Renzo De Felice and the Historiography of Italian Fascist

Author(s): Borden W. Painter, Jr.

Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 95, No. 2 (Apr., 1990), pp. 391-405
Published by: American Historical Association
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Renzo De Felice
and the Historiography of Italian Fascism
BORDEN W. PAINTER, JR.
RENZO DE FELIcE+occupies a central and controversial position in the contemporary
study of Italian fascism. Some historians hail his voluminous political biography of
Benito Mussolini, others think it looks suspiciously like a monument to the Duce.
De Felice himself aspires to write a history of Italian fascism based on thorough
documentation in order to provide a foundation for future interpretations, but
critics charge him with already giving us an interpretation that allows the most
favorable reading possible of Mussolini.
The controversy over his work is not confined to academic circles. Periodically, it
emerges in the Italian media, as it did in the mid-1970s and again early in 1988.
The public attention given to the issues raised by De Felice and his critics marks the
depth of the continuing political debate over the place of fascism and antifascism
in Italian society. The context of that debate will help us to understand De Felice's
work in terms of the historiography of Italian fascism and generic fascism, and it
also furnishes an interesting case study in the political use of history.
Here I examine one period of the debate that has stretched over a quarter-
century, the years 1974 to 1988. A great controversy broke out in 1974 when De
Felice's volume on the years 1929 to 1936, Mussolini il duce I: Gli anni del consenso,
appeared. In 1988, it re-erupted when De Felice called for an end to the
quasi-established antifascism that had undergirded Italian political life since World
War II, but that argument quickly became absorbed into a larger debate over
Stalinism. By 1988, changes in both the academic and political worlds had created
a more receptive atmosphere for De Felice's ideas, although controversy and
debate over his methods and his conclusions continued.
THE CENTERPIECE OF DE FELICE'S WORK is the multivolume biography of Mussolini.
Five volumes have appeared, bringing the story up to the Italian entrance into
World War II on June 10, 1940.1 The next volume will cover the war years. Finally,
I began this study in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar, "Fascism as a Generic
Phenomenon," directed by Henry A. Turner, Jr., at Yale University in 1987. I presented a revised
version at the Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting in Norfolk, Virginia, in November 1988,
on a panel, "Studies of Fascism," with Joseph Biesinger and Anthony Di Iorio, both colleagues in the
Summer Seminar. I am grateful for Henry Turner's encouragement and the suggestions of Charles
Delzell, Claudio Segre, Carole Fink, and Frank Coppa.
1 Published volumes of Renzo De Felice's Mussolini are: II rivoluzionario 1883-1920 (1965), Ilfascista
I: La conquista del potere 1921-1925 (1966), II fascista II: L'organizzazione dello stato fascista 1925-1929
(1968), II duce I: Gli anni del consenso 1929-1936 (1974), II duce II: Lo stato totalitario 1936-1940 (1981),
all published in Turin. In preparation is L'alleato 1940-1945. For useful summaries of De Felice's work
391
392 Borden W. Painter, Jr.
De Felice promises a one-volume summation with his latest conclusions. He has
stressed that his views are always evolving, developing, and changing. "Every book
at the very moment it is published, in a certain sense, is rejected by the author,
because as he rethinks it he will have something more, something different to say."2
Born in 1929, Renzo De Felice began his academic career as a student of Federico
Chabod, whose broad historical interests ranged from the Renaissance to the
French Revolution, from nineteenth-century foreign policy to the fascist period. De
Felice also acknowledges the influence of Delio Cantimori, another internationally
respected Italian historian whose published works deal with historical methodology
as well as subjects from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. Under
Cantimori's tutelage, De Felice produced his first publications on eighteenth-
century Italian Jacobins.3 De Felice came to the fascist period through a study of
the Jews in Mussolini's Italy: Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo (1961). What
began as a diversion turned into a new and permanent direction for his career.
Since then, he has been a remarkably productive scholar, concentrating his energy
on the study of Mussolini and Italian fascism. Fascism is a political as well as a
historical topic in Italy, and De Felice has thus become a public figure. He occupies
a place in Italian society unlike that of any scholar in the United States.
Through his first three volumes of the biography of Mussolini, De Felice has
challenged the established framework of historiography of Italian fascism. In turn,
he has been attacked for both methodology and content. His discussions of
Mussolini's intellectual formation and the influences on his thinking, for example,
have met with objections that De Felice makes the Duce into a more profound or
original thinker than could possibly have been the case. Critics complain that De
Felice relies too heavily on documents from within fascism, overlooks evidence that
does not fit his views, and too often appears to give Mussolini the benefit of the
doubt.
When Volume 4, Mussolini il duce, appeared in 1974 with its subtitle, Gli anni del
consenso [The years of consensus], critics immediately called into question the idea
of anything appproaching a "consensus" between the fascist regime and the Italian
people. De Felice had apparently touched some historical and political nerves.
Italians pride themselves on the antifascist consensus that has prevailed in their
political life since World War II.4 The next year, De Felice took his views to a larger
audience by granting a long interview to an American historian. Published in book
form (The Intervista, 1975), it yielded an easy-to-read 115 pages compared to Gli
anni del consenso's 800 pages of text and notes and 100 pages of appendixes. The
interview book became a best seller, generating articles in the daily and weekly
press, and interviews in the press and on television. Michael Ledeen, who
up to the mid-1970s, see "Introduction," Charles Delzell, trans., Renzo De Felice, Le interpretazioni del
fascismo: Interpretations of Fascism (Cambridge, Mass., 1977); and "Introduction," Michael A. Ledeen, ed.
and trans., Renzo De Felice, Fascism: An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice (New Brunswick,
N.J., 1976).
2 For the comments on a final, abridged volume and the quotation, see Renzo De Felice, Intervista sul
fascismo, Michael A. Ledeen, ed. (Rome-Bari, 1975): 19-22. [English translation: Fascism: An Informal
Introduction to Its Theory and Practice, 36-39]. Hereafter, citations of the interview will give page
references in both the Italian and English editions as Intervista [Fascism]. References to Ledeen's intro.
to the English edition will appear thus: Ledeen, Fascism.
3
Intervista, 1-10 [Fascism, 21-29].
4
See Richard Bosworth, "Italian Foreign Policy and Its Historiography," in Altro Polo: Intellectuals and
Their Ideas in Contemporary Italy, Richard Bosworth and Gino Rizo, eds. (Sydney, 1983), 65-68.
The Historiography of Italian Fascism 393
conducted the interview, summarized the immediate reaction to its publication in
July 1975:
By the middle of the month it was the best-selling paperback in the country, and at this
writing (mid-October) it is still number one on the best-seller list. It has sold over fifty
thousand copies (a remarkable figure in a country with a population of sixty million, an
illiteracy rate of over thirty percent, and where only one person out of ten reads a daily
newspaper). It has been the object of long diatribes from several of the country's leading
intellectuals, and the subject of front-page editorials in the official newspapers of both the
Communist and Neofascist parties. It has twice been the subject of prime-time programs on
the national television network. Renzo De Felice has been called everything from "soft on
Mussolini" to "depraved," and has been accused of trying to "rehabilitate fascism." In short,
it is the most controversial book of the year in a highly charged political atmosphere.5
Although many historians before De Felice had viewed the years 1929 to
1936-that is, from the Lateran Pact to the conquest of Ethiopia-as the most
successful period for the fascist regime, De Felice went further. He found
antifascism nearly extinct within the country and thoroughly ineffective from its
bases abroad. He argued that, with Mussolini firmly in control of the state as well
as the means of communication and education, the fascist government and its
charismatic leader had achieved a genuine consensus on fascism among the Italian
people.6
De Felice had begun his definition of "consensus" in the previous volume of the
biography, covering the years 1925 to 1929 (published in 1968).7 As evidence, he
cited the growing recognition of fascism and Mussolini abroad, Mussolini's prestige
at home-which admittedly far outstripped that of the fascist party and fascist
ideology-and the growing conservatism of once-revolutionary movements such as
futurism, which accorded with a widespread openness to fascism's combination of
traditional and revolutionary elements. In fact, part of the regime's appeal was its
claim to a revolution that was, first of all, a restoration of the traditional culture and
a fulfillment of the Risorgimento.
In Gli anni del consenso, De Felice argued that there was both a moral and material
consensus on fascism.8 The material consensus arose from the security that the
regime offered to Italians, including the working class, while the moral consensus
grew out of the fascist call for change and a new society that appealed particularly
to the young. This moral element represented "that spark of revolutionary fervor
that there is within fascism itself, and that tends to construct something new."9 The
politics of Mussolini's regime ultimately stifled this revolutionary component of the
original movement, but in the early 1930s it formed an important part of the
consensus.
De Felice qualified his notion of consensus in several ways. First, he placed its
strongest point in the period from 1929 to 1934, curiously leaving the Ethiopian
war out, and, second, he admitted that the consensus was superficial in character.
He also acknowledged that much of its power stemmed from the lack of any
alternatives. Because the regime could produce neither the new ruling class nor the
new society it had promised, it turned to war in a vain attempt to "fascistize" Italy.
5Ledeen, Fascism, 7.
6
See Philip Cannistraro, La fabbrica del consenso (Rome-Bari, 1976).
7Mussolini ilfascista II: L'organizzazione dello statofascista 1925-1929, 369-81.
8
See De Felice, Mussolini il duce I: Gli anni del consenso, chap. 2, "Gli anni del consenso: II paese,"
54-126.
9
Intervista, 29 [Fascism, 44].
394 Borden W. Painter, Jr.
What ultimately led to the demise of Italian fascism was a kind of "self-destruction,"
stemming in part from the self-deception of Mussolini.'0
De Felice's Duce, for all his cunning and political shrewdness, could not move
beyond ideas, policies, and institutions aimed at short-term political benefits. The
state came to intervene more and more in national life but often in heavy-handed
and inefficient ways, with the Duce trying, but often failing, to keep control.
Psychologically, Mussolini turned inward, especially after the death of his brother
and confidant Arnaldo in 1931. He isolated himself from the views of others and
increasingly came to believe that the "whole edifice of the regime and the destiny
of Italy depended on him." While De Felice's Mussolini, then, tried to appear as the
infallible Duce who alone knew how to control the masses, he was in fact a kind of
behind-the-scenes political broker and mediator who had to keep a number of
constituencies sufficiently happy to avoid "putting into crisis the general equilib-
rium on which the system was founded.""II
Mussolini's failure to take full advantage of his opportunities to build a strong
foundation for future success also manifested itself in the fate of the fascist party
during the 1930s, when Achille Starace served as party secretary. Starace opened
up party membership in 1932, requiring civil servants to join and allowing others
in who could pay the fee, reversing earlier attempts to restrict membership to a
truly fascist elite. Although staracismo came to symbolize the virile fascism of
physical fitness and daring, it seemed to many a sterile substitute for the revolution
fascism had long promised.'2 Mussolini, unable or unwilling to find a way of
transforming Italians into new fascist men, turned to a policy of war and empire
after 1935, which broke down the superficial and fragile consensus. Thus De Felice
allotted about half of his fourth volume to chapters on foreign policy, Ethiopia, and
empire.
Before the publication of the Intervista, the initial critical appraisals of Gli anni del
consenso had attacked De Felice's interpretation. Leo Valiani's 1975 review for
example, acknowledged the accomplishment of De Felice and the importance of his
work for the study of Italian fascism. But it also took issue with De Felice's
treatment of Italian foreign policy, arguing that Mussolini's policy up to 1934 was
hardly the "diplomacy of peace" that De Felice would have it be. In addition,
Valiani offered a more general criticism of the book, one frequently leveled at the
biography as a whole: De Felice had fallen prey to that fascination with his subject
that often besets biographers. The result was a portrait of the Duce placed in the
best possible light. "We do not deny," wrote Valiani, "that Mussolini had his notable
personal magnetism, exactly that magnetism that even decades distant still dazzles
De Felice."'3
Such criticism was not new. Roberto Vivarelli had made similar points in his 1967
review of Mussolini il rivoluzionario. He took issue with De Felice on a number of
specific points, such as his treatment of Italian socialism and Mussolini's place in
both the socialist movement and the events of 1912 to 1914. He also made the same
larger point about De Felice, namely, that he was dazzled by his subject, did not
understand Mussolini's character as an adventurer, and ignored evidence contrary
10
Mussolini il duce I: Gli anni del con.sen.so, 180-81 and following.
11 Mussolini il duce I: Gli anni del con.sen.so, 174, 168.
12
Mussolini il duce I: Gli anni del con.senso, 216 and following.
13 Leo Valiani, Corriere della sera, February 7, 1975.
The Historiography of Italian Fascism 395
to his views. Above all, Vivarelli complained, De Felice's greatest defect was his lack
of any sense of irony in dealing with his subject.'4
De Felice used the Intervista to respond to such criticisms and to expand on his
tentative conclusions about both Italian fascism and fascism more generally. He
admitted that even Mussolini understood the "precariousness" of the consensus he
had achieved,'5 but he argued that Mussolini was not as stupid as many wanted to
believe. The Duce was aware of the nature of the problems facing him and his
regime. De Felice maintained that fascism had a genuinely revolutionary compo-
nent in its desire to incorporate the mass of the population into the life of the state
and the nation.'6 When the precarious consensus did not lead to a true "fascisti-
zation" of the Italian people, the regime became more totalitarian and turned to
war and conquest.
Citing Jacob Talmon's book, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, De Felice
sought to show that Italian fascism had roots in the left, going back to the French
Revolution and Rousseau. In effect, he denied the existence of a generic fascism by
arguing that the differences between the Italian and German varieties were greater
than their similarities. He did not see the social base of Italian fascism as limited to
a lower middle class threatened with a loss of identity and squeezed between the
organized working class and the increasing power of big business and industry.
Rather, he emphasized the involvement of an "emerging middle class" that in a
positive and dynamic way sought entrance into the political life of the nation.
Above all, De Felice maintained the importance of distinguishing between fascism
as a movement and fascism as a regime. The regime pushed aside but never wholly
eliminated the movement, and De Felice sees the movement as the true embodi-
ment of fascism. The distinction between movement and regime is key for him.'7
The Intervista also allowed De Felice to talk about his approach to history. Of
particular significance was his contention that historical views are always tentative
and developing as scholars learn more and uncover new evidence. It is an approach
quite different from more structured and theoretical methods that accept certain
givens as part of the study of history. His way of doing history, in other words, was
bound to clash with the Marxist approaches that have dominated much of Italian
intellectual and academic life since World War II. De Felice's continuing polemic
with Italian Marxism provides another important clue for understanding where his
work fits in the historiography of fascism.
WITHIN THE IMMEDIATE AND WIDESPREAD REACTION to the Intervista,18 the objections
to De Felice's views were of two kinds: those that took De Felice to task on specific
14 Roberto Vivarelli, Rivista storica italiana, 79 (1967): 438-58; 458.
15 Intervista, 53 [Fascism, 66].
16 Intervista, 63-65 [Fascism, 74-76]. Compare Joseph La Palombara, Democracy Italian Style (New
Haven, Conn., 1987), 273-75, on the legacies and lessons of fascism. La Palombara concluded that "the
Fascist party did politicize society! It became the chief mechanism through which people were recruited
and promoted to coveted positions"; 274.
17 Intervista, 100, 24-31 [Fascism, 102, 40-47].
18 Some examples include articles and reviews in the following newspapers and magazines, all from
1975: L'Espresso, June 29; Corriere della sera, July 5 and July 23; II Giorno, July 6; La Stampa, July 18;
L'Unitea, July 20; Panorama, July 31. Subsequent books that include these and other references and
discuss De Felice and the historiography of Italian fascism are: Nicola Tranfaglia, ed., Fascismo e
capitalismo (Milan, 1976), with essays by P. Alatri, G. Carocci, V. Castronovo, E. Collotti, G. Quazza, G.
Rochat, and Tranfaglia; Marina Addis Saba, II dibattito sul fascismo: Le interpretazioni degli storici e dei
militanti politici (Milan, 1976); Francesco Perfetti, II dibattito sulfascismo (Rome, 1984); Guido Quazza, et
al., Storiografia e fascismo (Milan, 1985), with essays by Quazza, E. Collotti, M. Legnani, M. Palla, G.
396 Borden W. Painter, Jr.
issues while also calling attention to his allegedly benign attitude toward his subject;
and those that went further to reject his general position, his way of doing history,
and his presumed political bias. We have already seen the first type of criticism. Leo
Valiani wrote two additional articles on the Intervista in which he denied the
importance of De Felice's distinction between movement and regime and reiterated
his disagreement with De Felice's reading of documents and treatment of such
issues as foreign policy.'9 Paolo Alatri rejected De Felice's notion of a dynamic
emergent middle class, seeing instead a frightened lower middle class on the
defensive, "caught between a rising proletariat and the ruling upper middle class,
which raised Mussolini to power and kept him there. When has a dictatorship of the
Right ever favored the masses? De Felice makes a distinction between the original
movement and the actual government. For me, as for everyone else, there is just
Fascism pure and simple." Giampiero Carocci commented, "Fascism? A mess, that's
all. If we must speak of 'consensus' it is for only the 18 months between the
foundation of the Empire and the Spanish Civil War."20
Indeed, it is De Felice's penchant for fine points, details, and distinctions that has
particularly annoyed and disturbed those taking a more theoretical and, it might be
said, global view of fascism and the forces shaping history. During the controversy
in 1975, De Felice offered a revealing analogy: "I feel like a paleontologist trying to
reconstruct a dinosaur, and every tiny bone I find fills me with enthusiasm. I have
been gathering these bones for 15 years. No one wanted to dig them up, and now
everyone wants to send them back. Yet every day I find something new on
Mussolini."21
Although Alatri and Carocci are Marxist historians, they kept to specific points of
disagreement with De Felice and avoided rejecting his work as a whole on
ideological or political grounds. Others were not so cautious, and this second type
of criticism found De Felice's position, methods, and alleged political bias wholly
unacceptable. For example, Giovanni Ferrara, participating in the same interview
and discussion with Alatri and Carocci, commented that the approach to fascism
had to be "polemical," and he considered De Felice's viewpoint "fascist." Nicola
Tranfaglia, a young Marxist historian, charged De Felice with rehabilitating
fascism.22 A devastating editorial in the journal of the National Institute for the
History of the Movement of Liberation in Italy, Italia contemporanea, bore the
pejorative title "An Afascist Historiography for the 'Silent Majority"' and de-
nounced positions that ended by becoming "objectively philo-fascist" and thereby
having a "diseducational" function. From its perspective, De Felice advanced not
only a novel interpretation of fascism but also a new and illegitimate way of doing
history. After a brief defense of a Marxist interpretation of fascism, the editorial
condemned De Felice and his followers in no uncertain terms. In both his
biography of Mussolini and his journal, Storia contemporanea, De Felice was guilty of
a phony kind of objectivity that refused to take a clear position, placed all theses on
Santomassimo, and an extensive bibliography. Nicola Tranfaglia, Labirinto italiano: Ilfascismo, I'antifas-
cismo, gli storici (Florence, 1989), is a collection of Tranfaglia's essays and book reviews from 1970 to 1988.
19 Leo Valiani, Corriere della sera, July 5 and July 23, 1975. Valiani later wrote a longer review of both
the Intervista and Gli anni del consenso in Rivista storica italiana, 88 (1976): 509-30.
20 Both comments appeared in an interview published in the weekly news magazine Panorama, July
31, 1975.
21
Renzo De Felice, Panorama, July 31, 1975.
22
In
II
Giorno, July 6, 1975, as quoted in Ledeen, Fascism, 17.
The Historiography of Italian Fascism 397
the same plane, failed to make any qualitative distinctions between various political,
social, and economic forces. The editorial concluded by condemning such academic
opportunism as representative of one of the worst traditions of Italian intellec-
tuals.23
The public debate over De Felice's views quieted somewhat when a senior and
revered member of the Italian Communist party, Giorgio Amendola, commented
that, although he disagreed with De Felice, a fresh examination of antifascism was
needed.24 In effect, Amendola admitted that the fascist regime did forge something
of a consensus because antifascism failed to establish a base among all groups and
classes of Italian society.25
Not surprisingly, De Felice's views on Mussolini and fascism did not raise in other
countries the storm that thundered through Italy in 1975. Professional historians
took note, especially in England, where Denis Mack Smith, dean of British
historians of modern Italy, managed to make some of the issues public in the pages
of the Times Literary Supplement. He reviewed Gli anni del consenso and the Intervista
in the TLS of October 31, 1975, taking vehement exception to De Felice's portrait
of Mussolini as one far too kind, flattering, and indulgent. A few years later, he
summed up his views on Mussolini in a masterful, tightly organized, and lucidly
written biography of Mussolini.26
Mack Smith found it "hard to avoid the impression that Mussolini has been given
the benefit of too many doubts. We are informed, for example, that he was not
cruel (also, incidentally, that he lacked the cold fanaticism of Winston Churchill),"
when there is abundant evidence to the contrary. De Felice, according to Mack
Smith, simply ignored evidence that did not support his views and expressed views
without offering evidence. Where, for example, were the facts to show that fascism
was a truly revolutionary and progressive movement? The evidence for De Felice's
consensus argument was far from conclusive, and the heavy documentation De
Felice employed relied too much on fascist documents. Mack Smith did credit De
Felice with showing that the corporative system was a sham, but he complained that
23
"Fare la storia senza prendere posizione, riferire diverse ipotesi interpretative per negarle tutte,
senza peraltro riuscire ad esprimere una propria, ecco il falso modo di problematizzare tipico di questa
storiografia. Porre tutte le tesi sullo stesso piano, livellare tutte le forze politiche e sociali-la burocrazia,
la diplomazia, le forze economiche, il partito fascista-quasi che tra di esse non vi fosse un differenza
qualitativa di peso specifico, ecco un altro dei canoni metodologici della storiografia afascista, esemplar-
mente rappresentata dalla biografia mussoliniana del De Felice e dalla rivista Storia contemporanea, che
proprio per le sue caratteristiche promette di offrire larga copertura al mimetismo culturale e
all'opportunismo accademico delle peggiori tradizionali intellettuali italiane"; Italia contemporanea, 119
(une 1975): 3-7.
24 Giorgio Amendola's comments appeared on the front page of the Sunday edition of the
Communist party daily L'Unita, July 20, 1975. Subsequently, he was interviewed on antifascism by the
historian Piero Melograni: see Amendola, Intervista sull'antifascismo, Piero Melograni, ed. (Rome-Bari,
1976). This Intervista had little more to say about De Felice's views, but it did explore the subject of
antifascism from the 1920s to the 1970s.
25 De Felice complained in the Intervista that his critics had overlooked the fact that some of his views
agreed with those of Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti: "Years ago-when I wrote my first volume,
II Rivoluzionario, and certainly the first volume of II Fascista, and maybe even when the second had
appeared-Ernesto Ragionieri published Togliatti's Lessons on Fascism. In these Lessons, which I could
not have known about when I wrote my books, I found certain of my central themes about fascism. No
one, even in passing, noticed this 'strange' fact"; Intervista, 113 [Fascism, 113]. For his assessment of
Togliatti's ideas, see De Felice, Interpretations of Fascism, 150-51 (orig. pub. in the Italian edition of 1969).
Giorgio Rochat charged, nevertheless, that De Felice had misused Togliatti and quoted him out of
context; Rochat, "II quarto volume della biografia di Mussolini di Renzo De Felice," Italia contemporanea,
27 (1976): 96.
26 Times Literary Supplement, 3842 (October 31, 1975): 1278-80; Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini, A
Biography (New York, 1982).
398 Borden W. Painter, Jr.
then De Felice turned around and called the conquest of Ethiopia Mussolini's
"political masterpiece and greatest success," which Mack Smith believed was "worse
than shocking, it is nonsense."27
Michael Ledeen then stepped forward to defend De Felice in the TLS of January
9, 1976.28 De Felice had, Ledeen maintained, shown Mussolini's failure as a leader,
and his calling the Ethiopian war a "political masterpiece" must be seen within the
context developed by De Felice; it should not be read as approval of the deed.
Ledeen also offered the context for the distinction between movement and regime
and the meaning of "revolutionary" as applied to Italian fascism.29 Mack Smith
would have none of it. His stinging reply in the TLS one week later reiterated that
De Felice's heavy reliance on fascist documents had "led [him] to a lopsided view of
events." He charged that De Felice used the term "revolutionary" in "a highly
idiosyncratic way," and he dismissed Ledeen's discussion of the "political master-
piece" as a misleading characterization of "a catastrophic blunder and as a natural
product of the kind of regime Mussolini had so expertly set up." Mack Smith
concluded with examples of De Felice's distortion of evidence, especially in the
chapter of Gli anni del consenso dealing with British and European attitudes toward
Mussolini and fascism in the early 1930s.30 None of this criticism kept Mack Smith
from acknowledging, a few years later, the value of "the substantial study of fascism
being written by Renzo De Felice who has done more than anyone to open up the
subject to research in the archives."3'
However we view De Felice's work, no one can deny the impact it has had on the
study of Mussolini and fascism. The furor of the mid- 1970s brought his work to the
attention of more English-speaking historians. A special issue of the Journal of
Contemporary
History in October 1976 devoted to "Theories of Fascism" included
several articles on Italy, with those by Ledeen and Piero Melograni touching on
some of the themes in the De Felice controversy.32 The American political scientist
A. James Gregor remained true to his maverick views on fascism by writing a strong
endorsement of De Felice's position in a 1978 review of Gli anni del consenso and the
Intervista.33 It is not clear that De Felice would subscribe as enthusiastically to
Gregor's views, which depict Italian fascism as a "developmental dictatorship" and
seek to exclude German Nazism altogether from the fascist camp.34
The final word is not yet in on De Felice's work. Once he completes the last
volume of the biography, we can look forward to his one-volume summation, which
will surely be translated into English. At that point, there will be a fresh assessment
with, no doubt, renewed polemics, but the results should benefit the general
enterprise of understanding fascism, regardless of the disagreements on specific
27
Times Literary Supplement, 3842 (October 31, 1975): 1278, 1280.
28
Ledeen is an American who first met De Felice in Italy while doing research for his dissertation,
later published as Universal Fascism: The Theory and Practice of the Fascist International, 1928-1936 (New
York, 1972). He conducted the famous interview of the Intervista and edited the English translation. The
success of the Intervista led to Intervista sul nazismo (Rome-Bari, 1977), in which Ledeen interviewed
George L. Mosse [English translation: Nazism: A Historical and Comparative Analysis of National Socialism
(New Brunswick, N.J., 1978)].
29
Times Literary Supplement, 3852 (anuary 9, 1976): 35-36.
30
Times Literary Supplement, 3853 (anuary 16, 1976): 58.
3' Mack Smith, Mussolini, xiv.
32
Journal of Contemporary History,
11
(October 1976).
33
A. James Gregor, "Professor Renzo De Felice and the Fascist Phenomenon," World Politics, 30 (April
1978): 433-49.
34
See Charles S. Maier, "Some Recent Studies of Fascism," Journal of Modern History, 48 (September
1976): 506-21. Maier's review article discussed the work of both Gregor and De Felice, as well as a
number of other books on Italian and German fascism.
The Historiography of Italian Fascism 399
points. In the meantime, it is the Italian political and cultural scene that provides
the context for De Felice's views and the reactions to them. Antifascism was the
foundation of the postwar Republic and was written into the Constitution of 1948.
All the parties, with the exception of the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano
(MSI), shared an antifascist faith. This antifascism, according to the Australian
historian Richard Bosworth, tended to view Mussolini's regime as having been one
"of a semi-criminal minority. The 'Italian people' were unwilling victims of Fascist
tyranny. When they had the slightest chance they sympathised with or joined the
Resistance."35
IN 1975, THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY (PCI), espousing "Eurocommunism," was
on the ascendant, and it seemed quite possible that it would come into a
government with the Christian Democrats or join in a coalition with other parties
of the left. Hence it was good politics to keep all doors open and not to question
perceived historical truths that had direct connections with present political
realities. There was a compromise, Italian style, reports Bosworth, "whereby
Christian Democracy and its allies dominated the world of 'real power' in Italy; they
formed the government, staffed the bureaucracy, and controlled the state-owned
industries. The P.C.I. and its allies in exchange were left the world of the intellect
which remained a place of immense and, to an Anglo-Saxon, almost incomprehen-
sible prestige." Within that intellectual and cultural world, "Marxism, or rather
Gramscism, seemed to have become the governing ideology of the Italian
intelligentsia."36
Antonio Gramsci's revision of Marxism stressed the significance of the political
superstructure, the special role of intellectuals in the class struggle, and the concept
of hegemony in civil society. Although Gramsci's concepts have given many
historians a useful and sometimes highly illuminating context within which to work,
De Felice has rejected Gramscian categories, thus setting himself on a collision
course with most of Italy's intellectual and academic elite. De Felice concluded the
Intervista with this statement:
Recent attempts to historicize fascism and the Resistance that a politician like Giorgio
Amendola has felt the need to undertake are symptomatic of the political and cultural
situation in Italy. On the one hand, they illustrate-by counterpoint-the abstractness and
cultural conformism of many of our historians; on the other hand, they offer the possibilities
of evaluating communist cultural hegemony. From the mouth of a nonconformist, many of
Amendola's affirmations would be considered heresies, and the spirit of his analysis would
be considered moderate if not downright reactionary, while coming from Amendola they
acquire authority and citizenship.37
Four years later, De Felice expressed rather pessimistic views about the state of
Italian historiography, charging that Marxist and non-Marxist historians had failed
to find common ground for their historical work. He blamed, in particular, the
35Bosworth, "Italian Foreign Policy," 68.
36
Bosworth, "Italian Foreign Policy," 68. As Bosworth notes, it is more "Gramscism" than Marxism
that dominates the thinking of the intellectual and academic elite of the left. Antonio Gramsci's
influence on the historiography of Italy, and that of the West generally, has been particularly important.
Gramsci helped found the PCI in 1921 and served the party with distinction until his imprisonment by
the fascist regime in 1926. His notebooks and letters, written while in a fascist prison for a decade, are
a remarkable corpus that has brought fresh perspectives and new life to Marxist thought.
37
Intervista, 115 [Fascism, 115].
400 Borden W. Painter, Jr.
historiography of the New Left, which had exerted such strong influence after
1968. It challenged traditional Marxist historiography and thwarted the revisionist
efforts of Marxist historians begun in 1956. Only Giuliano Procacci and Paolo
Spriano, according to De Felice, continued such revisionist work. The Marxist
historians also had to worry about their "duty of recovering converts for the
Communist Party." Under these circumstances, there was little hope for "any
defence of a common historicism."38
When the next volume of the biography appeared in 1981, the audience's mood
was quite different. Mussolini il duce II: Lo stato totalitario, 1936-1940 also met
negative criticism, but most of the debate remained on a scholarly level, with little
of the public controversy of 1975. The storm had clearly abated, and relative calm
reigned. The reasons for the difference arose from changes De Felice made,
changes within the academic and intellectual worlds, and changes within the Italian
political scene. This time, De Felice gave no Intervista to reach a wider audience.
Circumstances did not create the environment for repeating such a best seller, and
De Felice apparently no longer felt the need to seek the same sort of public hearing
he had in 1975.
In his fifth volume, De Felice devoted an entire chapter of nearly one hundred
pages to "consenso" between 1936 and 1940.39 His use of quotation marks around
the term indicated an apparent retreat from its controversial application to a
country ruled by a dictatorship. He stated in the first chapter that the fascist regime
continued to enjoy broad support in the period under discussion, but the consensus
was less solid and more passive than it had been a few years earlier, because of the
Spanish Civil War and the introduction of the racial laws in 1938.40 Nevertheless,
this "consensus" persisted and was intact when Italy entered the war in 1940. Only
with defeat impending in 1942-1943 did it finally break down. That breakdown
will presumably be analyzed in the next volume.
Anything De Felice wrote was still news in 1981, even if not at the level of 1975.
In an interview in the popular weekly magazine Panorama, on July 20, De Felice
noted that an argument over his views went on but without it being seen as a
struggle between "God and Lucifer." He apparently took comfort from the fact
that the debate over consensus now focused on its extent rather than its existence.4'
De Felice saw something of a historiographical turning point ("una svolta sto-
riografica") taking place. One of De Felice's more persistent and consistent critics,
Gianpasquale Santomassimo, agreed that the climate had changed. He also felt that
De Felice had become more cautious than in the past. He went on to review Lo stato
totalitario, finding fault again with De Felice's over-reliance on fascist documents
and his reaching for conclusions not supported by the sources. Indeed, Santomas-
simo suggested that some of the sources De Felice cited supported conclusions
opposite from those he had drawn. Santomassimo also disagreed with De Felice's
portrayal of foreign policy from 1936 to 1940, a large portion of the book.42
French historian Michel Ostenc also saw 1981 as initiating something of a new era
38
Renzo De Felice, "Italian Historiography since the Second World War," in Altro Polo, A Volume of
Italian Studies, Richard Bosworth and Gianfranco Cresciani, eds. (Sydney, 1979), 178.
39
De Felice, Mussolini il duce II: Lo stato totalitario, 1936-1940, chap. 2, "Il 'consenso' tra la met'a del
1936 e la meta del 1940," 156-255.
40 See the review by Charles F. Delzell, "Mussolini and the Totalitarian State, 1936-1940: The De
Felice Interpretation," Italian Quarterly, 24 (Summer 1983): 101-08.
41 The statement reads "vede che vi si discute la misura del consenso. Prima si negava che il fatto fosse,
semplicemente"; Renzo De Felice, Panorama, July 20, 1981, 128.
42
Gianpasquale Santomassimo, "Discussioni di Renzo De Felice," Passato e presente, 1 (1982): 23-30.
The Historiography of Italian Fascism 401
in the historiography of Italian fascism. He observed that, by 1981, there came "the
end of the hagiography of antifascism." This change would clear the way for fresh
appraisals of fascism. He hastened to add that this development in no way
weakened the moral condemnation of fascism. On the contrary, a more objective
study of it would help historians better understand fascism as a historical phenom-
enon and thus oppose its resurgence.43
Apart from critical comments other historians may make about De Felice's work,
the extent of his influence emerges in how other historians use his work. For
example, the late Giorgio Candeloro's ninth volume of Storia dell'Italia moderna, II
fascismo e le sue guerre, appeared in late 1981. Candeloro included in his bibliogra-
phy and cited in his text all the volumes of De Felice's biography of Mussolini,
including the latest volume, Lo stato totalitario.44 Candeloro wrote as a historian
identified with the left and once again took issue with De Felice's reliance on fascist
sources, with his inflation of the consensus enjoyed by the fascist regime and
consequent deflation of the coercion it used, and his overemphasis on the ideology
and psychology of Mussolini, whose decisions thus appeared autonomous, free
from the influence of social and institutional factors.45 Yet Candeloro's criticism did
not keep him from using De Felice throughout his own volume. He cited De Felice
more than any other historian. Over seventy footnotes list works by De Felice, the
majority citing volumes of the biography. In one sense, there is nothing surprising
in Candeloro's stance. He disagreed with certain aspects of De Felice's perspectives
and methods but finds his work a rich mine, as do most historians, for his own
understanding of the phenomenon of Italian fascism. And the tenor of his criticism
and his use of De Felice's work were far removed from the polemical atmosphere
of 1975.
Marco Palla's review of Lo stato totalitario in Studi storici carried a similar tone. He
raised the standard objections to De Felice with respect to outlook, bias, use of
documents, and attitude toward Mussolini. Nevertheless, he did not reject, out of
hand, the notion of consensus in the 1930s but, rather, criticized De Felice's vague
definition of it and lack of strong and clear empirical data based on local studies. In
a sense, Palla seemed to suggest that there may have been a consensus, but we do
not yet have sufficient evidence for it.46
The appearance of the journal Passato e presente in 1982 was another indicator of
a different intellectual and political atmosphere in Italy. The editorial in the first
issue justified its publication by arguing that "no other existing journal seems to
have-in content and structure-one of the characteristics that is at the base of
Passato e presente: the explicit will to reflect the historiographical debate, to discuss
the orientations of historiography and, if possible, to influence them." Although
starting from a leftist, Marxist, and Gramscian position, the journal's editors hoped
to transcend narrow or dogmatic points of view in order to look at the full
panorama of historiography on the events of the twentieth century.47
Passato e presente also proclaimed that it would be international in its represen-
tation of contemporary historiography. Immediately following the first issue's
43Michel Ostenc, "Historiographie du fascisme italien: Examen critique," Revue d'histoire de la deuxieme
guerre mondiale, 139 (1985): 22-23.
44
Giorgio Candeloro, Storia dell'Italia moderna, vol. 9: Ilfascismo e le sue guerre (Milan, 1981).
45
Candeloro, Storia dell'Italia moderna, 9: 495.
46 Marco Palla, Studi storici, 1 (1981): 23-49.
47
Passato e presente, 1 (1982): 3-4. The editors are Franco Andreucci and Gabriele Turi. The editorial
committee includes Gianpasquale Santomassimo. Among those listed as collaboratori are Enzo Collotti,
Eugenio Garin, Eric Hobsbawm, and Marco Palla.
402 Borden W. Painter, Jr.
editorial were three reviews of De Felice's Lo stato totalitario: two by foreigners,
Adrian Lyttelton and Jens Petersen, and the third, already mentioned above, by
Gianpasquale Santomassimo. While all three found points of disagreement with De
Felice's latest work, the tone of their criticism was temperate. As Lyttelton
commented, De Felice was producing a work beyond the scale of anything else
attempted on the subject. His conclusion was not unlike Candeloro's rejection of
certain aspects of De Felice's work and simultaneous use of it as an indispensable
source for his own work on the fascist period.
Richard Bosworth has proposed several reasons for the relatively quiet reception
of De Felice in 1981-1982 compared with the uproar of 1974-1975. First, De Felice
had succeeded in winning support for his argument that fascism had built some
kind of consensus. Thus when he "argued that 'without war and defeat Fascism
would not have fallen,' or that anti-Fascism was not a serious threat to the regime
and almost all discontent towards it was pre-political, or that few among the
'fellow-travelers' of Mussolini actively wanted his downfall, there was little reac-
tion." De Felice's rejection of ideological treatments of history, whether Gramscian-
Marxist or Catholic, seemed consonant in the 1980s with increasingly popular
public views. "It may be accidental, it may be not, that De Felice's own rejection of
Catholicism and Communism and defence of an increasingly conservative lay and
capitalist 'third way' was paralleled by similar developments on the political
stage. "48
Bosworth noted that about the only historian to mount a full-scale assault on De
Felice's newest volume was Giorgio Rochat, a military specialist. Rochat's review
appeared in Italia contemporanea.49 Once again, De Felice's documentation came
under attack, and Rochat charged that he relied far too much on the accounts of
Galeazzo Ciano and Dino Grandi for his discussion of foreign policy. For Rochat,
De Felice's analysis of consensus was as vague and unsubstantiated as ever. He
singled out De Felice's use of the term "cultural revolution" as particularly
provocative, since the fascist regime had never used the term, and it could only call
to mind Mao Tse-tung's China. Finally, Rochat concluded that De Felice offered
only a partial revaluation of fascism with no clear line of interpretation and
objected to his use of quotation marks as spreading ever more ambiguity about
difficult and controversial terms.
Rochat's final paragraph linked De Felice to the mass media, charging that he
seemed to have a near monopoly on public radio and television programs on
history, as a result of his political connections and his capacity to give to a large
segment of the public the history it wanted. Nicola Tranfaglia seconded this point
in an article on fascism and the mass media in 1983. Tranfaglia saw the publication
of the Intervista in 1975 as the initiation of a challenge to "the dominant
interpretation in the culture of the antifascist tradition," which had "opened the
way to the possibility of a gradual revaluation of Mussolini and his regime." The
media had ignored earlier scholarly debate, but De Felice's decision to offer a
psychological study that explained events in terms of Mussolini's temperament
gained the attention of the media.50 Three years later, Enzo Collotti argued that De
Felice's influence had been amplified by the work of his students and colleagues in
De Felice's journal, Storia contemporanea, and his exposure on state television, which
48
Bosworth, "Italian Foreign Policy," 70, 71.
49Bosworth, "Italian Foreign Policy," 70; Giorgio Rochat, "Ancora sul Mussolini di Renzo De Felice,"
Italia contemporanea, 141 (1981): 5-10.
50
Nicola Tranfaglia, "Fascismo e mass-media," Passato e presente, 3 (1983): 135-48.
The Historiography of Italian Fascism 403
so constantly sought his historical opinion that the public might conclude he was the
only important researcher on the subject.5'
THE CONCERN EXPRESSED OVER THE INFLUENCE of De Felice's views through
exposure in the mass media was also a concern over the changing political
atmosphere in Italy. By the early 1980s, the PCI occupied a weaker and more
ambiguous position on the Italian political spectrum. The fall of the Christian
Democratic government in 1981 led to the appointment of the first non-Christian
Democratic prime minister, the Republican party leader Giovanni Spadolini. Even
more significant was the assumption of the premiership, after Spadolini's seventeen
months in office, by the Socialist leader Bettino Craxi. Craxi held office for over
three years until March 1987, longer than any prime minister since World War II.
Elections between 1976 and 1987 showed a decline in the electoral strength of
the PCI from nearly 35 percent to just under 27 percent. Craxi had succeeded in
increasing the Socialist vote in national elections from just under 10 percent to over
14 percent in the same period, and even a Communist political scientist admitted
that his party had lost votes to the Socialists in the June 1987 parliamentary
elections.52 The Socialists, in other words, had fought for an enhanced position on
the Italian party spectrum without collaboration with the Communists. The death
of the PCI's popular leader, Enrico Berlinguer, in June 1984 brought immense
sympathy from the Italian public but only momentarily halted the electoral decline
of the party.53
By 1988, the situation for Italian historiography had also changed considerably
from that of 1975. De Felice touched off a second public controversy at the
beginning of the year by calling for an end to the official antifascism of the Italian
Republic, which he argued was now an outdated obstacle to political reform.
Among other things, antifascism "was used by the Communists to assume a patina
of democracy and they continue to claim legitimacy with it."54
The subsequent debate in the media on these remarks55 was engulfed by a new
public and political fracas over the historical and political implications of Stalinism.
Bettino Craxi's Socialist party (PSI) held a two-day conference in March 1988 on
the subject of "Lo stalinismo nella sinistra italiana" [Stalinism in the Italian Left].
A number of historians, including De Felice but with the conspicuous absence of
Communist historians, discussed and debated the effects of Stalinism on Italy and
Europe with particular attention to the role played during the 1930s and 1940s by
51
Enzo Collotti, "L'Etat totalitaire," Revue d'histoire de la deuxieme guerre mondiale, 143 (1986): 32.
52
See the article in the New York Times, June 21, 1987, IV, 2: 3.
53For an interesting analysis of the decline of the Communist vote and the gains of the Socialists,
Social Democrats, Liberals, and Republicans, see Adolfo Battaglia, "New Politics Emerge in Italy," on
the editorial page of the New York Times, April 4, 1985.
54As quoted in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, January 17, 1988, IV. The interview that
touched off the controversy appeared in the Corriere della sera, December 27, 1987. Shortly thereafter,
Leo Valiani and De Felice had an opportunity to state their views on the question of antifascism in Nuova
antologia (anuary-March 1988): 167-71. De Felice emphasized the need to distinguish between
antifascists and democrats. The two are not the same, and the communists, in particular, must
demonstrate their adherence to liberal democratic values. "An antifascist habit no longer makes a
democratic monk" [L'abito antifascista non farebbe piui il monaco democratico]. The Corriere della sera
interview of December 27 and a follow-up interview published January 8, 1989, appear in Jader
Jacobelli, Il fascismo e gli storici oggi (Rome-Bari, 1988), along with comments by twenty-four journalists
and historians.
55
See, for example, "L'antifascismo e salvo," in L'Espresso, January 17, 1988.
404 Borden W. Painter, Jr.
the leader of the PCI, Palmiro Togliatti, who had died in 1964.56 The political
motivation of Craxi and the Socialists was clear enough: embarrass the PCI,
undermine Togliatti's historical stature by his association with Stalin and Stalinism,
and, further, make the case that the Socialists were the true inheritors of a
democratic socialism whereas the Communists were the inheritors of a tradition
tainted by totalitarianism.57 The conference prompted complaints from Commu-
nist party leader Alessandro Natta that it was unfair to attack and try Togliatti in
this fashion.58
De Felice's place within Italian historiography on fascism has been most affected
by the crisis facing the Italian Marxists both politically and historiographically.59
Eurocommunism has failed to develop, and the left wing of the PCI is loath simply
to meld into "Mediterranean" socialism. The PSI has considerably enhanced its
political strength in Italy and now seriously challenges the PCI for leadership of the
left. Marxist historians find themselves on the defensive because the debate over
fascism has been dwarfed by the debate over Stalinism. The changes in the Soviet
Union brought on by Mikhail Gorbachev have revived all sorts of troubling
historical questions that Italian Marxist historians previously either ignored or
played down by attributing the sins of Stalinism to Stalin himself rather than to his
system or its ideology. In addition, although Gramsci remains the patron saint of
the left in Italy and elsewhere, some historians have doubts about the precise
meaning of his historical ideas and their political implications.60
In these circumstances, De Felice's polemical stance toward Italian Marxist
historiography has become part of a larger challenge to the hegemony so long
enjoyed by that school. The challenge is fundamentally of a twofold character: a
rejection of abstract, theoretical approaches to history; and skepticism about
traditional Marxist definitions of fascism. This challenge has opened the way to a
56
The conference was held on March 16 and 17, 1988. Some of the papers then appeared in the
Socialist party journal Mondoperaio, April-May 1988. A volume including all the papers, commentaries
and discussions appeared a few months later: Lo stalinismo nella sinistra italiana, Atti del Convegno
Organizatto da Mondoperaio, Roma 16-17 marzo 1988 (Rome, 1988).
57Craxi had begun his campaign to disassociate the PSI historically and politically from the PCI as
early as 1976. See "La storia secondo Bettino," in Epoca, March 13, 1988. For a Socialist critique of
Gramsci, see Luciano Pellicani, Gramsci e la questione comunista (Florence, 1976).
58
See, for example, "Che errore attaccare Togliatti," in La Repubblica, March 19, 1988.
59
A sample of recent books on the Marxist "crisis" by Marxists includes: Carl Boggs, The Two
Revolutions: Antonio Gramsci and the Dilemmas of Western Marxism (Boston, 1984); Carl Boggs, Social
Movements and Political Power: Emerging Forms of Radicalism in the West (Philadelphia, 1986); Joseph
Femia, Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process (Oxford, 1981);
John Hoffman, The Gramscian Challenge: Coercion and Consent in Marxist Political Theory (Oxford, 1984);
Jack Lindsay, The Crisis in Marxism (Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, 1981); Ernesto Laclau and Chantal
Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London, 1985); Anne
Showstack Sassoon, Gramsci's Politics, 2d edn. (Minneapolis, Minn., 1987). Also see the comments on
Gramsci and the concept of hegemony in H. Stuart Hughes, Sophisticated Rebels: The Political Culture of
European Dissent 1968-1987 (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).
60
The following sorts of questions are being raised and debated by scholars interested in Gramsci:
What exactly does hegemony mean? Do Gramsci's ideas lead to the dicatatorship of the proletariat or a
democratic state? Is the distinction between Western and Eastern Marxism accurate? What did Gramsci
think of Stalin and Stalinism?
Victoria De Grazia uses Gramsci's notion of hegemony in her fine study of the Dopolavoro: The Culture
of Consent, Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, 1981), and rejects De Felice's consensus
thesis: "Consent is sometimes defined as a favorable public opinion, something subject to being
ascertained scientifically at the ballot box or by polling. The assumption that such opinions are freely
given, if not freely formed, could never be sustained for fascist Italy; nor, as some recent studies of the
regime have implied, is it possible to deduce from the personal charisma of the Duce or from the
propaganda bombardments of the Ministry of Popular Culture the existence of a generalized consensus
in favor of the regime"; 20. The "recent studies" she cites are De Felice, Mussolini il duce I: Gli anni del
consenso; and Cannistraro, La fabbrica del consenso.
The Historiography of Italian Fascism 405
more sympathetic attitude toward De Felice's work.6' De Felice's contribution has
been to demythologize and to depoliticize the study of Italian fascism, arguing that
Marxist or Communist views have distorted historical perspective on the subject.
The Italian Communists, De Felice seems to say, have profited from a kind of
"innocence by association." They have monopolized antifascism and hence pur-
veyed historical views in accordance with their best political interests.
De Felice's work supports two major points with respect to the nature of Italian
fascism and fascism more generally. First, Italian fascism can only be understood in
its dialectic with communism. Fascism's defeat of Marxism was accomplished by a
combination of support from conservative and traditional forces as well as attempts
to formulate a revolutionary stance of its own while endeavoring to build its own
mass base. The Marxists accept only the first part of such a formulation. Second,
generic fascism to De Felice has no basis in historical fact62 but is a political
construct advantageous to Marxist parties and governments, for generic fascism
means that fascism can always appear again. If it does, the Marxists, claiming to
understand it "objectively," will be in the best position to thwart it.63
In the short run, the current political situation means that De Felice's views now
stand a better chance of getting a sympathetic hearing, though not necessarily
unanimous applause. The trend seems to be toward a historiography that concen-
trates more on specific points and less on theory. In the long run, the issues raised
by an examination of De Felice's views of Italian fascism and generic fascism must
be assessed within the larger context of the methods underlying the study of history
in general and fascism in particular. De Felice has succeeded as a historian not
because everyone agrees with what he has written but because, as with Jakob
Burckhardt on the Renaissance or Geoffrey Elton on Tudor England, everyone
who writes on the subject has to take his views into account.
61
Even those critical of De Felice's position in general and his consensus argument in particular
seemed capable, by the 1980s, of making their points more on the basis of empirical research and less
on the basis of political and ideological stances. See, for example, Luisa Passerini, "Work, Ideology and
Working Class Attitudes to Fascism," in Our Common History: The Transformation of Europe, eds. Paul
Thompson and Natasha Burchardt (London, 1982): 54-78; and Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural
Experience of the Turin Working Class (Cambridge, 1987). For a sympathetic summary of De Felice's
position and its influence, see the article by his student Emilio Gentile, "Fascism in Italian Historiogra-
phy: In Search of an Individual Historical Identity,"Journal of Contemporary History, 21 (1986): 179-208.
62 De Felice does see enough similarities in the various fascisms to warrant continuing attempts to
define the fascist phenomenon: "The task certainly is not easy, but it is my conviction that-thanks above
all to the research and new approach given the problem by some scholars and especially by Jacob
Talmon, George L. Mosse, Eugen Weber-it is not impossible"; Renzo De Felice, "II fenomeno fascista,"
Storia contemporanea, 10 (1979): 627-28. Compare Intervista, 24, 82 [Fascism, 40-41, 89-90].
63 For examples of non-Italian views on the question of generic fascism, see Martin Kitchen's critique
of Ernst Nolte, Fascism (London, 1976), 44-45; and Tim Mason's quarrel with De Felice and Henry
Turner over modernization, "Italy and Modernization: A Montage," History Workshop, 25 (Spring 1988):
127-47. The latter article concludes with some unflattering comments about "Bettino Craxi, the Socialist
Party leadership and the media-managers arrayed behind them"; 144.