A. James Gregor on Proletarian nation

“Mussolini insisted that Fascism was the only form of ‘socialism’ appropriate to the ‘proletarian nations’ of the twentieth century.”

“In October and November 1937, Mussolini spoke of a ‘necessary alliance’ with Germany and Japan in anticipation of what he conceived an inevitable conflict between the ‘proletarian nations’ and the ‘sated’ industrial powers.”

“Michels, like Olivetti, conceived Italy’s proletarian nationalism to be revolutionary, indeed, Marxist in essence. More than that, Michels was prepared to identify national interests and national sentiments as factors of primary historical and socialist importance—a conviction that was to provide the vindication for our century’s first national socialism.”

“As early as 1930, Fascist theoreticians had begun to speak of an internazionale fascista, a pan-fascist union of kindred have-not or proletarian, nations. By 1935, Fascist maintained that Fascism recognized that the ravages of war and depression in Europe could only be undone by international ‘antiplutocratic’ reconstruction and argued, as a consequence, that Fascism was to be both ‘patriotic and international at the same time.’”