Mussolini’s Theory of National Socialism

Mussolini’s theory of national socialism, as we have seen, progressed in stages and evolved together with a process of revising Marxism. But, as always, this evolution took place in accordance with the realities of the period: it accelerated from the winter of 1914. Originally, Mussolini’s national socialism was an offshoot of the antimaterialist revision of Marxism, but it gradually acquired its own character. As an independent phenomenon, Mussolinism was an amalgam of elements that, blended together in a kind of “mixer,” produced something very different from any of its original components. Mussolini himself played an important part in this process.

--Zeev Sternhell, The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, trans. David Maisel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 215.