Benny the Moose
D’Souza’s next chapter is entitled “Mussolini’s Journey” and is largely concerned with tracking Mussolini’s transformation from a socialist in the years leading up to World War I to a fascist once the war had ended. It’s true that Mussolini was a committed socialist before the war. Some of D’Souza’s other claims about him seem a bit overblown, however.
For instance, to link Mussolini’s fascist turn to his socialism, it’s necessary for D’Souza to distinguish Mussolini from some run-of-the-mill Italian left-wing in fin de siècle Europe. To establish this level of credibility, D’Souza writes, “this founding father of fascism was, together with Vladimir Lenin of Russia, Rosa Luxemburg of Germany, and Antonio Gramsci of Italy, one of the best known Marxists in the world.”[1] In fact, D’Souza continues, Lenin congratulated Mussolini on the latter’s founding of the his fascist party.
The problem with disputing some of D’Souza’s claims is that they are unsourced, for instance, this notion of Lenin congratulating Mussolini. The two men were certainly aware of one another; Lenin wrote of Mussolini in January 1915 that he was a deserter from the cause of workers and a chauvinist.[2] However, if the story D’Souza tells is true, Lenin had certainly changed his mind only a year later, when he wrote about Mussolini in his tract “Left Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, referring to the Italian as the leader of a “group of renegades ... who advocated the bourgeoisie’s imperialist policy and supported the war.”[3] In short, if the story in this chapter is true, it was out of character for Lenin.
Continuing, D’Souza distinguishes the fascism of Mussolini from the National Socialism of Hitler, but points out their similarities as well: “Hitler was, like Mussolini, a man of the Left. Hitler too was a socialist and a labor leader who founded the German Socialist Workers’ Party with a platform very similar to that of Mussolini’s fascist party.”[4]
In a way, it’s remarkable that so much wrong information could be packed into so compact a space. Leaving aside the notions that Hitler was a socialist or a man of the left, he was (1) never a labor leader and (2) did not found the Nazi party, (3) which was called the German Workers Party – not the German Socialist Workers Party, at its founding and subsequently, under Hitler, the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Moreover, compare the platform of Italy’s National Fascist Party (NFP) with the 25 points from the NSDAP posted earlier:
The platform calls for things the Nazis would not have been caught dead requesting: universal suffrage, proportional representation and a corporatist negotiating body, the empowerment of labor unions, taxation (rather than abolition) of unearned income, and curtailment of the rights of religious organizations, including the seizure of their assets. Do these platform planks make the NFP a “left wing” party? No more so than the left-leaning points of the Nazis’ 25 points make the NSDAP one.
Quoting Gregor again, D’Souza claims that Mussolini was hardly alone in being a left-winger who became involved in fascism. Curiously, although D’Souza quotes Gregor correctly in writing that the first Italian fascists were “almost all Marxists,” the beginning of the very same paragraph in Gregor’s Faces of Janus notes that these same men were “opposed to organized socialist and communist political institutions.”[5]
Clearly the actions of Mussolini after WWI resulted in a rift in international socialism, one that Gregor himself notes was based on the nationalism inspired by Italy’s entry into the war. Indeed, the extent to which the socialist parties distanced themselves from the rising nationalism of the interwar period says much about the extent to which this core philosophical underpinning of fascism was at odds with the left at large.
After a tremendous error, in which he claims that Bolshevism divided into Leninist and Trotskyite factions, with Lenin finally ordering Trotsky’s assassination (for real),[6] D’Souza moves on in his attempt to trace the ideological origins of fascism within socialism. From the viewpoint of fascists, D’Souza writes, “Marxism and socialism were too inert and needed to be adjusted leftward.”[7] The fascists, he says, were the left wing of socialism.
Certainly this pronouncement would come as a surprise to the Left Opposition within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, led at one point by Trotsky and subsequently by Kamenev and Zinoviev, who were marked by their opposition to Lenin’s New Economic Program. It would probably also come to the genuine left opposition to the Bolsheviks in general, characterized not only by Marxists like Luxemburg but also the anarchists of the Kronstadt Rebellion, none of whom could be characterized as remotely fascist.
The Crisis of Marxism
D'Souza's core claim in his history of fascism as a tendency within socialism claims a crisis in Marxism, and in a way this is true, although there is a sloppiness on D'Souza's part by not distinguishing between Marxism and socialism -- all Marxists and socialists but not all socialists are Marxists. There then is the matter of which crisis he might be referring to here. Is it the Bolshevik/Menshevik split over the notion of a party vanguard? The aforementioned split, which was not limited to Italy, over support for WWI? How about the division of socialist parties generally between Marxist and democratic wings?
None of these, it turns out. Rather than, e.g., dealing with the matter of socialist parties dividing between Marxist and democratic tendencies, D’Souza instead glosses over this schism, even while mentioning one of its principal protagonists – Eduard Bernstein. He quotes a letter from Bernstein to Engels from the 1890s in which, it appears, Bernstein abandons Marxism or socialism or both; in fact, in this letter, Bernstein is pointing out that Marxist conditions for revolution are not present, and therefore socialism must be sought by different, democratic means.
So, D’Souza writes, “A great debate emerged Marxists, socialists, and leftists, and the result was the emergence of two new strains of Marxian socialism that would dominate the new century. The first was Bolshevism or Leninism. The other was fascism or National Socialism.”[8]
I suppose half right is better than entirely wrong. Yes, one of these strains was Bolshevism/Leninism/Soviet communism. But the other strain in the struggle in which Bernstein was on one side and Kautsky, Luxemburg, et al. were on the other was not fascism – it was democratic socialism.
Rather than acknowledge this point, D’Souza launches into an overview of how Lenin justified the emergence of communist revolution in preindustrial Russia, rather than, as predicted, Germany or the U.K. He covers vanguardism and how Lenin’s position was at odds with those of Luxemburg and Kautsky. He fails, however, to acknowledge that the positions of Luxemberg and Kautsky, on the one hand, and of Bernstein and other democratic socialists, on the other, constituted, respectively, the left and right wings of the socialist movement in Europe, with the center occupied by the Soviets.
None of these, it turns out. Rather than, e.g., dealing with the matter of socialist parties dividing between Marxist and democratic tendencies, D’Souza instead glosses over this schism, even while mentioning one of its principal protagonists – Eduard Bernstein. He quotes a letter from Bernstein to Engels from the 1890s in which, it appears, Bernstein abandons Marxism or socialism or both; in fact, in this letter, Bernstein is pointing out that Marxist conditions for revolution are not present, and therefore socialism must be sought by different, democratic means.
So, D’Souza writes, “A great debate emerged Marxists, socialists, and leftists, and the result was the emergence of two new strains of Marxian socialism that would dominate the new century. The first was Bolshevism or Leninism. The other was fascism or National Socialism.”[8]
I suppose half right is better than entirely wrong. Yes, one of these strains was Bolshevism/Leninism/Soviet communism. But the other strain in the struggle in which Bernstein was on one side and Kautsky, Luxemburg, et al. were on the other was not fascism – it was democratic socialism.
Rather than acknowledge this point, D’Souza launches into an overview of how Lenin justified the emergence of communist revolution in preindustrial Russia, rather than, as predicted, Germany or the U.K. He covers vanguardism and how Lenin’s position was at odds with those of Luxemburg and Kautsky. He fails, however, to acknowledge that the positions of Luxemberg and Kautsky, on the one hand, and of Bernstein and other democratic socialists, on the other, constituted, respectively, the left and right wings of the socialist movement in Europe, with the center occupied by the Soviets.
Finally, Syndicalism?
Now, finally, D’Souza begins a discussion of syndicalism. Proving the observation that even a stopped clock is right twice per day, he notes that the core philosophical movements that united within fascism were nationalism and syndicalism and ties this synthesis in part to Sorel. Unfortunately, D’Souza never distinguishes syndicalism from socialism, even as he notes correctly the contributions to fascism of Sorel in the form of revolutionary violence.
In short, D’Souza notes the similarities between Sorel and Lenin and between Sorel and Mussolini and presumes that, because two people share some similarities with a third, then those two people must also share similarities with each other. D’Souza does not entertain the possibility that these sets of similarities might be mutually exclusive.
It is worth noting that there are appreciable points of overlap among these three men. All three men obviously saw value in violence. All men at one point or another embraced the idea of empowering workers, although the organizational structure under which they could be empowered varied among them: Lenin favored the party, Sorel the union, and Mussolini (at least in theory) the corporatist state. Conversely, while Mussolini favored a strong state, Sorel was essentially an anarchist, while Lenin saw the state as transitional (again, at least in theory).
The national question is the final area of dispute: Mussolini was explicitly ultranationalist, and Lenin was explicitly internationalist. Sorel seems to have broached nationalism at times and avoided it at others, although the fusion of nationalism with syndicalism was facilitated in no small part by Sorel’s ideas. In fact, this is a crucial distinction between syndicalism and fascism because, when fascists sought to incorporate syndicalism into their economic planning, they did so mainly to circumvent the emergence of socialism.
When D’Souza next returns to the issue of nationalism, he finally acknowledges the specific contribution of ethnic nationalism to fascism, but rather than contrasting ethnic nationalism with the internationalism of the left or even with the civic nationalism of other states, he instead ties it to 21st century identity politics on the American left – a connection that ignores white nationalism.
To be continued
[1] Dinesh D'Souza, The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left (Washington: Regnery, 2017), Loc. 1135.
[2] V.I. Lenin, "What Next? On the Tasks Confronting the Workers' Parties with Regard to Opportunism and Social-Chauvinism," Social Democrat, no. 36 (January 9, 1915), https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/jan/09.htm
[3] V.I. Lenin, "Left Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (Moscow, 1920), chapter 7, footnote 28, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch07.htm
[4] D'Souza, ibid, Loc. 1183.
[5] A. James Gregor, Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 2000), 20; D'Souza, ibid, Loc. 1194.
[6] Ibid, Loc. 1206.
[7] Ibid, Loc. 1230.
[8] Ibid, Loc. 1268.
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