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Why did Fascism occur in Italy?

Submitted by alicegrey » Tue 18-Aug-2020, 20:36 Subject Area: General	0 member ratings

The term fascism can be defined as the political attitude and movement that came about between the first and the second world wars. The term comes from the word “fasces” that means an ax that is tightly wound with sticks. Fascism represented an attitude of a major interest in social, economic, political, and military power in a dominant state or race led by a dominant leader. It rejected the concepts of socialism, democracy, and capitalism. It was characterized by single party dictatorships with police surveillance and terrorism. Fascism grew in different countries including Norway, Denmark, France, and Italy among other countries. It was caused by a number of factors.
Before the World War 1, the Kingdom of Italy, as it was referred to then, had many serious problems. It had limited natural resources, large debt and relied only on a few industries, including transportation facilities. Extreme poverty and lack of education was the characteristic of Italian society coupled by an uneven tax regime. The notion of regionalism was strong and allowed only a section of the Italians to vote. The Pope had refused to recognize the Italian state following the loss of Rome and the papal lands. Peasant anarchism and banditry caused government repression. In the 1880s, a socialist movement came about among the workers in the city. Between 1870 and 1915 Italy had a governance of a series of coalitions of left, right and center liberals, who were never able to form a single majority. Italy formed a triple alliance with Germany and Austria in 1882 and unsuccessfully tried to conquer Ethiopia. When the World War 1 started, Italy remained neutral for a period of one year before joining the allies. This was after being promised territories known as Italia Irredenta.
Benito Mussolini was the person who founded the National Fascist Party in Italy after being ousted in the Socialist Party in 1915 before he went to fight in WW1. The World War 1 had detrimental effects on Italy. Between 1915 and 1917, Italian troops got about 10 miles of Austrian territory. The disaster of Caporetto occurred in 1917 when Italians had to fight with the whole army of Austria and seven divisions of German troops. The Italian section lost 300,000 men. By the end of the war, 600,000 Italian people were dead, 950,000 wounded and 250,000 crippled. The war costed more resources than the government had spent for fifty years. Italy was hit by high inflation, high rates of unemployment and extreme poverty.
Fascism in Italy was caused by a multiplicity of factors. The influences of Marxism, liberalism, socialism, Catholicism, syndicalism, and nationalism contributed to the rise of fascism. The Italian fascism was believed to be highly exportable, despite the fact that it carried nationalistic overtones. However, it was non-racist. The economic depression that came about because of the World War One and the social unrest because of poverty and unemployment heavily contributed to fascism. The Italian leaders were also fearful of communism, and its manifestations, judging by the fact that it had failed and caused the Russian revolution. Italian leaders did not want to go the same route like Russia. At the time, parliamentary democracy was weak, especially due to the fact that Italy was divided into influences of socialism, Marxism, liberalism, nationalism, and Catholicism among other ideologies.
The Italian fascism had at least four phases. Until 1925, fascism in Italy represented a political action that sought an identifiable ideology. Mussolini had been a socialist, pacifist, an anarchist, internationalist and a pragmatist. When he ascended into power in 1922, he had not identified a specific ideology as his standpoint. Thus, he took up fascism as his guiding system of thought and ideology. The second phase of fascism developed from 1925 to 1938. This is the period when Italy operated as the first fascist state. The primary theoretician of Italy at this time was Alfredo Rocco. He conceived the fascist state as strong and a modern nation-state that accepted the notions of capitalism in terms of the socio-economic sphere. It was also conceived as a syndicalism state that started a forced union of capital and labor. The new faces of the modern state, namely the labor unions, party bureaucracy, industrialists, and civil servants, were to be controlled by the state. The state became the authoritarian body that all other values, such as the fascist party would subordinate to. In the second phase, the electorate had an essential role to play. The 400 candidates that were to occupy the legislature were to be voted in.
The third phase of fascism had certain differences. Mussolini faced an attack from Adolf Hitler and his national socialist state. From 1938 to 1943, when the Grand Fascist Council ousted Mussolini, he became a victim of his own propaganda. Mussolini involved the state in wars of colonial inquest and great imperialistic wars. The government separated the people and removed them from the decision-making process. The parliamentary candidates were excluded from voter approval. A totalitarian state was created. The third phase of fascism had failed to implement the prescriptions that Rocco had offered as an ideology. German Nazis rescued Mussolini after his fall from power. He created a proto-fascist state under the protection of Nazis. During this time, Mussolini concentrated on dealing with traitors. He executed several of them including his son in law Count Ciano. Giovanni Gentile created the last Italian fascist theory that was more philosophical than the earlier ideologies. The last phase of fascism was largely an artificial construct of political historians and scientists.
Fascism in Italy operated as an efficient statist system that allowed or advocated for strong totalitarian overtones until interests of colonial conquest wars came about. Fascism came into existence because of the decayed economic, political, and social conditions that were present in post-World War 1 Italy. Fascism brought order to Italy. It managed to use state power to solve the economic hardships that had been brought about by the Great Depression. One of the most notable observations of fascism is that it maintained the highest state form, which is found in a nation at war. Greater self-fulfillment was realized out of war. Fascism claimed that a dynamic and vibrant state seeks new conquests in order to grow at the expense of states that are dying. Mussolini and his assistant leaders had become victims of fascist propaganda. European leaders were not interested in discrediting fascism. Most European leaders supported fascism as an expression of a rightist political reaction to socialism. The communist world did not see fascism as a competing ideology. Fascism shared a common Marxian heritage with Bolshevism.
Bolshevism and fascism were formerly bound in socialist tradition in terms of science and utopia. The fascist state justified actions by creating syndicalism in enforcing compliance required under liberal ideology. This means that the state was to create and execute a general will that was expressed in irrational and natural terms. For instance, the fascist party sustained its legitimacy through the assumption of guardianship over the contents of the general will. Fascism established reciprocity with the producer class. Full employment, reasonable wages, production, distribution, and prices of goods among other things were assured by the state. The management and labor unions gave up the strikes, disorder, and lockouts that would interrupt the production processes.
About the author: Alice Grey is a bachelor in English philology and sociology at California University. She is currently working as one of the best writers at the advanced plagiarism checker She also studies feminine psychology.

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