Fascist Principle of Primacy of Action

The Fascist Principle of Primacy of Action is the idea that Fascism should be defined less by a stable identity or consistent platform than by its capacity to act. In Benito Mussolini’s account, the movement could draw on competing political positions without being bound by them; what mattered was turning circumstances and grievances into action. This flexibility helped it adapt, but also left open what that action would serve and whom it would empower.

Identity Without a Fixed Program

Cesare Rossi urged Benito Mussolini to look toward the agrarian forces in Bologna and revise the San Sepolcro program, leaving behind what Rossi regarded as remnants of the movement’s left-wing past. He wanted the fasci to decide what they were. Mussolini resisted the premise: for him, defining the movement too precisely risked making it answerable to a settled set of principles. Fascism could be described as an anti-party and a form of anti-politics, but that label was not meant to become a doctrine in its own right. The point was to avoid the constraints of ideological consistency, which Mussolini associated with paralysis.

The narrative grants Rossi’s diagnosis of the problem: the fasci lacked a clear idea of the future or a settled direction. But it reverses his prediction of the consequences. Indeterminacy, rather than condemning the movement, could become an advantage. Fascists did not need to offer a comprehensive account of how reality should be remade; they needed to claim a place within it, intensify existing grievances, and mobilize factional antagonisms. In this account, neither left nor right had to be excluded in advance. The movement could cultivate states of mind formed in the aftermath of war and act on opportunities as they arose.

Action in Place of Doctrine

The San Sepolcro program is presented as a provisional document rather than a binding map for the future. Its demands could be alarming, but the operative meaning of the fasci lay in combat. The movement could therefore appear reactionary or revolutionary according to circumstances, promising no settled course and incurring no obligation to honor one. This was not simply an absence of ideas: it was a method for keeping choices open and allowing political practice to determine the movement’s direction.

Gabriele D’Annunzio offered a related emphasis on action, although not a detailed program for the fasci. His appeal to young people centered on going toward life through action. The narrative describes this emphasis as a way of bypassing the demand for a comprehensive political theory: when thought is discharged into action, deliberation and inner complexity give way to simpler responses. At a Fascist meeting, Mussolini likewise presented the movement as practical, dynamic, and without preconceived ideas, making action its sole doctrine. The principle thus joined a public identity of restless modernity to a refusal to specify in advance what each intervention should accomplish.

From Political Opportunity to Organized Force

This openness mattered in a setting where political conflict was not abstract. In Bologna, socialist organizations held extensive influence in the countryside and labor conflict strained the city’s social order. In Emilia, socialist control extended to 223 of 280 municipalities; farmhands, who might find work for an average of only 120 days a year, depended on labor organizations that regulated hiring and other parts of rural economic life. These conditions supplied concrete grievances and competing organizations for political actors to mobilize. They do not, by themselves, explain the Fascist response, but they show the material conflicts within which the principle operated.

The movement’s practical turn also took institutional forms. In Milan, Michele Bianchi acted on Mussolini’s instruction to make the fasci available to the prefect for maintaining public order. A confidential government circular called for Fascist cooperation against revolutionary attempts, including violent repression, provided the groups accepted the authorities’ command. The episode shows how action could cross the boundary between a movement outside the state and assistance to state power: instead of resolving its political identity first, the movement entered an available arrangement against a shared opponent.

In Ferrara, organized action became more explicitly military in method. A punitive expedition assembled armed men to strike several rural organizations at once, using surprise and trucks supplied by the Agrarian Association. The narrative connects this organization to a struggle over control of the countryside, while also recording internal dissent: Olao Gaggioli resigned as city secretary in protest against Mussolini’s break with D’Annunzio and the agrarian influence. The contrast makes the principle’s costs visible. Flexibility enabled alliances and operations, but it could also sharpen conflicts over whose interests the movement served.

Mobilization, Regeneration, and Consequence

The principle extended beyond individual expeditions to the organization of mass action. In May, Italo Balbo’s mobilization plan brought thousands of impoverished farm laborers into Ferrara by foot, bicycle, wagon, and barge. Preparations included detailed orders to provincial leaders; beatings and alcohol were prohibited, and buildings were requisitioned for accommodation. The following morning, tens of thousands of laborers filled and paralyzed the city. The scale and logistics of the operation demonstrate that action did not necessarily mean spontaneity: it could depend on centralized instructions, local networks, transport, and control of space.

Action also had a political and symbolic register. In a later speech, Mussolini contrasted the movement’s small early gatherings with its mass following and presented its expansion as a national revival: volunteers became an army, a people became a nation, and the nation became a state. The narrative places this image alongside earlier postwar descriptions of veterans as a force pressing against the old political order, and alongside the promise of a vigorous new man rising from national decline. These are not evidence of a coherent program so much as a language that gave momentum and change the appearance of historical purpose.

The principle’s significance lies in this combination of adaptability and force. By refusing a fixed political identity, Fascism could move between competing positions, form temporary alliances, and make organization and mobilization more decisive than declared commitments. But the resulting flexibility did not make its actions politically neutral: in the episodes recounted here, they were bound up with the repression of opponents, struggles over labor and property, and claims to national authority. The doctrine kept the movement’s destination open while making action itself the test of political power.