Mussolini Believed It Was the Right Moment to "Bring up to Date" the Concept of Socialism through a Revision Based upon the Concept of Revolutionary Idealism

Mussolini’s mix of Marxism and of idealism, of Pareto and of Nietzsche, represented something original in the ideological tradition of Italian socialism. Mussolini claimed the right to be heretical as he saw it as a quest to give new vitality to Marxism, basing it upon current events and the new requirements of new situations.

Having reached the leadership of the party and after a decade of expounding a consistent policy of revolution, Mussolini believed that it was the right moment to “bring up to date” the concept of socialism and the party’s policies through a theoretical and practical revision based upon the concept of revolutionary idealism that he himself had developed over the previous ten years. However, at the end of 1913—owing to his position as a member of the revolutionary leadership that had taken control of the party and, above all, due to his role as Avanti!’s editor—Mussolini did not feel sufficiently free to engage in this work of theoretical revision. This explains why he founded the magazine Utopia, which defined itself in its subtitle as “The fortnightly journal of Italian Revolutionary Socialism.” He wrote to Prezzolini on March 25, 1914, “I did not found it so much for myself as to discover amongst today’s young people—both Socialists and non-Socialists—minds that have been overlooked and are able to rejuvenate theory with a new interpretation, be it orthodox or heterodox.”

--Emilio Gentile, "A Revolution for the Third Italy," in Mussolini 1883-1915: Triumph and Transformation of a Revolutionary Socialist, ed. Spencer M. Di Scala and Emilio Gentile (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 264.