Editing Fascism (section)

===Fin de siècle era and lead up to World War I (1880–1914)===
{{See also|National syndicalism}}
The historian [[Zeev Sternhell]] has traced the ideological roots of fascism back to the 1880s and in particular to the {{lang|fr|[[fin de siècle]]}} theme of that time.{{sfnmp|Sternhell|1998|1p=169|Payne|1995|2pp=23–24}} The theme was based on a revolt against [[materialism]], [[rationalism]], [[positivism]], [[bourgeois]] society, and [[democracy]].{{sfnp|Sternhell|1998|p=170}} The {{lang|fr|fin-de-siècle}} generation supported [[emotionalism (disorder)|emotionalism]], [[irrationalism]], [[subjectivism]], and [[vitalism]].{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=24}} They regarded civilization as being in crisis, requiring a massive and total solution.{{sfnp|Sternhell|1998|p=170}} Their intellectual school considered the individual as only one part of the larger collectivity, which should not be viewed as a numerical sum of atomized individuals.{{sfnp|Sternhell|1998|p=170}} They condemned the rationalistic, [[liberal individualism]] of society and the dissolution of social links in bourgeois society.{{sfnp|Sternhell|1998|p=170}}

The {{lang|fr|fin-de-siècle}} outlook was influenced by various intellectual developments, including [[Darwinian]] biology, {{lang|de|[[Gesamtkunstwerk]]}}, [[Arthur de Gobineau]]'s racialism, [[Gustave Le Bon]]'s [[psychology]], and the philosophies of [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]], and [[Henri Bergson]].{{sfnp|Sternhell|1998|p=171}} [[Social Darwinism]], which gained widespread acceptance, made no distinction between physical and social life, and viewed the human condition as being an unceasing struggle to achieve the [[survival of the fittest]].{{sfnp|Sternhell|1998|p=171}} It challenged positivism's claim of deliberate and rational choice as the determining behaviour of humans, with social Darwinism focusing on heredity, race, and environment.{{sfnp|Sternhell|1998|p=171}} Its emphasis on biogroup identity and the role of organic relations within societies fostered the legitimacy and appeal of nationalism.{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=29}} New theories of social and political psychology also rejected the notion of human behaviour being governed by rational choice and instead claimed that emotion was more influential in political issues than reason.{{sfnp|Sternhell|1998|p=171}} Nietzsche's argument that "God is dead" coincided with his attack on the "[[herd mentality]]" of [[Christianity]], [[democracy]], and modern [[Collectivism and individualism|collectivism]], his concept of the {{lang|de|[[Übermensch]]}}, and his advocacy of the [[will to power]] as a primordial instinct, were major influences upon many of the {{lang|fr|fin-de-siècle}} generation.{{sfnp|Payne|1995|pp=24–25}} Bergson's claim of the existence of an {{lang|fr|élan vital}}, or vital instinct, centred upon free choice and rejected the processes of materialism and determinism; this challenged Marxism.{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=25}}

In his work ''The Ruling Class'' (1896), [[Gaetano Mosca]] developed the theory that claims that in all societies an "organized minority" would dominate and rule over an "disorganized majority",{{sfnmp|Outhwaite|2006|1p=442|Koon|1985|2p=6}} stating that there are only two classes in society, "the governing" (the organized minority) and "the governed" (the disorganized majority).{{sfnp|Caforio|2006|p=12}} He claims that the organized nature of the organized minority makes it irresistible to any individual of the disorganized majority.{{sfnp|Caforio|2006|p=12}}

{{multiple image
| align = right
| direction = horizontal
| width =
| image1 = Charles Maurras - avant 1922.jpg
| width1 = 120
| caption1 = [[Charles Maurras]]
| image2 = Georges Sorel (cropped).jpg
| width2 = 112
| caption2 = [[Georges Sorel]]
}}

[[French nationalist]] and [[reactionary]] monarchist [[Charles Maurras]] influenced fascism.{{sfnp|Carroll|1998|p=92}} Maurras promoted what he called [[integral nationalism]], which called for the organic unity of a nation, and insisted that a powerful monarch was an ideal leader of a nation. Maurras distrusted what he considered the democratic mystification of the popular will that created an impersonal collective subject.{{sfnp|Carroll|1998|p=92}} He claimed that a powerful monarch was a personified sovereign who could exercise authority to unite a nation's people.{{sfnp|Carroll|1998|p=92}} Maurras' integral nationalism was idealized by fascists, but modified into a modernized revolutionary form that was devoid of Maurras' monarchism.{{sfnp|Carroll|1998|p=92}}

French revolutionary [[syndicalist]] [[Georges Sorel]] promoted the legitimacy of [[political violence]] in his work ''[[Reflections on Violence]]'' (1908) and other works in which he advocated radical syndicalist action to achieve a revolution to overthrow capitalism and the bourgeoisie through a [[general strike]].{{sfnp|Antliff|2007|pp=75–81}} In ''Reflections on Violence'', Sorel emphasized need for a revolutionary [[political religion]].{{sfnp|Antliff|2007|p=81}} Also in his work ''The Illusions of Progress'', Sorel denounced democracy as reactionary, saying "nothing is more aristocratic than democracy."{{sfnp|Antliff|2007|p=77}} By 1909, after the failure of a syndicalist general strike in France, Sorel and his supporters left the radical left and went to the radical right, where they sought to merge militant Catholicism and French patriotism with their views—advocating anti-republican Christian French patriots as ideal revolutionaries.{{sfnp|Antliff|2007|p=82}} Initially, Sorel had officially been a [[Revisionism (Marxism)|revisionist]] of Marxism, but by 1910 announced his abandonment of socialist literature and claimed in 1914, using an aphorism of [[Benedetto Croce]] that "socialism is dead" because of the "decomposition of Marxism".{{sfnp|Sternhell|Sznajder|Ashéri|1994|p=78}} Sorel became a supporter of reactionary Maurrassian nationalism beginning in 1909 that influenced his works.{{sfnp|Sternhell|Sznajder|Ashéri|1994|p=78}} Maurras held interest in merging his nationalist ideals with Sorelian [[syndicalism]], known as [[Sorelianism]], as a means to confront democracy.{{sfnp|Sternhell|Sznajder|Ashéri|1994|p=82}} Maurras stated, "A socialism liberated from the democratic and cosmopolitan element fits nationalism well as a well made glove fits a beautiful hand."{{sfnp|Holmes|2000|p=60}}

The fusion of Maurrassian nationalism and Sorelian syndicalism influenced radical Italian nationalist [[Enrico Corradini]].{{sfnp|Sternhell|Sznajder|Ashéri|1994|p=163}} Corradini spoke of the need for a nationalist-syndicalist movement, led by elitist aristocrats and anti-democrats who shared a revolutionary syndicalist commitment to direct action and a willingness to fight.{{sfnp|Sternhell|Sznajder|Ashéri|1994|p=163}} Corradini spoke of Italy as being a "proletarian nation" that needed to pursue imperialism in order to challenge the "[[plutocratic]]" French and British.{{sfnp|Blinkhorn|2006|p=12}} Corradini's views were part of a wider set of perceptions within the right-wing Italian Nationalist Association (ANI), which claimed that Italy's economic backwardness was caused by corruption in its political class, liberalism, and division caused by "ignoble socialism".{{sfnp|Blinkhorn|2006|p=12}}

The ANI held ties and influence among [[conservatives]], Catholics, and the business community.{{sfnp|Blinkhorn|2006|p=12–13}} Italian national syndicalists held a common set of principles: the rejection of [[bourgeois]] values, democracy, liberalism, [[Marxism]], [[Internationalism (politics)|internationalism]], and [[pacifism]], and the promotion of [[heroism]], vitalism, and violence.{{sfnp|Sternhell|Sznajder|Ashéri|1994|p=32}} The ANI claimed that liberal democracy was no longer compatible with the modern world, and advocated a strong state and imperialism. They believed that humans are naturally predatory, and that nations are in a constant struggle in which only the strongest would survive.{{sfnp|Gentile|2003|p=6}}

[[File:Manifesto of Futurism.jpg|thumb|[[Filippo Tommaso Marinetti]], Italian modernist author of the [[Futurist Manifesto]] (1909) and later the co-author of the [[Fascist Manifesto]] (1919){{sfnp|Elazar|2001|p=73}}]]

[[Futurism]] was both an artistic-cultural movement and initially a political movement in Italy led by [[Filippo Tommaso Marinetti]] who founded the [[Manifesto of Futurism]] (1908), that championed the causes of modernism, action, and political violence as necessary elements of politics while denouncing liberalism and parliamentary politics. Marinetti rejected conventional democracy based on majority rule and egalitarianism, for a new form of democracy, promoting what he described in his work "The Futurist Conception of Democracy" as the following: "We are therefore able to give the directions to create and to dismantle to numbers, to quantity, to the mass, for with us number, quantity and mass will never be—as they are in Germany and Russia—the number, quantity and mass of mediocre men, incapable and indecisive."{{sfnp|Hewitt|1993|p=153}}

Futurism influenced fascism in its emphasis on recognizing the virile nature of violent action and war as being necessities of modern civilization.{{sfnp|Gori|2004|p=14}} Marinetti promoted the need of physical training of young men saying that, in male education, gymnastics should take precedence over books. He advocated segregation of the genders because womanly sensibility must not enter men's education, which he claimed must be "lively, bellicose, muscular and violently dynamic."{{sfnp|Gori|2004|pp=20–21}}