Fascist Manifesto


The Manifesto of the Italian Fasces of Combat, commonly known as the Fascist Manifesto, was the initial declaration of the political stance of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento the movement founded in Milan by Benito Mussolini in 1919 and an early exponent of Fascism. The Manifesto was authored by national syndicalist Alceste De Ambris and the futurist poet Filippo Marinetti.

Contents of the Fascist Manifesto

The Manifesto is divided into four sections, describing the movement's objectives in political, social, military and financial fields.
Politically, the Manifesto calls for:
In labor and social policy, the Manifesto calls for:
In military affairs, the Manifesto advocates:
In finance, the Manifesto advocates:
These early positions reflected in the Manifesto would later be characterized by Mussolini in the Doctrine of Fascism as "a series of pointers, forecasts, hints which, when freed from the inevitable matrix of contingencies, were to develop in a few years time into a series of doctrinal positions entitling Fascism to rank as a political doctrine differing from all others, past or present."

The Manifesto in practice

Of the Manifesto's proposals, the commitment to corporative organisation of economic interests was to be the longest lasting. Far from becoming a medium of extended democracy, parliament became by law an exclusively Fascist-picked body in 1929; being replaced by the "chamber of corporations" a decade later.
Fascism's pacifist foreign policy ceased during its first year of Italian government. In September 1923, the Corfu crisis demonstrated the regime's willingness to use force internationally. Perhaps the greatest success of Fascist diplomacy was the Lateran Treaty of February 1929, which accepted the principle of non-interference in the affairs of the Church. This ended the 59-year-old dispute between Italy and the Papacy.