FASCIST REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

Introduction

Fascist Revolutionary Party (Partito Fascista Rivoluzionario,

PFR, aka Revolutionary Fascist Party) was the first political
party established by Benito Mussolini, founded in January
1915, as described in his 1933 "The Political and Social
Doctrine of Fascism". [1][2] ​

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Election of November 1919
In the election of 1919, Mussolini and his party put forth a “decidedly
leftist” and anti-clerical program which called for higher inheritance and
capital-gains taxes and the ousting of the monarch.[3] He also proposed
an electoral alliance with the socialists and other parties on the left, but
was ignored over concerns that he would be a liability with the voters.
During the election, Mussolini campaigned as the “Lenin of Italy” in an
effort to “out-socialist and socialists.”[4] Mussolini and his party failed
miserably against the socialists who garnered forty times as many votes,
an election so dismal that even in Mussolini’s home village of Predappio,
not a single person voted for him.[5] In a mock funeral procession after
the election, members of Mussolini’s former Italian Socialist Party
carried a coffin that bore Mussolini’s name, parading it past his apartment
to symbolize the end of his political career.[6] ​

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Election of May 1921 ​

In Italy’s general election of May 15, 1921, Mussolini’s PFR won 35 seats
in the Italian parliament, including Mussolini.[7]Earlier, Mussolini joined
the National Blocs (NB) lead by Giovanni Giolitti’s Italian Liberal Party
which also
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 the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI). The NB received 19.1% of the
FASCIST REVOLUTIONARY
vote, a total PARTY
of 105 members in the Italian Chamber of Deputies.[8] ​

During his maiden speech as a newly-elected Fascist Deputy on June 21,

1921, Mussolini acknowledged his paternity of communism, proclaiming
that “I know the Communists. I know them because some of them are my
children…”[9] After his election successes, Mussolini attempted to push
back against the violence of the Squadrismo, telling his followers that
the fasci should be purged and that too many people had joined his party
to ride its “wave of success.”[10] ​

I​n one chamber speech, Mussolini argued for three great forces of sincere
collaboration to facilitate a happier destiny for Italy—self-improving
socialism, the Popolari, and fascism. [11]
During this turbulent time of infighting and division, Mussolini would have
been happy as late as “1920-21 to take under his wing the Italian
Communists,” for whom he had a great affinity.[12] Other attempts to stop
the violence included Mussolini’s Pact of Pacification with the Italian
Socialist Party and other socialist syndicalist leaders. That strategy was
abandoned after the delegates at the Third Fascist Congress opposed
such an arrangement, being more favorable to promoting nationalism.

Third Fascist Congress of 1921 ​

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Due to the disastrous results in the November 1919 election, Mussolini
FASCIST REVOLUTIONARY
contemplated PARTY
a name change for his Fascist party. By 1921, Mussolini
favored a plan to rename the PFR and the Fasci Italiani
di Combattimento to the “Fascist Labor Party” or “National Labor Party”
at the Third Fascist Congress in Rome (November 7-10, 1921), in an
effort to maintain his reputation as being loyal to the left-wing tradition
of supporting trade unionism.[13] Mussolini envisaged a more
successful political party if it was based on a fascist coalition of labor
syndicates.[14] This alliance with socialists and labor was described as a
sort of “nationalist-leftist coalition government”, but was opposed by
both more conservative fascist members and the governing Italian
Liberal Party of Giovanni Giolitti, who already had decided to include the
Fascists in their electoral bloc.[15]

However, Mussolini was pressured by a majority of the

attending squadistsi leaders at the Third Fascist Congress, who were
resolute to inhibit the power of the revolutionary socialists and labor
unions. In order to retain his position as the undisputed leader of the
Fascist party, Mussolini agreed to make various conciliatory agreements,
including changing the party’s moniker to the National Fascist Party.[16]
[17] ​

References ​

​ . Benito Mussolini (2006), My Autobiography with The Political and Social

1
Doctrine of Fascism, Mineloa: NY: Dover Publication Inc., p. 227. Benito
Mussolini, “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” Jane Soames,
trans., Leonard and Virginia Woolf (Hogarth Press), London W.C., 1933, p.
7 Note that some historians refer to this political party as "The
Revolutionary Fascist Party"
2. Charles F. Delzell, edit., Mediterranean Fascism 1919-1945, New York,
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NY, Walker and Company, 1971, p. 96
FASCIST
3. Denis MackREVOLUTIONARY
Smith, Mussolini, New York,PARTY
NY, Vintage Books, 1983, p. 38
4. Denis Mack Smith, Modern Italy: A Political History, University of
Michigan Press, 1979, pp. 284, 297
5. Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini, New York, NY, Vintage Books, 1983, p. 38
6. Martin Clark, Mussolini (Profiles in Power), Routledge, 2014, p. 44
7. Thomas Streissguth, Lora Friedenthal, Isolationism (Key Concepts in
American History), New York, NY, Chelsea House Publishers, 2010, p. 57
8. John Foot, Modern Italy, New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p.
233
9. Ernst Nolte, The Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian
Fascism, National Socialism, Henry Holt & Company, Inc.; first edition,
1966, p. 154
10. Ernst Nolte, The Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian
Fascism, National Socialism, Henry Holt & Company, Inc.; first edition,
1966, p. 203
11. Ernst Nolte, The Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian
Fascism, National Socialism, Henry Holt & Company, Inc.; first edition,
1966, p. 206, Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini, XVII, 21, p. 66
12. Richard Pipes, Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime, New York: NY,
Vintage Books, 1995, p. 253
13. Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945, University of
Wisconsin Press, 1995, p. 99
14. Charles F. Delzell, edit., Mediterranean Fascism 1919-1945, New York,
NY, Walker and Company, 1971, p. 26
15. Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945, University of
Wisconsin Press, 1995, p. 100
16. Charles F. Delzell, edit., Mediterranean Fascism 1919-1945, New York,
NY, Walker and Company, 1971, p. 26
17. Joel Krieger, ed., The Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics,
Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 120

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FASCIST REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

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