Consume Product

Note: we would not consider these positions to be explicitly leftist at this time because most of these points have already been taken up by even the most conservative of movements. However, at the time in the post ww1 world, only the ussr had more progressivism in their policies than nascent fascism did.

>Universal suffrage by regional list voting, with proportional representation, voting and eligibility for women

>The nationalization of all arms and explosives factories

>The entrusting to the proletarian organizations themselves (who are morally and technically worthy) of the management of public industries or services.

>Disability and Old Age Insurance Bill by lowering the age limit, currently proposed at 65, to 55.

These are all quite left wing points from the 1919 manifesto. Most notably, the third point is quite literally advocating for marxist socialism. That is: the means of production being owned by the proletariat. Which it lays out plainly as a goal. The doctrine of fascism is less useful than the 1919 manifesto in seeing mussolini's viewpoint as a person. The entire thing was written by giovanni gentile and mussolini had little input on it.

What comes from mussolini and what comes from marinetti (who, again, was so radically to the left that nobody really held a candle to him, not even lenin) is hard to say, because we don't know who made each point. However, the fact that mussolini agreed to it is very much telling.

>Moreover, it is possible that some positions, alliances, or declarations were done for reasons of expediency. Such as paying lip service to "proletarians".

In mussolini's case it was definitely the other way around. Mussolini had to pay lip service to the "bourgeoisie" rather than the proletariat. Why? Because the fascist party ended up absorbing a bunch of people that he hated. Largely by accident. Shared opposition to the Italian socialist (and later the Italian communist) party, and a sense of fear that they absolutely had to join one or the other, made a whole lot of italy's liberals and conservatives file into the fascist movement.

>concept of equality (especially political equality) which by definition puts him solidly in the right wing camp.

True, but so did the soviet union in practice. So mussolini is not very special here, he's just more honest about his disbelief in equality than the soviets were.

>historical materialism and class warfare

Fascism's rejection of materialism goes back a very long way to sorelianism, which was the splinter of marxism that would go on to create the violent and revolutionary bolshevism and fascism respectively, as well as any descended ideologies. But I think that you may be confusing historical materialism - the viewpoint that material conditions drive social change - with philosophical materialism - the viewpoint that there is nothing apart from the material world. Both the marxists and the fascists were historical materialists. Mussolini and Lenin both advocated dialectical materialism in its most extreme form and were dismissed from their parties because of it. Lenin would create the bolsheviks out of disgruntled russian social democrats and mussolini would create the fascists out of disgruntled socialists.

As for rejecting class warfare, it's debatable. Not all fascism is corporatist and mussolini flirted with the concept of class warfare multiple times. The fascist syndicalists and futurists fully believed in class warfare. In the 1919 manifesto, mussolini advocates proletarian control of industry. Class collaborationism was the official party line, but again, the fascist party was syncretic and appealed to a lot of different interests in the best way that they could. What mussolini himself did or did not believe about class conflict is, well, debatable, because he himself made somewhat contradictory statements on the issue. But if I had to guess, considering that he was an adamant marxist for 20 years who almost died for it on numerous occasions, I'd speculate that he was at least somewhat partial to the thought of it.

>up to when do you think he was rooted in Marxism and at what point he distanced himself? Sometimes before 1933?

It's somewhat difficult to quantify but I'd say mussolini had multiple different breaks with Marxism:

The first would be in 1914 when he was expelled from the socialist party for advocating italys entry into ww1 to create the conditions for revolution.

The second would be the upon the founding of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. This was the point where he was very clearly diverged from marxism, but he still dipped his foot into it on a regular basis. And he still considered the ussr as a natural ally at this point.

The third would be when he merged the fascist party with italys conservative parties and won the 1924 elections. Though he didn't actually want to create the national list, and would have rather absorbed italys left instead. The blackshirts threatened to revolt if he did not do it. This one only kind of counts

Finally, the last would be whenever Italy joined the invasion of the ussr and abandoned its previously friendly and cordial relationship with the USSR. Most notably, Italy manufactured all of the ball bearings that were used on soviet tanks built before operation barbarossa. So, ironically, if not for an axis country, the ussr would not have functional tanks to repel the invasion of an axis country.

Furthermore, I consider that Israel must be destroyed