Lenin on Mussolini

[A.J.]

"What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy."

- Addressed to a delegation of Italian socialists in Moscow after Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922

[Guerrilla]

Mussolini used to be a socialist before he became a fascist.

[Chambered Word]

Is there some point I'm missing here?

[Dimentio]

"What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy."

- Addressed to a delegation of Italian socialists in Moscow after Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922

Funnier that Lenin condoned the Camaro Republic in Fiume in 1920.

[RadioRaheem84]

Funnier that Lenin condoned the Camaro Republic in Fiume in 1920.

The siege led by Gabriele d'Annunzio to establish the Constitution of Fiume was a mix of progressive and proto-fascist corporatism. It was seen as revolutionary at the time as nationalism was very much fused with progressive politics.

As for Lenin and Mussolini, Mussolini was a socialist before he became fascist and the big split was due to the issue of nationalism.

But this makes me wonder about the era in general. Was worker control of the means of production just not seen as viable at the time or something? It seems like all the people of the left and the fascist right seemed to think that various forms of state capitalism was the only means to acheive revolution.

The only ones that actually acheived worker control of the means of production were the Anarchists in Spain.

[A.J.]

Is there some point I'm missing here?

The point is Lenin still appreciated what a talented politician Mussolini was even after he had abandoned socialism.

[Rjevan]

The point is Lenin still appreciated what a talented politician Mussolini was even after he had abandoned socialism.
The one thing has nothing to do with the other, nobody ever claimed that only socialists can be talented politicians. I'd say Otto von Bismarck and Winston Churchill were both talented politicians like Hitler was without any doubt a gifted orator and a charismatic person. But that makes none of them a socialist, nor does my statements make me a monarchist, conservative or nazi. ;)

[heiss93]

I googled it and found it pretty questionable, do you have a source?

[Kléber]

Was worker control of the means of production just not seen as viable at the time or something? It seems like all the people of the left and the fascist right seemed to think that various forms of state capitalism was the only means to acheive revolution. Russia was much less industrialized than Italy. State capitalism was the only way to build Russian industry. There was no egalitarian shortcut to industrialization. As Lenin said the Russian workers were forced, due to their low culture, to temporarily copy the methods of the bourgeoisie.

What Lenin did not do, though, was pretend that this was socialism already, and therefore give up the fight for the next stage that was to come after development of industry. That act of revisionism, renaming state capitalism as "socialism" was only possible in 1938 after the Bolshevik leaders of 1917, including Lenin's entire politburo, had been executed.

In retrospect, Lenin's statement that it would be "easy" to go from state capitalism to socialism was.. perhaps incorrect. However, I doubt Lenin would be happy to know that his writings were censored and his ideas were revised in the 1930's to erase fine distinctions between his actual ideas and the new official "Leninism."

And one thing is for certain, when the Bolsheviks and Left SR's took power in 1917 they were only fulfilling the democratic demands of the working class. The bourgeoisie was refusing to step up to its historical role, so the proletariat had to carry out the national historical tasks for them.

Now that feudalism is all but beaten and the semi colonial nations are industrialized, Lenin's Imperialism and Trotsky's Permanent Revolution are both somewhat obsolete theories. However, while we can study an obsolete theory and reappraise it, we can learn nothing from taking revisionist lies as fact. All the revisionist baggage must be shed, starting with Stalinist revisionism.

Also, Italy and Germany were not really "state capitalist" in the sense that Soviet industry was with all production controlled by the state. Apart from a few state ventures and some regulation, most of it due to military concerns, the fascist countries maintained the capitalist market.