ine, but would find a series of ideas, of
anticipations, of hints which, liberated from the inevitable
strangleholds of contingencies, were destined after some years to
develop into doctrinal conceptions. Through them Fascism became a
political doctrine to itself, different, by comparison, to all others
whether contemporary or of the past.

I said then, "If the bourgeoisie think we are ready to act as
lightning-conductors, they are mistaken. We must go towards labour.
We wish to train the working classes to directive functions. We wish
to convince them that it is not easy to manage Industry or Trade: we
shall fight the technique and the spirit of the rearguard. When the
succession of the regime is open, we must not lack the fighting
spirit. We must rush and if the present regime be overcome, it is we
who must fill its place. The claim to succession belongs to us,
because it was we who forced the country into War and we who led her
to victory. The present political representation cannot suffice: we
must have a direct representation of all interest. Against this
programme one might say it is a return to corporations. But that does
not matter. Therefore I should like this assembly to accept the claims
put in by national syndicalism from an economic standpoint...."

Is it not strange that the word corporations should have been uttered
at the first meeting of Piazza San Sepolcro, when one considers that,
in the course of the Revolution, it came to express one of the social
and legislative creations at the very foundations of the regime?

2. Development.

The years which preceded the March on Rome were years in which the
necessity of action did not permit complete doctrinal investigations
or elaborations. The battle was raging in the towns and villages.
There were discussions, but what was more important and sacred--there
was death. Men knew how to die. The doctrine--all complete and formed,
with divisions into chapters, paragraphs, and accompanying
elucubrations--might be missing; but there was something more decided
to replace it, there was faith.

Notwithstanding, whoever remembers with the aid of books and speeches,
whoever could search through them and select, would find that the
fundamental principles were laid down whilst the battle raged. It was
really in those years that the Fascist idea armed itself, became
refined and proceeded towards organisation: the problems of the
individual and of the State, the probl