Giovanni Gentile Articulates Fascism
Lotuseaters Dot Com | 3 Oct. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngpimaIjoBo
2:35 It can be mentioned that José Antonio Primo de Rivera polemised against Rousseau.
3:46 Here you would find a very heavy opposition of Charles Maurras to Gentile.
Some would obviously count Maurras and Franco as both being outside Fascism proper, but common usage in Spain considers Franco and José Antonio as Fascists, common usage in France does it for Maurras and Pétain (both of whom lose points in my reckoning for collaboration with Hitler -- pretty much from 1942, not all of their activity).
To Maurras, France was eminently the work of Merovingians, Carolingians and above all of Robertides (because they only ruled West Francia, which is basically France, and not Mid-Francia which includes Switzerland, BeNeLux and N. Italy, and not East Francia which is essentially Germany and Austria). Robertides, a k a Capet, Valois, Bourbon, Bourbon-Orléans (Maurras being an Orléaniste).
Does that bely that Maurras was Corporatist? No. Or that José Antonio, also Corporatist, was a bit more Syndicalist? No.
4:21 Pétain and José Antonio as well as Franco obviously disagreed with him. They thought Catholic Christianity is above the state.
So did very obviously Pius XI ... who on other accounts (like corporatism) was not an outspoken enemy of Mussolini.
7:18 What you just said about syndicates and corporations has basically been copied in seminal principles by Swedish Social Democrats.
Via the Swedish Fascists known as Nysvenskar, who also admired Perón.
As Nysvenskar weren't getting into power on their own, they kind of "infiltrated" Social Democracy and brought it, economically closer to Fascism.
When it comes to things Sweden would have done like Norway against the Bodnarius, that's Marxism with a Woke strain, and was basically alien to Franco, José Antonio, even Mussolini.
8:20 Translation of what you just said.
If you like making gelato, you are one of a certain type of small businesses. If you like making cars, you are probably in the bigger business of Fiat. Either way you are in a Syndicate at least theoretically meant to make sure you have a voice, and the syndicate is there for anyone in the same line of business, either mom and pop shop or factory owner or factory employee or salesman ... and because both Fiat and the gelato stand, both the owner and the last employee of Fiat are in Italy, these Syndicates are regulated by the Italian state and also help to elect the Italian government. Chamber of Corporations complementing the Chamber of the Regions.
The Medieval system was not all that different, except Belloc voted not simply as part of Brewer's Guild, but more specifically of Brewer's Guild of London. Before some election reforms, obviously.
8:22 No, the Fascists clearly refuse to view you as part of a class, like distinction of the Fiat factory owner and the Fiat employee, and instead views you as part of a certain type of producer, like in both these cases car producers.
Similarily, if you have a gelato stand in a village 20 km outside Naples or if you make gelato you sell to fancy restaurants, you are different classes, since one is poor, one is rich, but same type of producers, namely Gelato makers.
Class is a horizontal division, those above and those below certain divides of income and good things of life and of society, type of producers is a vertical division, and different socio-economic outcomes inside it are partially equalised, because they are the same class of producers. The Fiat factory should not just examplify good cars, it should also examplify a solidarity between the Fiat factory worker and the Fiat factory owner.
Some corporations do in fact exist in modern liberal democracies as well, like for Medical personnel and for Lawyers. Whether you are an overworked provincial doctor or chief doctor of a prestigious hospital, you are "in the same boat" as Medical Association of your country. This guild socialism is found very compatible with human dignity and with freedoms if the ones enjoying or enduring it are doctors of medicine, but for some reason an effacement of individual personality if the ones enjoying or enduring it are at different ends of the Fiat hierarchy for car producers, or at different scales of economic prosperity for Gelato stands.
Obviously, Fascism does think of man as a producer, but does not deny he is also a consumer and for instance pretty often a family man. A gelato maker in Milan and one 20 km outside Naples would vote for the same set of people in the Chamber of Corporations, since they are the same kind of producers. But as a family man, a gelato maker in Milan and a Fiat worker in Milan would vote for the same set of representatives in the Regional Chamber as voting in the voting district(s?) of Milan.
8:57 no "the same category" in Gentile means type of producer.
Class means type of income and power in society.
Maurras and before him de La Tour du Pin criticised the concept of class warfare and substituted solidarity within he category of producers.
In the Three Estates, nobility with Feudal duties and rights were a same category of defenders (not exactly producers) whether they were relatively poor people like Henri de La Rochejaquelein or Lafayette or relatively rich people like Louis-Antoine de Bourbon-Condé, Duc d'Enghien, and similarily Catholic clergy were the same category of priests, whether they were relatively poor people like the Curate of Ars or relatively rich ones like Bossuet.
Very different from English House of Lords where lords secular and lords clerical are mingled, but all have to be above a certain level. A simple priest or a simple Esquire won't do.
9:13 That's a bogus analysis.
You can imagine a National Socialism where promotion of the proletariate class ends with the nation's frontiers. Both Beneš and Rudolf Jung were into such movements, the latter one in a party that over namechanges incorporated a man who should have remained a painter but it's still a horizontal division, proletarians are exalted because of a certain class that's seen as exploited, and needs "affirmative action" against employers and other people who could have exposed them to unfair deals.
However, the Corporazioni are vertical divisions, a Fiat worker and a Fiat boss are in the same corporazione, because both produce cars. The proletarian is also exalted, but it's because those who are more favoured than he are reminded (gently or sometimes not so gently) what they have in common as car producers. The corporation of car producers, typically stratified by (to Fascism largely irrelevant) classes of income is perfectly equal to the corporation of Gelato makers, who typically owning small shops or even stands are less stratified between them.
This is very different from Socialism. (Swedish Social Democracy only partially adopted the idea, LO is still a distinct umbrella organisation from SAF, blue collar workers from employers, rather than people from each sharing umbrella organisations from type of production).
9:22 Fascism doesn't divide Bourgeoisie from Proletariat. It divides Militaries from Priests and Educators, and both from Producers, and divides Car Producers from Ice Cream producers (who obviously produce gelato and not British ice cream).
9:28 No, Fascism is not against all of the other nations, in principle.
Italian Fascism (the namegiver) could in principle be against another nation that had territory that Italian Nationalists thought should belong to Italy. And in the outcome, they came to be against lots of other nations by allying with a man who should have remained a painter.
But the enemy is more basically class warfare as a species of incivility and of chaos, harming both production and peaceful enjoyment of life and ideally, Fascism is against class warfare from either side.
Chesterton did an interview with Mussolini, and got the impression that yes, Black Shirts did help employers to end attempts of expropriation and to end strikes, but only if said employers agreed to decent minimum wages and maximum hours.
9:43 Italian Fascism may at times have bought into the Darwinian struggle of primacy between nations, but when Mussolini was on a state visit to a man who should have remained a painter they spoke about an equitable order of harmony between nations.
For José Antonio and even Franco with his former dreams of becoming a Spanish Navy officer dashed by Spain losing Cuba, Guam and Philippines, this idea is absent.
And the same observation can be made for Juan Perón whom the Swedish Fascists basically made a honorary Fascist.
10:32 Mussolini in a famous speech conceived he could himself be a traitor.
"If I lead you, follow me, if I command you, obey me, if I betray you ... kill me."
Some would take the Salò Republic as a treason on his part and consider the partisans who hung him were taking him at his word.
10:53 While we are at reeducation, there is a huge difference between Nazi camps like Oranienburg taking care of someone until he has become a productive man, or died in their attempts to make him such, and Italian castor oil cures, until someone threw down the red flag and shouted Viva Italia.
I hope the latter didn't continue all that long past 1924. Oranienburg manners unfortunately did in the German example. Didn't come too close to Italy as long as Mussolini was the PM of an actual monarch.
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