nationalist party, Croce withdrew his contribution, announcing his decision in the press and to friends, regretting, as he was to say later to have been a little unwise (33). For Rizi, however, there is no possibility of mistaking Croce s view of nation with the nationalist s one. For Croce, the nation was an historical creation, whereas for the nationalists it was the result of natural forces, geographic elements, and ethnic heritage (33). In the chapters that follow, which cover two years at a time, sometime day by day, Rizi analyzes and explains Croce s political activity till his death in 1952. Chapter II, From Giolitti to Mussolini, 1920-1922 , outlines the slow Benedetto Croce and Italian Fascism 347 rise of fascism as a major force in Italian political life as basically a history of misunderstandings, and fatal mistakes (40). Unable to foresee the dire implications of the emerging Nationalist party, Liberal leaders like Giolitti, for instance, tried to absorb fascism into the constitutional life of the nation, hoping to blunt its radicalism and to channel its ambition (40). Everyone, Croce included, failed to realize that fascism was a new kind of beast, with a voracious appetite (40), just as they underestimated the ability and the ambition of Mussolini (41). The other occasion that has given rise to criticism was the Fascist Congress in Naples in October 1922, just a week before the March on Rome, which Croce attended with other senators to hear Mussolini s speech at the San Carlo Theatre. In his Taccuini, Croce wrote that he went: Believing it useful, and in a certain way, even dutiful to acquire a more direct knowledge of a political party, the importance and force of which was growing in Italy day by day (42). Mussolini s speech was meant to reassure the silent majority of Italy (42) and thus he was very careful in his speech not to worry or to offend anyone present. However, as Rizi points out, the reality was another, namely, that forty thousand Black Shirts and twenty thousand workers poured into Naples that same weekend and Mussolini spoke to them in a different language, using a different tone and promising different solutions (42). Either they will give us the government or we will take it by marching on Rome. Once there we will grab by the throat this miserable class . This side of Mussolini, writes Rizi, was missed or ignored by everyone including Croce (42). As the Fascist party possessed a military apparatus, it was too late to disband it without bringing in the army and risking a civil war. The frightening consequences of this prospect made the Liberal leaders even more timid. In the attempt to avert a conflict, believing that civil war was imminent, they opted to bring the fascist party into the government through legal means, hoping that Mussolini would accept a junior position. But as Rizi points out, and as others have indicated in hindsight, the fascist regime was far from being organized and institutionalized. There would have been time to put an anti-fascist coalition together to oppose Mussolini, but the liberal leaders succumbed to the illusion that it was possible to normalize fascism (43). Croce also shared this view believing that new and younger forces [should be] introduced into Italian political life, to give a new vigour to the political class, which the long war and the postwar period had impoverished and worn out (44). Liberals, like Croce, did not think that fascism could destroy the institutions created by the Risorgimento. For him, fascism was only an episode of the war period, a youthful and patriotic reaction, which would disappear without causing much harm, and perhaps leaving something good behind (44). And like all other liberals, Croce believed that all the national institutions were safe and that freedom was not Massimo Verdicchio 348 at risk. It never crossed my mind , Croce would comment later, that Italy would allow freedom to be snatched from her hands: that freedom, which had cost so much effort and so much blood, and which my generation regarded as a conquest lasting forever (44). Later he recognized to have shown little sagacity , and to have been guilty of easy optimism and not enough political foresight (44). But perhaps the reasons behind the failure of the liberal government to unite against Mussolini, as Rizi intimates, was mostly due to the fact that the liberals did not constitute a united front. Some of the Liberal leaders were very old, some even older than Croce, and they did not all share the same ideals, but were torn by divisions and bitter resentment (44). They had not changed with the changing Italian society. They were very set in their ways and unable to cope with the passions and the demands generated or increased by the war (44). They were expert parlamentarians but they lacked the qualities to deal with mass politics, and with the aspirations of the new emerging classes (44). More than sagacity , Rizi adds, the Liberals needed new blood and a modern political party, able to organize and mobilize their existing and potential supporters (44). Thus, when the time came, the Liberals, and Croce, voted for the motion of confidence in Mussolini s government. Another mistake was believing that the king, who was the head of the Armed Forces, could eventually resolve the situation when the need arose. The king, however, as he proved later, was not prepared to take action, in fact, he was afraid of becoming involved. While in these years Croce showed political benevolence toward Mussolini and his government, he always remained faithful to the ideals of liberalism and never surrendered them. Not only did he not accept any official position in the new government. but he also refused to meet personally with Mussolini. He had no reason not to esteem Mussolini, he wished him well in his work but a meeting between them would be useless since they were for social environment, for family and for cultural formation of a different origin (49). Of course, all this changed as Mussolini began to show his true intentions. The turning point, as Rizi writes in the third chapter that covers the years from 1923 to 1924, comes in the aftermath of the Matteotti affair. Although Croce thought that Mussolini had nothing to do with this murder, and while he refused to vote against the government, Croce began to believe that fascism was no longer a good thing, that it had to go, but without shocks (70). He was now convinced that fascism unable to find its legitimacy in the liberal state needed violence to maintain its power (70). Yet, as Rizi comments, he still did not see the contradiction between condemning fascist ideology and fascist violence, and giving his vote of confidence to the same government in the Senate. Croce argued that his was a prudent and patriotic vote (71), dictated by a desire to protect the good that fascism had created Benedetto Croce and Italian Fascism 349 and to give time to the process of the transformation of fascism (71). The actual break with fascism came with the break-up of his friendship with Gentile which he terminated suddenly indicating that the philosophical disagreements that they had, have now become practical and political in nature.