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to serve some important end of their several class purposes and interests;that Minister after Minister had perceived these currents andhad run with them, that Italy had descended with a kind of doomlikeinevitability into social and economic bankruptcy and thatMussolini, filled with a passion for power, coming on the scene in amoment of despair and chaos, perceiving obscurely the intentionsand desires of the people, quickly enough located them, rose topower, and then proceeded to put into effect a program not conformingto his own opinions, as he set out to do, but conforming tothe opinions of these controlling groups among the Italian people.There remains now merely to show clearly what, out of the conditionswe have been describing, he finally adopted and put togetherto make up that special form of society we call fascism.X · What Is Fascism?MUSSOLINI became Premier in October 1922. With the innumerablearguments about the march on Rome or with the story of theviolent, lawless, and outrageous tactics he used to come to power weare not concerned here. That history has been told many times. Ourbusiness is to see the use he made of his power to fashion a new formof society.He did not have a majority in parliament. He had to form acoalition cabinet which included a moderate socialist and a memberof the Popolari. Some liberal politicians saw the hope of a stablegovernment and the General Confederation of Labor (socialist)agreed to collaborate. Mussolini, of course, began to move towarddictatorship. But the full dictatorship did not come until 1925, afterthe assassination of Matteoti.We will now see the elements of the fascist society emerge—pointby point. First we must note one important difference betweencommunism and fascism which becomes clear here. Socialism has adefinite philosophy, based upon clearly enunciated principles whichhad long been debated and were widely understood. Socialists dis-48