JOHN GENTILE ORIGINS AND DOCTRINE OF FASCISM
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I. The two souls of the Italian people before the war.
The war for Italy was the result of a profound spiritual crisis, and this character has to take into account those who want to first understand some aspects of mind which slowly and laboriously gained in the first months of '15 in Italy, the resolution to take the field against the Central Powers, former allies, and then see in depth the reasons for the unique moral and political consequences that the war had in Italy. The history of war is not all in the intertwining of economic and political interests and the conduct of military actions. It was fought, and the first desired and then heard and evaluated by the Italian people by the people as a minority and female drivers as a majority wizard. Wanted, felt, measured with a certain mood, from which statesmen and generals could not matter, on which they acted, but, even more, he acted on them, influencing their action. Mind is not entirely clear and consistent or easily identifiable and recognizable as a whole. I disagree, especially the eve and aftermath of the war, when the trends and forces were not different in the discipline, the willingness of men and the very necessity of things, the war requires the will and spirit. I do not agree precisely because, regardless of the minor variety, there were two Italian soul currents are quite diverse, and almost two irreducible souls who, like fighting for nearly two decades and fiercely oppose the field to succeed in the settlement, which requires always waged a war and a victory with the triumph of one of the opponents, who alone can keep the won that is kept.
Just refer to the troubled history of Italian neutral, fair controversy that took place between interventionists and neutrality of attitudes. verses that were taking the view degl'interventisti, the ease with which they gradually accept all the ideas, the most different and even opposing, who presented themselves as favorable, however, intervention, and the media, of whatever kind, which gradually while the neutralists clings to prevent what they honestly believed the supreme misfortune of war, to acknowledge that two were not really political opinions or two views that contrasted the historical field, but two souls, each with its own fundamental orientation and a general requirement and its dominant. For some the essential thing was to make war with the Gentile
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Germany or against Germany. But enter the war in fire across the nation, the willing and unwilling, not because of Trento and Trieste, and Dalmatia, and certainly not to the specific benefits, military and political if not economic, that could cause these annexations, nor for the purchases he hoped that other colonial, even though these specific purposes were to be taken into account as corollaries or conditions of the prominent and substantial, which was to be pursued. You need to go to war to cement this nation once in the blood, formed more by luck than by value of 'his children, more competition for favorable contingencies for effective internal effort of the will of the Italian people aware of its unity, its interest in the unity of his right to the unit. Cementing the Nation, as it can only make war, to all citizens by creating a single thought, only a feeling, a passion and a common hope and anxiety experienced by everyone every day in the same yearning for the life of the individual views and felt, dimly or brightly, as connected with the life and the fate of something that is common to all but transcends the particular interest of each. Cementing this nation to make a nation real, real, alive, able to move and will and assert themselves and weigh in the world, and enter the short story with its own personality, with its fisionon1Ía, with its own character, with his original note, no longer live on borrowed civilization on others and to 'shadow of the great peoples factors history. So create it, really this nation, as is only possible for the emergence of any spiritual reality: with an effort, through the sacrifice. That was what frightened rather than the other, the wise men, the positive, they thought the mortal danger that the war would have exposed this young nation, not Provatas ever in a national war, not sufficiently prepared for such a trial, neither physically nor morally not strong enough in his team's recent date still to be able to throw into the fray without danger of breaking up the first violent shock. Not to mention that, in the opinion of the wisest of the wise, well done deal, neutrality could also produce more abundant fruits of victory in war: bear fruit, certain materials, those that pei wise policy are the only which Convenga speak.
The point of dissent was precisely that. The PEL were neutralist advantage, and gl'interventisti for a moral reason, not tangible, not palpable, weighable not on the scale, at least on that, that others were using. Although this reason was also then that the cost burden to pass on, for those who recognize her, to all the others. Since it is clear that any advantage of any order, always assume that there is an advantage, and to be able to take advantage and retain its advantages, and defend them, and holding short on personality. Which is the foundation and the principle of everything. Because everything is nothing, for the individual as the people without the will of all can and should be used by all and rely on. And the will and self-awareness, character, individuality, strong and energetic, the greatest wealth that parents can leave their children dying, and the work can be greater than the ambition of statesmen than to their people.
the eve of the war this duality of souls, one of which was pressing through a public whose manifestations became more lively, and the other is not resisted by the government, legally constituted political center of power, but the Parliament, who seemed a source of all power of initiative, and therefore fundamental issue of state sovereignty, were deployed against the irreconcilable,
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threatening, as the eve of a civil war. It was averted by the intervention of the supreme king, who gave the government the power to declare war. It was the first decisive step to solving the crisis.
2. The new Italy of the Risorgimento.
The crisis had ancient origins and roots of conflict in the depths of the Italian spirit. Who had a recent history, readily identifiable, but often resulting in the conduct of its old civilization. The recent history is that of the Risorgimento, when he wakes up this new politically Italy and wants to get up, and say the origins of the national movement of the century Decimononico. What are the active forces of the Risorgimento, while all the internal and external conditions in which these forces could operate? Mass of the Italian people, which some historians now tend to attribute a significant if not predominant action of the Risorgimento, likes English and French aid; War between Prussia and Austria, and between Prussia and France, etc.. can not be unless the conditions of the Risorgimento. Without Cavour, Napoleon III would never have fought in Lombardy. The case agent is always an idea made in person, in one or more certain that will serve specific purposes: in a conscious mind, which has a program to bring in place, in a concrete thought, historically active. So no doubt that the Italian Risorgimento was the work of a few, and could not be the work of a few. The few, as they are aware of an era and will have in hand the story: they see the forces that are available to them, make it matter of what one really is under active and productive: their will.
This will be the thought of poets, thinkers, writers, politicians, which in time can speak a language that responds to a universal sentiment: that is capable of becoming such. Alfieri to Foscolo, Leopardi by Manzoni, Mazzini to Gioberti you are weaving the threads of a new plot: it's a new thought, a new soul, a new Italy. Which differs from the old to something very simple and yet extremely important, since it grabs the life seriously, and what not. An Italy had in fact desired at all times, had always talked about: he had sung in all the tones and had reasoned in prose and rhyme, with every kind of arguments. But it was always an Italy span the brain more or less learned, and teaching more or less estraniatisi from the reality of life in which every person who takes things seriously to draw such conclusions de 'own beliefs and translating ideas into action. It was necessary that Italy came down in our hearts, together, of course, with all the other ideas relating to practical life, and there became something positive and alive. This is the meaning of the great motto: Giuseppe Mazzini's thought and action: that was the biggest revolution advocated by him and made him well, instilling in the mind of many - that were, however, of course, a small minority, but were sufficient to impose the problem where it could be determined, the play of Italian public opinion and international political forces - that life is not game, but the mission, and that therefore the individual has a law, an end, the achievement of which obtains its value, and to this end because it suits sacrifice, sacrificing comfort and now the private interests of newspapers, and now even his life. In order to thrive, and finally was born on Italian soil that plant-man, that Alfieri had desired, but for centuries
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not seen.
No revolution most clearly evident in our Risorgimento this character of an ideal, a thought that precedes action, and inspires, and finds his satisfaction. It is not material needs of elementary and widespread feelings that burst into a rage and popular uprisings impetuous. The demonstrations of '47 and '48 were themselves expressions of intellectuals, as today it seems, and, for the most part, funds made available by the minority of patriots, and who were the bearers of that idealism and urged governments and people towards the its implementation. No revolution, in this sense, the most idealistic of what was accomplished in the Italian Risorgimento.
Idealism, as faith in the necessity of the advent of an ideal reality, as a concept of life that should not close within the limits of the act, but progress and constantly transform and adapt itself to a higher law that acts on people's minds by force of its own ideals, these ideals is the essence of teaching Mazzini. The latter, including better or worse, more or less, was the soul of our Risorgimento, and the moral influence which he exercised and the knowledge that if they spread outside Italy, was the historical character of the great event in the world. Mazzini to that effect were Gioberti, Cavour, Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi and all patriots who worked on the foundation of the new Kingdom: Mazzini was around the Risorgimento, not only politically active forces, but in all forms of Italian spiritual life, whether it is reflected in the warm rays of the spirit of Mazzini, regardless of whether they ripen from the writings and propaganda of the great Genoese. First-rate writers, such as Manzoni and Rosmini, have no historical relationship with Mazzini, but have the same footprint, and contribute to convergent paths to the same effect: a belief in the minds of the planting. And this and that life is not what it is, but one that must 'be, and that only the second full of duties and difficulties, requiring more effort of will and self-denial and hearts willing to suffer to make it possible good, and worth living. Antimaterialistic conviction, essentially religious. Well, it runs a series of writers and thinkers of the time: not a materialist, not a religious life that does not feel that, despite the conflicts of a political nature that occurs between national aspirations and the needs or the doctrines of the Church, does not recognize, to some extent, the need to reinvigorate the religious sentiment in the hearts and rekindle the faith, that the Italians had become a formal exterior and mechanical. A Giuseppe Ferrari (but remember that it may as an exception) confirms the truth of the proceedings, because he just ended in absolute solitude, but not fought by Gioberti and moderates, but by the same Mazzini: restless spirit, murky, obscure in itself, contradictory, inconclusive: so formidable, for the brilliant quality of his intellect and extensive culture, demolish, as unfit, indeed any, in the building. The religion of
Gioberti is not to Rosmini, nor that of Manzoni. That is not to Mazzini Tommaseo, just to make finding kindred spirits. Between Cavour and Ricasoli, who feel strongly both the religious problem, as individual problem and political problem as the new Italy, the difference is even greater. One of the most distinguished thinkers in religious matters is the Lambruschini, who is now studying with great interest for the freshness and depth of his religious ideas, but he is a loner. And
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words can not speak of any religious movement of the first half of the Italian: motorcycle that has a character and a program, and to which many participate. But amid the variety of ideas and trends there is a common to all: the belief in the reality and power of the ideal principles that govern the world, and then the opposition to materialism and the spiritualistic conception of life. This is the overall shape. This is the land where all agree and can understand or fight.
3. The sunset of the Risorgimento and the reign of Umberto 1.
Codest idealistic religious conception of life, which is the basis of consciousness the national patriotic Risorgimento, dominates the Italian spirit and rules of that motion until all of history. It is the atmosphere in which to experience not even the heroic times until the proclamation of the new kingdom with Cavour, but even after the period of the Diadochi, from Ricasoli Lanza, Sella, Minghetti: end the occupation of Rome and all'assetto finance of state: when the work seemed done, closed the Risorgimento and time to launch this Italian people, became a nation through hard trials and strict system of discipline on the path of democratic development of free economic forces and moral as it was in her breast. The parliamentary revolution of 1876 marked, if not the end, arrest of the way, for which Italy had started from the beginning of the century, in that spirit that we sought to define. Yes changed course. It was not fancy or loss or weakness of men, but a historical necessity, it would be foolish now regret, but rather that it should be realized. It seemed the real victory for freedom, because from '61 to '76 the direction of Italian politics had always been of the Right, which was not very scrupulous in the observance and respect for civil liberties statutes but conceived of freedom in a manner opposite to Left. This always moved by the individual to the State and the State to the individual. Since men of the Left agreed, for several reasons, according to their different backgrounds and their different mental training, in conceiving the people as all the citizens who compose it, and so did the center of the individual and the source of the rights and actions, that a regime of freedom was bound to respect and guarantee. The men of the Right, however, also through a variety of trends in ways of thinking, they were firm and united in the concept of freedom that one can not speak except in the state, and that freedom has a serious and important content that is not because if you do not get into the balance of a State, whose sovereignty is the unshakable foundation of the diverse activities and interests of the game individual, that individual freedom is therefore no word as to if not be reconciled with the security authority of the State, that the short interest is always anteporsi to any special interest, and to that end, the law should claim absolutely and irresistibly invest people's life. Accurate but not without the obvious dangers, as applied without regard to the reasons for which it stands and seems to justify the opposite concept, leads to stagnation and then the annihilation of life that the state receives in itself and governing body of 'his relations, but it should not and can not suppress. The State becomes a form indifferent to the content, foreign matter which is regular and mechanization, and threatens to topple his subject in the mechanism. The individual, not
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invested internally by the law, not absorbed into the very life of the state, is contrasted to the State and its law, and feels this as a limitation, as a chain, which will be stifled if he fails to break it. It was the feeling of the men of '76. The country needed more room to breathe. His forces moral, economic, social development should not be further compressed by a law which does not recognize. So the reason of historical upheaval. Hence begins the period of growth and development of the new nation: development economic (industrial, commercial, railway, banking, agriculture) and intellectual development (scientific and educational). It is the focus of the reign of Umberto I. The nation that had received a form from the top, is lifted from the bottom and will endeavor, as he can, to rise to the next level, giving the State which had its codes, its administrative and political mechanism, its army and its finances, but languished, a heartfelt content of real forces, rising up from the individual industry and popular set in motion by the interests, the Risorgimento, the size of the all-purpose political draw, had not cared for. The most
minister of King Umberto, the Crispi, refusing to stop This violent motion of growth, and restore the strict authority and prestige of the state, and raise the banner of idealism, even religious, who in his youth had put in hand the same Mazzini, proved not to understand his time, and Ontario fell under the pressure of the so-called democracy unleashed violent tumultuously against his attempt. We had to wait while
, folded into the glorious old flag. Do not talk of war, or else it meant and required national pride and consciousness of a program to be in competition with the major powers. Do not dream of power, however, to assume the airs of those who might feel like equal, and to say their opinion. Attending but the discussions of others, happy to go back and have given the clean hands. Do not think about the limits of individual liberties in the interest of the abstract and metaphysical entity called the State. Do not mention God (as Crispi was tempted to do). Let the classes conquered step by step the well-being, self-consciousness, entered political life. Education and combating illiteracy, along with all other provisions of social legislation. Minus the education of the people to the Church and the secular public school. Fought in all forms and in all the ways the ancient and pernicious influence of the ecclesiastical, and become increasingly dense and powerful 's association created or remained in Italy to pursue that end. Freemasonry then introduced every day and branched and crept into the body and the administration 's army, the judiciary and in school. The central power of the state weakened, bent to the various attitudes of the popular will through the play of popular suffrage and parliamentary votes, more loose and free from any encumbrance over the constraints of life, which was anxious and excited to promote, which flows from the individual energies . Less authority, more freedom. Life at the bottom. And to increase the momentum and power, to the best of socialist propaganda, Marxist brand, to which the emergence or the development of modern industry opened its doors: new form of moral education of the working classes and training in them of a political consciousness. Revolutionary consciousness, but combined with a sense of human solidarity, new to the uneducated and primitive psychology of the Italian populace. New discipline within the associations and federations of class, but discipline
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part narrow, which narrowed the horizon of moral and broke most of the ties which man is morally bound to other men; and especially do not let most see what holds together in unity of interest, feeling and thinking all citizens of the same country. And the bonds that kept alone and pointed to as respectable and respected, all based in the feeling that everyone instinctively has its own well-being to conquer or defend. Materialistic conception of life, that Mazzini had fought in socialism, but that he was rightly held to be specifically its socialism, sibbene of every political view, liberal and even anti-socialist, but democratic individualistic, in that it directs the life satisfaction rights rather than performance of duties. Because liberalism and socialism are equally individualistic in denying a reality greater than the material life which has its measure in the purely individual. The materialist is always individual.
and Italy from 1876 to the War of the Left was a materialist and an Italy antimazziniana although much higher, needless to say, Italy premazziniana. But the lights went out of the Risorgimento. Except for some few survivors, whose voice is lost in the desert, the whole culture, in the moral sciences as in those of nature, letters, arts and the schools, was dominated by a crude positivism, which also protested when I want to do metaphysics and to withdraw into privacy agnostic, actually fell into materialism, understanding the reality in the midst of which man moves like a fact already made, and therefore limited and conditioned de 'his movements and actions, and therefore, at bottom, dominatrix, beyond all requirements and moral claim, necessarily arbitrary and illusory. Everyone talked about facts of good things, laughing all the metaphysical dreams and realities impalpable. The truth was there, and only had to open his eyes for him, and the same player could not be a mirror of that true nature. Of God, we have said, better not talk about it. Soul, yes, but as long as you see it in a category of physiological phenomena, which in fact it should keep an eye on. Patriotism, - like all other virtues-based religion, which no one can speak only when you have the courage to speak seriously - become topic of rhetoric, which could not be tasteful touch.
This, as it is in memory of those we were brought up in the last quarter-century of the last century, the spirit of that age antimazziniana that, except, again, some few faint voices, seemed to agree on a common library to hear a . The age that you can designate as politically demosocialista phase of the Italian state, since it was formed in the democratic mentality in the sense of individualism that has been said, and took off and was established in Italy, as a massive strength and primary, the socialism. It is the age that fills, as I mentioned, all the kingdom of Umberto I. Period of development and prosperity, in which yield and obscure the moral forces that create the Risorgimento.
August, 1927 Dear John
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