When, in the now distant March of 1919, I summoned a meeting at Milan,
through the columns of the _Popolo d'Italia,_ of those who had
supported and endured the war and who had followed me since the
constitution of the _fasci_ or Revolutionary Action in January 1915,
there was no specific doctrinal plan in my mind. I had the experience
of one only doctrine--that of Socialism from 1903-04 to the winter of
1914 about a decade--but I made it first in the ranks and later as a
leader and it was never an experience in theory. My doctrine, even
during that period, was a doctrine of action. A universally accepted
doctrine of Socialism had not existed since 1915 when the revisionist
movement started in Germany, under the leadership of Bernstein.
Against this, in the swing of tendencies, a left revolutionary
movement began to take shape, but in Italy it never went further than
the "field of phrases," whereas in Russian Socialistic circles it
became the prelude of Bolscevism. "Reformism," "revolutionarism,"
"centrism," this is a terminology of which even the echoes are now
spent--but in the great river of Fascism are currents which flowed
from Sorel, from Peguy, from Lagardelle and the "Mouvement
Socialiste," from Italian syndicalists which were legion between 1904
and 1914, and sounded a new note in Italian Socialist circles
(weakened then by the betrayal of Giolitti) through Olivetti's _Pagine
Libere_, Orano's _La Lupa_ and Enrico Leone's _Divenire Sociale_.
After the War, in 1919, Socialism was already dead as a doctrine: it
existed only as a grudge. In Italy especially, it had one only
possibility of action: reprisals against those who had wanted the War
and must now pay its penalty. The _Popolo d'Italia_ carried as
sub-title "daily of ex-service men and producers," and the word
producers was already then the expression of a turn of mind. Fascism
was not the nursling of a doctrine previously worked out at a desk; it
was born of the need for action and it was action. It was not a party,
in fact during the first two years, it was an anti-party and a
movement.
The name I gave the organisation fixed its character. Yet whoever
should read the now crumpled sheets with the minutes of the meeting at
which the Italian "Fasci di Combattimento" were constituted, would
fail to discover a doctrine, but would find a series of ideas, of
anticipations, of hints which, liberated from the inevitable
strangleholds of contingencies, were destined after some years to
develop into doctrinal conceptions. Through them Fascism became a
political doctrine to itself, different, by comparison, to all others
whether contemporary or of the past.
I said then, "If the bourgeoisie think we are ready to act as
lightning-conductors, they are mistaken. We must go towards labour.
We wish to train the working classes to directive functions. We wish
to convince them that it is not easy to manage Industry or Trade: we
shall fight the technique and the spirit of the rearguard. When the
succession of the regime is open, we must not lack the fighting
spirit. We must rush and if the present regime be overcome, it is we
who must fill its place. The claim to succession belongs to us,
because it was we who forced the country into War and we who led her
to victory. The present political representation cannot suffice: we
must have a direct representation of all interest. Against this
programme one might say it is a return to corporations. But that does
not matter. Therefore I should like this assembly to accept the claims
put in by national syndicalism from an economic standpoint...."
Is it not strange that the word corporations should have been uttered
at the first meeting of Piazza San Sepolcro, when one considers that,
in the course of the Revolution, it came to express one of the social
and legislative creations at the very foundations of the regime?