Italian Fascism

Italian Fascism, also known simply as Fascism (Italian: Fascismo), is the original capital-"F" fascist ideology in Italy and the world. Italian Fascism is based upon Italian nationalism and the restoration of "Italia Irredenta" (claimed unredeemed Italian territories) to Italy as well as territorial expansionism that Italian Fascists deemed necessary for a nation to assert its superiority and strength to avoid succumbing to decay. Italian Fascists claim that modern Italy is the heir to ancient Rome and its legacy, and historically supported the creation of an Italian Empire to provide spazio vitale ("vital space") for colonization by Italian settlers and establishing control over the Mediterranean Sea as Italy's Mare Nostrum ("Our Sea"), as it had been under the Roman Empire.

Italian Fascism promotes a corporatist economic system whereby employer and employee syndicates are linked together in corporative associations to collectively represent the nation's economic producers and work alongside the state to set national economic policy. Italian Fascism promoted such economics as a "Third Alternative" to capitalism and Marxism that Italian Fascism regarded as "obsolete doctrines". Italian Fascists claim that their economic system resolves and ends class conflict by creating class collaboration. However it publicly favours proletarian culture due to its association with economic production and claims that proletarians as producers must have a dominant role in the nation. It claims that cultural nationalization of society is necessary to emancipate the nation's proletariat, and promotes the assimilation of all classes into a proletarian national culture.

It opposes liberalism, but made clear that it was not seeking a reactionary restoration of the pre-French Revolutionary world that it considered to have been flawed, and that had been the cause of the rise of liberalism, but had a forward-looking direction. It is opposed to mainstream socialism because of its typical opposition to nationalism. While it rejected Marxian socialism for its support of class conflict, its opposition to private property, and its materialism, the ideology was influenced by Saint-Simonian utopian socialism that accepted private property. Fascism shared the Saint-Simonian producerist conception of viewing societies as having productive and parasitic elements. Italian Fascism was declared to be opposed to the reactionary conservatism developed by Joseph de Maistre.