III.

Political Development

While abroad, Mussolini studied the works of socialist thinkers such as Karl Marx and became involved with socialist groups. Returning to Italy in 1904, he drew on his exposure to leftist ideas, his quick intelligence, and his growing talent as a journalist and orator to make advances in local socialist circles. In 1910 he married Rachele Guidi, with whom he would have five children.

A.

Newspaper Editor

In 1911 Mussolini was jailed for leading protests against Italy’s invasion of Libya. On his release in 1912 he was lionized by the left for his attack on imperialism and the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI; Italian Socialist Party) appointed him editor of the party’s prestigious official newspaper, Avanti! (Forward!). By now living in Milan, he acquired notoriety and a loyal personal following for his explosive editorials. His pieces generally took the form of scathing polemics against both the Italian liberal government and its main opposition, moderate socialist reformists. Meanwhile, his impatience with democratic procedures and his indifference to the harsh day-to-day experience of the poor distanced him from the traditional Italian socialist tenets of majority rule and humanitarianism. Despite his actions against Italy’s imperial conquest of Libya, Mussolini was at heart more a nationalist than a socialist.

The outbreak of World War I marked Mussolini’s official break with socialism. At first Italy stayed out of the war. Most socialists, including Mussolini at the time, wanted the country to remain neutral on the grounds that the war was imperialistic and contrary to workers’ interests. However, in 1915 the Italian government decided to enter the war after the Allied Powers of Britain, France, and Russia promised Italy significant territorial gains in the Treaty of London. As Italy prepared for war, Mussolini also shifted his position, and began to support Italy’s entrance into the conflict. He justified his reversal by contending that wartime chaos would bring about revolution and that inaction would only isolate the socialists. Mussolini also foresaw that war would raise nationalistic passions in Italy—passions on which he could capitalize. To socialist party leaders this turnaround provided evidence of Mussolini’s pure opportunism, and they dismissed him from Avanti! He subsequently founded a new newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia (The People of Italy), which later became the organ of the Fascist movement. When the socialists learned that the newspaper was financed by the French, who wanted Italy to enter the war, and by industrialists, who wanted to split the socialist movement, they expelled him from the PSI.

Italy entered the war in May 1915 and Mussolini was drafted into the army in September. He was severely wounded in February 1917 when a grenade launcher he was firing exploded, and he was released from the army in June. The time he spent under arms only made him a more convinced nationalist, completing his break with the socialist movement.

B.

Birth of Fascism

When the war ended in November 1918, Mussolini was at a loose end politically. His sympathies lay with the nation’s hundreds of thousands of war veterans, many unemployed and, most of all, disaffected with the liberal Italian state. While Italy was making the difficult transition from war to peace, and negotiations over the Treaty of Versailles were not going well for Italy, Mussolini published an appeal in Il Popolo d’Italia for the formation of a new political movement: the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Leagues). The founding meeting took place in Milan on March 23, 1919: 119 war veterans, nationalists, revolutionary syndicalists, and Futurists responded to the appeal, and 53 of them signed a programme of irredentist demands, claiming Fiume (now known as Rijeka) and Dalmatia—Italian-speaking areas but not part of Italy—and making socialist-inspired calls for an eight-hour working day, a minimum wage, ownership of businesses and public services by syndicates, and a reduction in the age of retirement. The anti-clerical and anti-monarchist tone came close to Mussolini’s initial ideas.

The programme in fact displeased Mussolini, who only published it in June, having sweetened it somewhat so as not to alarm the industrialists, who were financing the movement in the hope that it would combat the communists. At first Mussolini’s strategy was without success: by December 31 the Fascists numbered only 870, present in 31 cities. Mussolini suffered from competition with other nationalist groups, most notably that of the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, whose supporters seized Fiume in September 1919. Mussolini, who had no role in this affair, lacked the prestige of the man of letters D’Annunzio. At the same time, the Fascist programme was still too radical, so much so that Giovanni Agnelli, director of FIAT, withdrew Mussolini’s subsidy. Mussolini’s name was on a list of candidates in Milan in the October 1919 legislative elections. However, he won only 5,000 votes and was not elected.

While events allowed the Fascist movement to survive—D’Annunzio’s Fiume campaign failed to gather momentum, and a wave of revolutionary strikes broke out in the summer of 1920. Mussolini was able to capture the nationalist constituency, supporting the workers’ strikes while criticizing the socialists, who became the targets of Fascist violence in the streets. At first Mussolini organized young Fascists, known as Black Shirts because of their distinctive uniform, into armed squads in order to defend Fascist rallies. Soon, however, these squads were to attack and disrupt the rallies of rival political factions, especially the socialists. Mussolini thus introduced wartime tactics into peacetime politics. In speeches and rallies Mussolini denounced inept politicians and incited nationalist fervour, hoping to seize the initiative from traditional opposition parties, notably the socialists. However, when Mussolini ran for parliament later that year—promising to replace the parliamentary monarchy with a republic, tax war profits, divide up the large estates for landless farmers, and grant women the vote—he failed miserably.