“According to Marx, the evolution of capitalism would inevitably lead to the pauperization of the proletariat and then, just as inevitably, to its radicalization. It is interesting that Bento Mussolini arrived at an identical judgment ten years later. Before the outbreak of the first World War, Mussolini had been the closest analogue to Lenin in the European socialist movement, being equally revolutionary and anti-reformist. He was the Lenin of the Italian Socialist Party with the difference that, whereas Mussolini managed to rally behind him a revolutionary majority and expel the reformers, in Russia, Lenin found himself leading a minority and forced to break away from the Social-Democratic Establishment.”

—  Richard Pipes

Source: Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution (1995), pp. 36-37

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Richard Pipes46
American historian 1923–2018

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“What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy. [Addressing to a delegation of Italian socialists in Moscow after Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922]”

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“Hitler did not have Mussolini's revolutionary socialist background… Nevertheless, he shared the socialist hatred and contempt for the 'bourgeoisie' and 'capitalism' and exploited for his purposes the powerful socialist traditions of Germany. The adjectives 'socialist' and 'worker' in the official name of Hitler's party ('The Nationalist-Socialist German Workers' Party') had not merely propagandistic value… On one occasion, in the midst of World War II, Hitler even declared that 'basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same.”

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“In Italy, comrades, in Italy there was but a Socialist able enough to lead the people through a revolutionary path, Benito Mussolini.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

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1920s

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