Social and political doctrine Essay Example for Free

Social and political doctrine Essay Fascist theorists, repeating one of Mussolinis convictions, maintained that every social and political doctrine revolved around a specific conception of man and society. If this is true, Fascisms doctrine gravitated around a normic conception of man and society which Fascist theoreticians themselves variously charecterized as organic, solidaristic, or communalistic in order to distinguish it from the liberal coception to which Fascism was intransigently opposed. Before the advent of Fascism, both syndicalists and nationalists referred to their general conception of man and society as organic ;that is to say, society was understood to constitute a system, an integrated network of recurrent norm- governed interpersonal behavior patterns, coprehensive and differentiated enough to be self- sufficient with respect to the functional equirements of its members, and capable of long- term persistence. The individual was understoo to be a functioning component of a self-regulating social system. He was conceived as a determinate person only insofar as he assumed functions within the structure of relations which preceded his role occupancy and which would persist beyond it. For Fascists to speak of a social system, of integration, of norm governance, and of pattern persistence implied the existence of a central and sovereign agency of control and regulation: the state. Thus, in one of the early systematizations of Fascist doctrine, Giovanni Corso could maintain that society, law, and state are inseparable notions. The one is intrinsic to the other:. In 1935, Stefano Raguso insisted that even  the simplest community of men is inconceivable unless sustained by an active principle of organization [and] this principle of organization consists in the subordination to a sovreign, political power. This relationship had already been systematized in 1927 by Corrado Gini, who was a member of the commission studying constitutional reform after Fascisms accession to power. He describes society as a system normally found in evolutionary or devolutionary equilibrium possessed of the capacity of self- conservation and re- equilibrization which finds its highest expressioo in the modern state. Fascist doctrine inherited many conceptions from the sociological traditions of prewar Italy, but it was the conception of the state, which became central to Fascist thought only in 1921, which gave Fascism a specific and determinate character of its own. Thus, Fascists indicated that while the people, sustained by the group building sentiments to which we have alluded, constitute the content of the state, the state is formally defined by its political and juridical functions. Fascists held that, technically speaking, any form of ordered, autonomous associated life was animated by a state. The state is any society or community of men held together by a political nexus. The formal element in the state is its sovereign political and juridical power. The state is the creator of an order, through the medium of law, or norms, that reduces all the component entities to unity and coordinates all activities to a common end. The state is the ultimate repository of force to which all other must, in the final analysis, appeal for regulative sanction. Fascist theorists like Panunzio recognized that organized associations within the state had the capacity to issue rules and regulations governing their collective membership, but they held that such rules and regulations were effective only if they were directly or indirectly sanctioned by the state. That is, it was recognized that association would follow interests, real or fancied, that provided the grounds of identification among men. The imposing rise of economic organizations, specifically the syndicates, was ample evidence of that historic reality. Sects, clubs, cooperatives, cultural association- all constituted interest-fostered, rule-governed association within the state. All were autonomousinsofar as they were capable of governing their  own internal organization by the promulgstion of procedural and substantive rules. The state might not, for whatever reasons, exercise its sovereign right over them. Organizations might continue to function on the strenght of their own capacity to sanction their members. Nonetheless, Fascists insisted, the state is the sole and ultimate source of imperative sanction since the stae has the exclusive right to the regulation of the use of force. In effct, Fascism rejected the thesis that there was any limit, in principle, to the states political and juridical sovereignity. The state was integral, totalitarian. Fascism conceived no interest-economic, educational, religious or cultural- as falling outside its purview. Tere was, consequently, no private as distinct from public interest. This idea found doctrinal expression in Mussolinis aphorism: Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, and nothing against the state. If the term community has as its reference a number of individuals whose behaviour is governed by a normative order, and if the state provides the ultimate sanction that sustains theorder, the state is then understood to constitute  an underlying and essential social reality that is coextensive and coterminous with, and logically prior to, the community. If that community is a nation- a community having a common history and culture, that manifests itself in shared, stable, and habitual preferences and pririties that permit members to share more intimately with each other a wider range of communication than with outsiders- then the nation and the state are, in some critical sense, conflated. In speaking of the state per se one refers to the normative order, and in speaking of the nation one speaks of the collection of living individuals whose behaviour exemplifies that order. The political formula, Costamagna maintained, was a stenographic and sometimes elliptical formula which exressed the ultimate moral basis upon which the legitimation of power of a political class rests. Recognition, on the part of the political mass, of the legitimacy of rule entitles the moral obligation of obedience to rule. Moreover, the political formula provides the hierarchy of values which order the moral universe of the individual. The politica formula provides the content of imperatives and their normative force as well. In terms of the doctrinal language of Fascism, the nation was construed to be the real and the ultimate source of all that was valuable and valued in the individual. The nation was understood to be essentially a norm-governed community. The state was the ultimate source of sanction which, in making the norms operative, made the nation a realiy. In this fashion the state and the nation are identified with the expression stato-nazion. Since the normative system is the constitutive moral substance of the people that constitute the content of the nation-state, the state and the people are identified with the expression stato-  popolo. Since the prevailing normative system is the product of a series of creative acts on the part of historic political elites, and the contemporary political elite is charged with the responsability of sustaining and perpetuating that system and educating the masses to its responsabilities, that elitr organized in a unitary party and that system can be identified with the expression stato-partito. What results is a convenient set of substitutions that permits the nation to be identified with the state, the people and the party. This, in essence, is what Fascism mean by an integral  political system, or totalitarianism. In effect, what was implied was an identification of the ultimate real interests of the nation, the state, the party, and the individual, however divergent their apparent interests. Since the state and the party were effectively identified with the wilol of the man, Mussolini, was via the substitutions above indicated, identified with the nation. It was this identification which charecterized Mussolinis leadership as charismatic; the Duce was conceived as the living and active incarnation of the nation. This conception of charisma entered  official Fascism doctrine, for Michels identified the Regime as charismatuc government, and the official Party manual of 1936 maintained that the charismatic theory of the national society has found, in reality its first full realization in Fascism. The Fascist Synthesis Fascist doctrine was largely Mussolinis own product. Some os its elements were vital constituents of Mussolinis social and political thought as early as 1904. As he gimself indicated, however, these elements had themselves been constituents of other political or intellectual traditions. The three princical doctrinal sources of the Fascist synthesis are the antiparliamentarian sociological tradition of Gumplowicz, Mosca, Pareto, the radical syndicalist tradition of Sorel, and the nationalist tradition of Corradini. A common provenience and a constellation of historic circumstances bruoght these traditions together in Fascism. What was lacking was a principle of unity, a concept which would articulate these elements into a defensible rationale. That unifying concept was the Gentilean notion of the state; and with its adoption Fascism became the first frank totalitarian movement on the twentieth century. The doctrine of Fascism rests upon the moral priority of the nation and the state as its moral substance against which all other values are relative. Since this is th case, we have notdealt with the varying and various institutions thruogh which the integration of economy was affected. The institutional structure of the Corporative State is far less significant than the hierarchy of values which provided its rationale. Fascists early made it plain that they would use whatever methods proved effective in their effort to integrate the economic, intellectual and political life on the nation into one infrangible unity.