The Birth of Fascist Ideology by Zeev Sternhell

Author:Zeev Sternhell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2009-01-12T14:13:00+00:00

FROM THE LIBYAN WAR TO THE INTERVENTIONISM OF

THE LEFT: THE IMPERIALISM OF THE WORKERS,

THE SYNDICATE, AND THE NATION

In October 1910, one year before the Libyan War, Paolo Orano began publishing La lupa. In the editorial staff of this journal, the names of Sorel, Helve, and Peguy rubbed shoulders with those of Labriola, Michels, Missiroli, Pietri-Tonelli, and Fovel." It should be pointed out that in 1.910 Sorel was the object of attacks from the Italian Left, which reproached him for his close links with the Action fran4aise. Agostino Lanzillo, Sorel's closest disciple among the Italian revolutionary syndicalists, now took up a defense of the master in a series of articles in Il divenire soclale. While arguing in favor of the Sorelian concept of violence (in this case, proletarian violence), Lanzillo fiercely attacked Herve.15

The fact that Sorel, the principal ideologist of revolutionary syndicalism, drew close to Maurrassian nationalism, adding to it antimaterialism and antirationalism, aroused the interest of the radical nationalist Corradini. Corradini had already seen a nationalist-syndicalist faction emerge and de- velop.16 Corradini believed that revolutionary syndicalist "direct action" was indicative of a willingness to fight-a quality he held to be the precondition for the war through which Italian society would overcome its problems. He associated the syndicalist elites with aristocrats and antidemocrats." This form of reasoning made the grafting together of nationalism and syndicalism seem conceivable and advantageous. Mario Viana and Enrico Corradini thus took it upon themselves to indicate the points in common of the two movements, publishing articles on the subject in the nationalist journal Il tri- colore.I S They pointed out that the two movements had parliamentarianism as their common enemy. Viana, for his part, tried to demonstrate the necessary identity of interests of capital and labor in a productionist economy, the only kind able to neutralize the inroads of foreign capital. In this connection, he reminded the syndicalists that they too sought an increased production." Corradini saw syndicalism as a doctrine of class economic solidarity, while nationalism was the doctrine of national economic solidarity. He held that the nation was an intermediary between class and the international sphere. Because the nation was composed of individuals, the hedonistic principle of maximum profit for a minimum effort was as valid for the nation as it was for the class. For Corradini, however, the nation was and remained primarily a moral factor; and it was the dominant factor in historical development. It represented the largest functional unit of people able to coordinate their actions decisively and in hall consciousness.20

Another common factor Corradini described was the desire for conquest, which according to him was shared by nationalists and syndicalists. On this basis, he saw a similarity in their call for a heroic spirit and for the necessity of developing the qualities this required. These resemblances gave rise to a joint aspiration: imperialism. Even though this manifested itself in two apparently different forms-national imperialism and labor imperialism-it was nevertheless the same beyond these two variations.`' These two movements, he wrote, had the same purposes: to stop pacifism, oppose repression, and fight against bourgeois decadence.

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