[5] Sometimes considered the "father" of revolutionary syndicalism or at least "the leading figure amongst the French Syndicalists",[6][7] Georges Sorel supported militant trade unionism to combat the corrupting influences of parliamentary parties and politics, even if the legislators were distinctly socialist.
As a French Marxist who supported Lenin, Bolshevism and Mussolini concurrently in the early 1920s,[8][9] Sorel promoted the cause of the proletariat in class struggle, and the "catastrophic polarization" that would arise through social myth-making of general strikes.
[14] By 1909, Sorel became disappointed over the compromising policies of socialist parliamentarians, the movement towards democratic socialism and the decadence of the proletariat who were seduced by the "mirage of enormous economic benefits".
"[20] According to Sorel, the power of democratic-republican governments was debasing the revolutionary initiative of the worker class which forced him to search for other alternatives, including a nationalism, but one devoid of any monarchism.
[15] In 1909, Sorel published an article in Enrico Leone's Il Divenire sociale, an influential journal of revolutionary syndicalism in Italy, which was later reprinted and championed by Charles Maurras in the L'Action française entitled "Antiparliamentary Socialist".
[37] The emphasis by syndicalists towards the importance of "producerism" had been originally initiated by Sorel in 1907, who argued that "Marx considers that a revolution by a proletariat of producers who [have] acquired economic capacity.
"[40] After the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP), Italian syndicalists continued to move further away from orthodox Marxism, determined to revise it to fit the changing times and to embolden its strategic goals.
They argued that the Russian Bolsheviks had failed to adhere to Engels' 1850 admonition about the dangers of trying to establish a social revolution within an economically backwards environment.
[41] This drift had emerged years before the economic malaise of Soviet Russia, prompting most Italian syndicalists to transcend the errors and drawbacks that "they believed they found in orthodox Marxism.
"[42] Developed to bring about worker control of the means of production by direct action, the intellectuals of syndicalism came to the realization that Italy's primitive economy could facilitate neither equality nor abundance for society.
"[45] Rossoni and his Fascist syndicalist cadre were soon regarded as "radical or leftist elements", who sought to protect the economic interests of "workers and to preserve their class consciousness.
"[46] Rossoni strove to build a "collective interest in the economy", that would subject employers to Fascist discipline while providing a more substantial role for workers to make economic decisions.
"[48] In his early anti-capitalist polemics, Rossoni claimed that capitalism "depressed and annulled production rather than stimulating and developing it" and that industrialists were "apathetic, passive, and ignorant.
[51] In some cases, Rossoni's pro-labor stances worried industrialists due to his philosophic interpretation of Marx's "dynamic law of history", which lead him to support the eventuality of workers' control of factories.
[49] He argued that industrialists had a legitimate right to assume their positions, but only until "such time as workers, organized into new syndicates, had mastered the requisite competence to take command.
[54] Much of the increased membership in Fascist syndicates stemmed from the deteriorating economic conditions that occurred during the long factory strikes in the early 1920s that had been spearheaded by revolutionary socialists.
Considered as a "left fascist", Spirito supported the struggle for a populist type of "corporativism", a sort of proprietary corporation that provided the features of "collective ownership without undesirable economic centralization.
[58] They identified Fascism and syndicalist ideology as a replacement for parliamentary liberalism so as to advance the interests of workers and common people as well as "modernize the economy.
In the 1919 Unione Italiana del Lavoro (UIL) strike at the Franchi e Gregorini metallurgical plant in Dalmine, he supported workers' occupation of factories.
In early 1944, Mussolini's "socialization law" called for nationalization of industry that would pursue a policy where "workers were to participate in factory and business management.