About the author
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) was the founder of Italian Fascism and dictator of Italy from 1922 until 1943. The Doctrine of Fascism (1932), drafted with the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, is the regime's official self-definition: it exalts the all-encompassing state, rejects liberalism, democracy, and pacifism, and glorifies struggle and national will. It is studied here as a primary source for understanding fascist ideology — and the catastrophe it produced — not as a credible political programme.
Synopsis
A short political essay in which Mussolini argues that fascism is anti-pacifist, anti-materialist, and anti-individualist. The state is the supreme ethical reality; the individual exists only in relation to it. The text defines the fascist rejection of liberal democracy and socialist class politics.
Quote to notice
Direct quote · Public domain“For the Fascist, everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State.”
This defines the total priority of the state over individual rights in fascist doctrine — the direct inversion of liberal political philosophy.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism and Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism.
Reading note
This is a primary text of fascist ideology, not a neutral philosophical argument. Read it to understand fascism from the inside. It must be accompanied by critical and antifascist analysis.
Best paired with
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism; Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism.