Consent, Mobilization, and Participation

Abstract

The relationship between Fascism and the middle classes has long been highlighted by historians as one of the wellsprings of the Italian people’s support for Mussolini’s dictatorship. Renzo De Felice, in the mid-1970s interview with Michael Ledeen that formed the basis for his Intervista sul fascismo, identified a close connection between the consolidation of the Fascist movement and its being “in large part the expression of an emerging middle class.” Fascism, at its origins, constituted “the most important point of reference and attraction for those sectors of the petite bourgeois that desired a greater participation in and direction of the political and social life of the country.” These were “sectors [that] no longer recognized the traditional ruling class (and in particular the political class of the country) as capable of governing legitimately and thus, albeit in a confused manner, they challenged the social forces that the ruling classes represented.”¹ It was precisely these tensions that were at the heart of that “Fascism-movement” identified by the authoritative biographer of Il Duce as the undeniable, animating spirit of Mussolini’s early political success. For De Felice, Fascism was in fact born as “the attempt of the petite bourgeoisie in its ascendancy … to assert itself as a new class, a new force” that “not only desired greater participation, but also conceived of itself as a genuine alternative to the traditional ruling class.”²