“Ahistoric” and “Counterrevolutionary” Elements Had Somehow Succeeded in Overwhelming Marxism and Political Progressivism that Had Been Commissioned, by History, to Transform the World

Given his Marxist convictions, Gramsci was certain that the First World War had irretrievably impaired the survival capacity of industrial capitalism. Capitalism had entered its “final crisis.” Any effort at revival was doomed to failure. Any political movement that sought the rehabilitation of capitalism, in any form, was hopelessly reactionary—seeking to restore what history had deemed irretrievably lost. Worldwide proletarian revolution was on history’s immediate agenda. Whether composed of Nationalists, National Syndicalists, or Fascists, any movement opposed to the unalterable course of history could only proffer contradictory, irrational, and abstract doctrines.

As a Marxist, Gramsci knew history’s future course. He held that any political movement not committed to that course was, of necessity, not only irrational and counterrevolutionary, but reactionary as well. Such movements must, necessarily, represent nonproletarian agrarian and industrial elements condemned by history to its “ashbin”—to reaction, counterrevolution, and confusion.

Given that set of convictions, one did not have to consider the intrinsic merits of the non-Marxist ideological formulations found in Fascist thought. The very best of non-Marxist doctrinal statements could be nothing other than “ideological abstractions.” Since capitalism had finally lapsed into that last “general crisis” foretold by Marx in the mid-nineteenth century, the future was clear. All twentieth-century political movements not committed to proletarian revolution must necessarily be contradictory as well as irrational—and because counterrevolutionary, violent.

By the time of Fascism’s accession to power on the peninsula, Marxists of all kinds, and their fellow travelers, were desperately searching for the key to the understanding of the complex events that had overtaken them. “Ahistoric” and “counterrevolutionary” elements had somehow succeeded in overwhelming Marxism and political progressivism that had been commissioned, by history, to transform the world. It was at that juncture that Clara Zetkin affirmed that Mussolini’s success was not the simple consequence of military victory; it was “an ideological and political victory over the working class movement.”

That did not mean, in the least, that Fascism employed an ideology that enjoyed superiority over that of Marxism. What it meant was that Marxists had not employed inherited “theory” to best advantage. Prior to its victory, Marxists had not understood the “essence” of Fascism. Once understood, there was an aggressive effort among members of the Third International to formulate a convincing account of Italian Fascism to better counteract its toxin. Unfortunately, there was never to be any consistency among the Marxist assessments. Marxist theoreticians settled on only one consistency: Fascism was deemed counterrevolutionary, opposed to the course of history. So disposed, Fascism had to be, necessarily, irrational—and, as irrational, contradictory.

--A. James Gregor, Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 11-12.