Roberts Shows How Fascism Could Be at Once Populist and Elitist, Modernizing and Traditionalist, Procapitalist and Anticapitalist, Nationalist and anti-Italian, Totalitarian and Anticollectivist

This interpretive work confronts the central questions about Italian fascism in contemporary history. It focuses on the syndicalist intellectual tradition, which began as a revisionist form of Marxism around the turn of the century and gradually became the most important theoretical component in Italian fascism.

The revised syndicalist program showed young, politically inexperienced fascists how to proceed as they sought to construct an alternative to both parliamentary liberalism and Marxist socialism in the aftermath of World War I. By considering both the neosyndicalist blueprint and the frustrations and hopes of these younger fascists, the author demonstrates that a reasonably coherent populist current was at work in Italian fascism and that it had a major impact on the shape of the regime. Though hardly heroes or intellectual giants, these fascists were trying to devise rational, forward-looking solutions to a wide range of genuine problems, some peculiarly Italian, some more universal. While the author takes the fascists seriously, on their own terms, he does not seek to rehabilitate them. In fact, his account illuminates the inadequacies in the fascist program and the weaknesses in the movement itself.

The serious study of fascism only began about twenty years after World War II, and it has been directed mostly toward nazism, not Italian fascism. Scholars have tended to approach Italian fascism from an adversary position, easily dismissing it with a few generalizations. Consequently, the central question of how a left-wing movement was transformed into fascism has been largely ignored. It is precisely here that Roberts's study makes its central contribution. His systematic exploration of fascist perceptions and purposes enables us to understand, for the first time, how fascism could be at once populist and elitist, modernizing and traditionalist, procapitalist and anticapitalist, nationalist and anti-Italian, totalitarian and anticollectivist. The author traces the emergence of the fascist perspective in terms of the crisis of classical Marxism and sheds new light on the role of Italian fascism in the greater drama of European history.

--David D. Roberts, The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979), book jacket.