The Vision of a New Order Would Come When the Groundwork Done by the Fascists Was Crowned with Socialism

One need only read the pertinent passages about Italian fascism in the very interesting diaries of Victor Serge, a dissident Russian Communist, to understand the deep and lasting connection between the national and international leftist ideologies, socialism-communism and fascism. Serge writes about Nicola Bombacci, a Socialist who later returned to Italy and "collaborated." When Serge met him in his exile in Berlin (1923-1924), Bombacci told him that Mussolini owed much to the ideas of the Communists. "Why," Serge asked, "didn't you get rid of Mussolini at the time of the destruction of the cooperatives?" "Because our most militant and energetic men had gone over to him." Serge confesses that he then realized how much he was tortured by the attraction fascism exercised on the extreme left.

Equally interesting are the confessions of Henri Guilbeaux, another founder of the Komintern, made to Serge. Guilbeaux saw in Mussolini the real heir of Lenin. Serge concluded that fascism attracted so many of the revolutionaries by its "plebeian force and violence" and by its constructive program: to build schools, to drain swamps, to promote industrialization, to found an empire. Moreover, there was the vision of a New Order which, to the leftist mind, would come about when the groundwork done by the Fascists was crowned with socialism. "It is impossible to review the Fascist phenomenon without discovering the importance of its interrelations with revolutionary socialism," Serge confessed.

--Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House Publishers, 1974), 159-160.