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Proletarian nation was a term used by 20th century Italian nationalist intellectuals such as Enrico Corradini to refer to Italy and other nations that they regarded as being productive, morally vigorous, and inclined to bold action, which they considered to be characteristics associated with the proletariat. [1] Corradini admired revolutionary proletarian movements such as syndicalism for their tactics, although he opposed their goals, and he wanted to inspire a radical nationalist movement that would use similar tactics in service of different goals: a movement that would advocate imperialist war in place of class revolution, while maintaining the same methods of "maximum cohesion, concentration of forces, iron discipline and utter ruthlessness." [2] Corradini associated the concept of proletariat with the economic function of production, arguing that all producers are in a moral sense proletarian (not only the workers, but also productive owners and entrepreneurs), and he believed that all producers should be at the forefront of a new imperialist proletarian nation. [3]
The concept of a "proletarian nation" was later adopted by fascists after World War I, and it was used to attempt to draw the working class away from socialism and communism by arguing that the struggle between classes could be replaced by a struggle between nations, specifically between "proletarian nations" and plutocracies. [4]
Enrico Corradini coined the term "proletarian nation" in 1910, as part of an argument for a new type of radical nationalism that would take inspiration from "the fire, the nerve, the decisiveness" of the revolutionary left, but promote war instead of revolution and territorial conquest instead of overthrowing the ruling class. [5] Corradini opposed revolutionary socialism and syndicalism in Italy for their anti-patriotism, anti-militarism, internationalism and advocacy of class conflict, but he and other nationalists admired the revolutionary and conquering spirit of these proletarian movements. At a meeting of the Italian Nationalist Association in 1910, Corradini said:
We are the proletarian people in respect to the rest of the world. Nationalism is our socialism. This established, nationalism must be founded on the truth that Italy is morally and materially a proletarian nation
— Manifesto of the Italian Nationalist Association, December 1910 [5]
The newly developed concept, proletarian nation, was advocated in a weekly magazine, La Lupa , which was founded by Paolo Orano in October 1910 and of which Corradini was among the leading contributors. [6]
The concept was occasionally used by Benito Mussolini from before World War II until his death. The term indicated not only the difference between fascism and capitalism, but also between communism and fascism.
In one of his last interviews before his death in 1945, Mussolini told journalist Ivanoe Fossani that "we are proletarian nations that rise up against the plutocrats" and that "I am more convinced than ever that the world can not get out of the dilemma: either Rome or Moscow." [7]
The term "proletarian nation" was also used in Germany in the 1920s by the Strasserite wing of the Nazi Party, who were critical of Adolf Hitler's leadership and sought to give their party a greater appeal to German workers. Gregor Strasser and his brother Otto Strasser, together with associates including Joseph Goebbels, responded to socialists with an appeal for proletarian nationalism. They argued that there should not be a "call of the proletarian class but of proletarian nations." Regarding Germany as having been humiliated, betrayed and plundered after World War I, the Strasser faction saw the "world as divided into oppressing and oppressed people" and supported the idea of an alliance between Germany and other oppressed nations, which Hitler branded "political nonsense". [8] Much later, Nazi official and head of the German Labour Front Robert Ley described Germany as a proletarian nation in 1940. [9]
A similar term was also used in China. Li Dazhao, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party, identified China as a whole as a proletarian nation and the white races as the world ruling class. [10] Later Maoist movements, such as the Maoist Internationalist Movement, have also used the term to refer to oppressed nations of the Third World in contrast to bourgeois (First World) nations. [11] In the 1970s, the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, USA used the term "dispersed proletarian nation of a new type" to refer exclusively to African-Americans as a nation of mostly wage laborers and industrial workers (with no significant black bourgeoisie or peasantry as in other nations), dispersed across the territory of the United States. [12]
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxism, fascism is placed on the far-right wing within the traditional left–right spectrum.
Strasserism is an ideological strand of Nazism which adheres to revolutionary nationalism and to economic antisemitism, which conditions are to be achieved with radical, mass-action and worker-based politics that are more aggressive than the politics of the Hitlerite leaders of the Nazi Party. Named after brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser, the ideology of Strasserism is a type of Third Position, right-wing politics in opposition to Communism and to Hitlerite Nazism.
In Marxist theory, bourgeois nationalism is the ideology of the ruling capitalist class which aims to overcome class antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie by appealing to national unity. It is seen as a distraction from engaging in class struggle and an attempt to impose interests of capitalists on the proletariat by constructing capitalist interests as "national interests". Internationally, it aims to create antagonism between workers of different nations and serves as a divide-and-conquer strategy. The bourgeois nationalism is contrasted with left-wing nationalism and proletarian internationalism.
The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that were first described in Western Europe following the Second World War. Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a third position between the capitalism of the Western Bloc and the communism of the Eastern Bloc.
The history of fascist ideology is long and it draws on many sources. Fascists took inspiration from sources as ancient as the Spartans for their focus on racial purity and their emphasis on rule by an elite minority. Fascism has also been connected to the ideals of Plato, though there are key differences between the two. Fascism styled itself as the ideological successor to Rome, particularly the Roman Empire. From the same era, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's view on the absolute authority of the state also strongly influenced fascist thinking. The French Revolution was a major influence insofar as the Nazis saw themselves as fighting back against many of the ideas which it brought to prominence, especially liberalism, liberal democracy and racial equality, whereas on the other hand, fascism drew heavily on the revolutionary ideal of nationalism. The prejudice of a "high and noble" Aryan culture as opposed to a "parasitic" Semitic culture was core to Nazi racial views, while other early forms of fascism concerned themselves with non-racialized conceptions of the nation.
Enrico Corradini was an Italian novelist, essayist, journalist and nationalist political figure.
Italian fascism, also classical fascism and Fascism, is the original fascist ideology, which Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini developed in Italy. The ideology of Italian Fascism is associated with a series of political parties led by Mussolini: the National Fascist Party (PNF), which governed the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, and the Republican Fascist Party (PFR), which governed the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. Italian fascism also is associated with the post–war Italian Social Movement (MSI) and later Italian neo-fascist political organisations.
The National Fascist Party was a political party in Italy, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of Italian fascism and as a reorganisation of the previous Italian Fasces of Combat. The party ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 when Fascists took power with the March on Rome until the fall of the Fascist regime in 1943, when Mussolini was deposed by the Grand Council of Fascism. It was succeeded, in the territories under the control of the Italian Social Republic, by the Republican Fascist Party, and ultimately dissolved at the end of World War II.
The Italian Nationalist Association was Italy's first nationalist political movement founded in 1910, under the influence of Italian nationalists such as Enrico Corradini and Giovanni Papini. Upon its formation, the ANI supported the repatriation of Austrian held Italian-populated lands to Italy and was willing to endorse war with Austria-Hungary to do so. The party had a paramilitary wing called the Blueshirts. The authoritarian nationalist faction of the ANI would be a major influence for the National Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini formed in 1921. In 1922 the ANI participated in the March on Rome, with an important role, but it was not completely aligned with Benito Mussolini's party. Nevertheless, the ANI merged into the Fascist Party in October 1923.
Fascist movements in Europe were the set of various fascist ideologies which were practiced by governments and political organizations in Europe during the 20th century. Fascism was born in Italy following World War I, and other fascist movements, influenced by Italian Fascism, subsequently emerged across Europe. Among the political doctrines which are identified as ideological origins of fascism in Europe are the combining of a traditional national unity and revolutionary anti-democratic rhetoric which was espoused by the integral nationalist Charles Maurras and the revolutionary syndicalist Georges Sorel.
Fascist movements gained popularity in many countries in Asia during the 1920s.
Paolo Orano was an Italian psychologist, politician and writer. Orano began his political career as a revolutionary syndicalist in Italian Socialist Party. He later became a leading figure within the National Fascist Party, in part through his legitimization of antisemitism.
Nazism, formally National Socialism, is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism. The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the Second World War when the Third Reich collapsed.
Sorelianism is advocacy for or support of the ideology and thinking of Georges Sorel, a French revolutionary syndicalist. Sorelians oppose bourgeois democracy, the developments of the 18th century, the secular spirit, and the French Revolution, while supporting Classicism. A revisionist interpretation of Marxism, Sorel believed that the victory of the proletariat in class struggle could be achieved only through the power of myth and a general strike. To Sorel, the aftermath of class conflict would involve rejuvenation of both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Italian nationalism is a movement which believes that the Italians are a nation with a single homogeneous identity, and therefrom seeks to promote the cultural unity of Italy as a country. From an Italian nationalist perspective, Italianness is defined as claiming cultural and ethnic descent from the Latins, an Italic tribe which originally dwelt in Latium and came to dominate the Italian peninsula and much of Europe. Because of that, Italian nationalism has also historically adhered to imperialist theories. The romantic version of such views is known as Italian patriotism, while their integral version is known as Italian fascism.
National syndicalism is a far-right adaptation of syndicalism to suit the broader agenda of integral nationalism. National syndicalism developed in France in the early 20th century, and then spread to Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all proletarian revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that capitalism is a world-system and therefore the working classes of all nations must act in concert if they are to replace it with communism.
Fascist syndicalism was an Italian trade syndicate movement that rose out of the pre-World War II provenance of the revolutionary syndicalist movement led mostly by Edmondo Rossoni, Sergio Panunzio, Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, Michele Bianchi, Alceste De Ambris, Paolo Orano, Massimo Rocca, and Guido Pighetti, under the influence of Georges Sorel, who was considered the "'metaphysician' of syndicalism". The fascist syndicalists differed from other forms of fascism in that they generally favored class struggle, worker-controlled factories and hostility to industrialists, which lead historians to portray them as "leftist fascist idealists" who "differed radically from right fascists." Generally considered one of the more radical fascist syndicalists in Italy, Rossoni was the "leading exponent of fascist syndicalism", and sought to infuse nationalism with "class struggle".
La Lupa was a weekly magazine which was published in Florence, Italy, in the period 1910–1911. Although it existed for a short period, it is known to be one of the publications which laid the foundations of the fascist governments in the following years.