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My Autobiography / The Political & Social Doctrine of Fascism
This memoir recounts the Italian dictator's years as an agitator, journalist, and soldier, the formation of the Fascist Party, the "March on Rome," and his early years in power. It articulates Il Duce's vision of his nation's return to glory and includes his definitive statement on the doctrine of Fascism and its political justification. 8 illustrations.
272 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1928
25 people are currently reading
320 people want to read
About the author
Benito Mussolini
314 books176 followersBenito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian dictator who founded and led the National Fascist Party (PNF). He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 1943, as well as Duce of Italian fascism from the establishment of the Italian Fasces of Combat in 1919 until his summary execution in 1945 by Italian partisans. As dictator of Italy and principal founder of fascism, Mussolini inspired and supported the international spread of fascist movements during the inter-war period.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
May 5, 2011
A snow job that makes Fascism look reasonable, even altruistic. Possibly ghost written by Richard Washburn Child or Arnaldo Mussolini. Dates from about 1928.
March 19, 2025
It's a great book of memories.
July 8, 2024
Lol, what a loser!
October 9, 2025
Ur so annoying to read about but I have to for my assignment
November 29, 2023
Would mussolini ever lie about anything that happened in his life ? maybe even be biased towards certain world events? theres no way even if that one american ambassador may have ghost written it this is still true and honest kino
January 14, 2026
mostly waffle with the occasional homoerotic letter to D’Annunzio
July 1, 2025
Excellent book, highly recommend to any student of history. We all know how it ends, but it’s a great read filled with some alarming parallels to today.
Read
July 12, 2024Say what you will about this guy. El Duce could write.
Some passages I found notable:
“Voting was reduced to a childish game; it had already humiliated the nation for entire decades. It had created a perilous structure far below the heights of the duties of any new Italy.”
“It was necessary in my opinion to create a political atmosphere which would allow men in government to have some degree of courage, to speak harsh truths, to affirm rights, only after having exacted duties, and, if necessary, imposing these duties.”
“Thus the Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, life which should be high and full, lived for oneself, but above all for other- those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries and those who will come after.”
“Fascism denies the materialist conception of happiness as a possibility, and abandons it to its inventors…Fascism denies the validity of the equation, well being=happiness, which would reduce men only to be fat and well-fed - and would thus degrade humanity to a purely physical existence.”
“Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage. The democratic regime may be defined from time to time giving the people the illusion of sovereignty, while the real effective sovereignty lies in the hands of other concealed and irresponsible forces. Democracy is a regime nominally without a king, but is ruled by many kings- more absolute, tyrannical, and ruinous than one sole king, even though a tyrant.”
“The forms in which States express themselves may change but the necessity for such forms is eternal. It is the State which educates its citizens in virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity; harmonizing their various interests through justice, and transmitting to future generations the mental conquests of science, of art, of law, and the solidarity of humanity.”
“The Fascist State is not indifferent to the fact of religion in general, or to that particular and positive faith which is Italian Catholicism. The State professes no theology, but a morality, and in the Fascist State religion is considered as one of the deepest manifestations of the spirit of man; thus it is not only respected but defended and protected.”
Some passages I found notable:
“Voting was reduced to a childish game; it had already humiliated the nation for entire decades. It had created a perilous structure far below the heights of the duties of any new Italy.”
“It was necessary in my opinion to create a political atmosphere which would allow men in government to have some degree of courage, to speak harsh truths, to affirm rights, only after having exacted duties, and, if necessary, imposing these duties.”
“Thus the Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, life which should be high and full, lived for oneself, but above all for other- those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries and those who will come after.”
“Fascism denies the materialist conception of happiness as a possibility, and abandons it to its inventors…Fascism denies the validity of the equation, well being=happiness, which would reduce men only to be fat and well-fed - and would thus degrade humanity to a purely physical existence.”
“Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage. The democratic regime may be defined from time to time giving the people the illusion of sovereignty, while the real effective sovereignty lies in the hands of other concealed and irresponsible forces. Democracy is a regime nominally without a king, but is ruled by many kings- more absolute, tyrannical, and ruinous than one sole king, even though a tyrant.”
“The forms in which States express themselves may change but the necessity for such forms is eternal. It is the State which educates its citizens in virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity; harmonizing their various interests through justice, and transmitting to future generations the mental conquests of science, of art, of law, and the solidarity of humanity.”
“The Fascist State is not indifferent to the fact of religion in general, or to that particular and positive faith which is Italian Catholicism. The State professes no theology, but a morality, and in the Fascist State religion is considered as one of the deepest manifestations of the spirit of man; thus it is not only respected but defended and protected.”
May 27, 2019
This is a good book provided you also read a biography by someone who is as objective as possible such as Ivone Kirkpatrick. The dictation style in some cases is quite good as it shows us his humor and his style. You get a true feeling for who he is with this manner of writing a book. The down side is that it reads almost like he is talking to you which in some cases is not ideal. However, there are many articles and speeches copied verbatim contained in the book. It was an interesting look into who he felt he was and what he had accomplished up to that point in 1928. It is also interesting to see the events and things he left out of his story. In some cases he completes hides the truth but in others he is pretty straightforward by stating that he committed a certain which would be considered deplorable today. T
March 9, 2025
Interesting read if you wan to learn something about how one of the most brutal dictators from the 20th century thought about himself and the world.
It’s clear from this book how hollow fascism was, it was an ideologically void cosplay at playing army in civil society. Action and aesthetics without purpose, other than the pleasure of masochistic men that are eager to fall in line and dedicate themselves to a cause. All the better that the cause remains undefined and the means are all pretend. Except all the dead and tortured, it would have been a great de Sade fantasy of power and pleasure.
There are clear parallels and distinctions to today’s wanna be dictators and champions of ‘my country above all other’ movements that seem to never learn from their mistakes.
All in all, recommended read, but I can only give it two stars as it’s not very well written.
It’s clear from this book how hollow fascism was, it was an ideologically void cosplay at playing army in civil society. Action and aesthetics without purpose, other than the pleasure of masochistic men that are eager to fall in line and dedicate themselves to a cause. All the better that the cause remains undefined and the means are all pretend. Except all the dead and tortured, it would have been a great de Sade fantasy of power and pleasure.
There are clear parallels and distinctions to today’s wanna be dictators and champions of ‘my country above all other’ movements that seem to never learn from their mistakes.
All in all, recommended read, but I can only give it two stars as it’s not very well written.
March 17, 2015
Before He was Funny, The Autobiography of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini wrote his autobiography, rather, Mussolini dictated his autobiography, in 1928, when he was still ascending, and it wasn’t published in Italy until 1971, years after his ignominious fall from power. Say, what? What’s the point of an autobiography if you’re not going to publish it? Well, he did publish it in 1928, in the United States. That, apparently, was the intent of the book, to speak to America. (Which doesn’t explain why he didn’t also simultaneously publish it in Italy and elsewhere.) It first appeared, serialized, in the Saturday Evening Post, then came a Scribner’s edition, (one of those large print, green-cover hardbound tomes.) So who exactly was Mussolini trying to reach in America, and why?
Was it the millions of Italian immigrants and their children? Was it the money people in America? Both?
Maybe Mussolini wanted to generate sympathy in America for Italian fascism. Again, why? Mussolini’s fascism wasn’t a Lenin-like ideology intent on conquering the world. True, Mussolini wanted an empire, but his was to be a colonial empire, taken with brute force, not with ideas, an empire like the British or the French, an empire reviving the glory of Rome. The support of all those Italians who’d gone off to America, while welcomed, would have been irrelevant. (When it came time for those immigrants to choose between the old country with its fascism and the new country with its democracy, the Italian-Americans resoundingly chose the latter.)
If it was American money Mussolini was after, again, so what. A book couldn’t, by itself, convince the money people (not all of whom were bankers) to support Mussolini. What Money wanted to see, and saw, was stability.
The popularity of Mussolini was peaking in America around the time of the publication of the autobiography and faded afterward with Mussolini’s blundering attempts at empire and his alignment with that other European fascist. Mussolini’s ultimate legacy became not one of strength but of buffoonery.
We get glimpses of the buffoonery in the autobiography. It’s something the strutting, bumptious Il Duce can’t hide, not even behind a veil of false humility.
We get an account of Mussolini’s early years, his school days. He tells us how he stood up to bullies. History says he was the bully. He tells us he used to pinch people in church, very Italian, assuming he only pinched the girls, and harmless, except he pinched until his victims cried and the pinching may have been a harbinger for the fascists’ political opponents being forced to drink castor oil. Cute, except the amount of castor oil forcibly drank was excessive (up to a liter and sometimes mixed with gasoline.) In a few instances the treatment brought death and in all instances it brought pain and suffering and humiliation.
Mussolini glosses over another part of his childhood, the three different occasions when he stabbed people with knives.
Raised in a socialist house, Mussolini got his initial political leanings from his socialist dad, a blacksmith, and three of Mussolini’s four names - he had two middle names - came from socialists, including Benito, which he got from leftist Mexican president Benito Juarez. How socialist was Mussolini as a young man? Enough so when Italy moved toward entering the First World War, Mussolini spoke out against it, and against the corrupting influence of patriotism. He may have fled the country to avoid conscription at the outbreak of the war. (Mussolini says no, history says yes.)
One of Mussolini’s main ideas was to attack the socialists, which doesn’t mean he was an opportunist. His conversion to fascism seems genuine.
What fueled Mussolini’s rise was decisiveness.
Italy came out of World War One on the winning side but you wouldn’t have thought so with how the country looked in the immediate post-war years. It was a mess. It was all going wrong for Italy - betrayed, so they felt, at the peace table by their wartime allies and at home by the socialists. It was chaos and into the chaos, into the political vacuum, there stepped a strongman, an assured man. And give Mussolini credit. At a time when everyone else seemed hapless, when no one seemed to know how to fix things, Mussolini stepped forward, confident and assured. Under his brand of fascism, all men were to toil happily for the glory of the nation and those who didn’t would get castor oil.
The trains may have run on time but at a terrible price.
Mussolini’s image today, like Italy’s image in World War Two, has become one of derision. That all mostly came after the book was published but reading the book today and knowing what was coming, it’s easy to laugh at some of the poses and boasts of the dictator. (There aren’t too many photographs in the book but what few there are, are terrific.) Mussolini can’t hide his buffoonery or his bombast. He tries to be humble and it all plays into the stereotype history has of him.
But that was all post 1928 and in 28, Mussolini was still the big dog of European fascism.
He tries (and fails) to be humble. Whatever he did, he did for the good of the nation. His country called and he responded. He was decisive at a time when few were, and in the chaos, decisiveness was what the people wanted.
There are plenty of books available about Mussolini, but his autobiography, probably unintentionally, tells us more about Mussolini than what Mussolini may have intended. He practically insists we read between the lines.
I read the original hardbound edition, available from my local library, and can’t vouch for the quality of the e-book, available on Amazon.
Benito Mussolini wrote his autobiography, rather, Mussolini dictated his autobiography, in 1928, when he was still ascending, and it wasn’t published in Italy until 1971, years after his ignominious fall from power. Say, what? What’s the point of an autobiography if you’re not going to publish it? Well, he did publish it in 1928, in the United States. That, apparently, was the intent of the book, to speak to America. (Which doesn’t explain why he didn’t also simultaneously publish it in Italy and elsewhere.) It first appeared, serialized, in the Saturday Evening Post, then came a Scribner’s edition, (one of those large print, green-cover hardbound tomes.) So who exactly was Mussolini trying to reach in America, and why?
Was it the millions of Italian immigrants and their children? Was it the money people in America? Both?
Maybe Mussolini wanted to generate sympathy in America for Italian fascism. Again, why? Mussolini’s fascism wasn’t a Lenin-like ideology intent on conquering the world. True, Mussolini wanted an empire, but his was to be a colonial empire, taken with brute force, not with ideas, an empire like the British or the French, an empire reviving the glory of Rome. The support of all those Italians who’d gone off to America, while welcomed, would have been irrelevant. (When it came time for those immigrants to choose between the old country with its fascism and the new country with its democracy, the Italian-Americans resoundingly chose the latter.)
If it was American money Mussolini was after, again, so what. A book couldn’t, by itself, convince the money people (not all of whom were bankers) to support Mussolini. What Money wanted to see, and saw, was stability.
The popularity of Mussolini was peaking in America around the time of the publication of the autobiography and faded afterward with Mussolini’s blundering attempts at empire and his alignment with that other European fascist. Mussolini’s ultimate legacy became not one of strength but of buffoonery.
We get glimpses of the buffoonery in the autobiography. It’s something the strutting, bumptious Il Duce can’t hide, not even behind a veil of false humility.
We get an account of Mussolini’s early years, his school days. He tells us how he stood up to bullies. History says he was the bully. He tells us he used to pinch people in church, very Italian, assuming he only pinched the girls, and harmless, except he pinched until his victims cried and the pinching may have been a harbinger for the fascists’ political opponents being forced to drink castor oil. Cute, except the amount of castor oil forcibly drank was excessive (up to a liter and sometimes mixed with gasoline.) In a few instances the treatment brought death and in all instances it brought pain and suffering and humiliation.
Mussolini glosses over another part of his childhood, the three different occasions when he stabbed people with knives.
Raised in a socialist house, Mussolini got his initial political leanings from his socialist dad, a blacksmith, and three of Mussolini’s four names - he had two middle names - came from socialists, including Benito, which he got from leftist Mexican president Benito Juarez. How socialist was Mussolini as a young man? Enough so when Italy moved toward entering the First World War, Mussolini spoke out against it, and against the corrupting influence of patriotism. He may have fled the country to avoid conscription at the outbreak of the war. (Mussolini says no, history says yes.)
One of Mussolini’s main ideas was to attack the socialists, which doesn’t mean he was an opportunist. His conversion to fascism seems genuine.
What fueled Mussolini’s rise was decisiveness.
Italy came out of World War One on the winning side but you wouldn’t have thought so with how the country looked in the immediate post-war years. It was a mess. It was all going wrong for Italy - betrayed, so they felt, at the peace table by their wartime allies and at home by the socialists. It was chaos and into the chaos, into the political vacuum, there stepped a strongman, an assured man. And give Mussolini credit. At a time when everyone else seemed hapless, when no one seemed to know how to fix things, Mussolini stepped forward, confident and assured. Under his brand of fascism, all men were to toil happily for the glory of the nation and those who didn’t would get castor oil.
The trains may have run on time but at a terrible price.
Mussolini’s image today, like Italy’s image in World War Two, has become one of derision. That all mostly came after the book was published but reading the book today and knowing what was coming, it’s easy to laugh at some of the poses and boasts of the dictator. (There aren’t too many photographs in the book but what few there are, are terrific.) Mussolini can’t hide his buffoonery or his bombast. He tries to be humble and it all plays into the stereotype history has of him.
But that was all post 1928 and in 28, Mussolini was still the big dog of European fascism.
He tries (and fails) to be humble. Whatever he did, he did for the good of the nation. His country called and he responded. He was decisive at a time when few were, and in the chaos, decisiveness was what the people wanted.
There are plenty of books available about Mussolini, but his autobiography, probably unintentionally, tells us more about Mussolini than what Mussolini may have intended. He practically insists we read between the lines.
I read the original hardbound edition, available from my local library, and can’t vouch for the quality of the e-book, available on Amazon.
December 21, 2022
I’m increasingly drawn to the view that fascism is a product of socialism’s failures. M thought that fascism was the successor to a defunct liberalism and servile socialism.
The piece serves a propagandistic mission and the trained eye will pick out the biases and distortions of history.
It’s an interesting look into what fascism “says” about itself and it’s origins. What it does in power, as Clara Zetkin and others note, is a different matter.
Was this actually written by Mussolini? If so, he certainly had an author’s flourish.
The piece serves a propagandistic mission and the trained eye will pick out the biases and distortions of history.
It’s an interesting look into what fascism “says” about itself and it’s origins. What it does in power, as Clara Zetkin and others note, is a different matter.
Was this actually written by Mussolini? If so, he certainly had an author’s flourish.
October 25, 2024
What the book accomplished
I wanted a better understanding of how this period of European history rose into being. Reading an autobiography is of course seen and recorded through one's own eyes and their perspective and not necessarily for the good of the country's citizens and the reality of living through it.
I found, not unexpectedly, a lot of parallels of my European studies between Bonaparte, Hitler and Mussolini - thank goodness such men will never rise to power again - right.
I wanted a better understanding of how this period of European history rose into being. Reading an autobiography is of course seen and recorded through one's own eyes and their perspective and not necessarily for the good of the country's citizens and the reality of living through it.
I found, not unexpectedly, a lot of parallels of my European studies between Bonaparte, Hitler and Mussolini - thank goodness such men will never rise to power again - right.
Read
January 23, 2025Unratable. I find it performative to give a book like this a one star rating, but giving it a five star rating for being an important piece of history also feels strange.
That being said, understanding fascist movements, their rise, and the character of fascist leaders is best started at the beginning, with this book. May well be essential reading in this era of increasing hypernationalism across the western world.
That being said, understanding fascist movements, their rise, and the character of fascist leaders is best started at the beginning, with this book. May well be essential reading in this era of increasing hypernationalism across the western world.
October 1, 2021
Gute Einsicht in die Gedankenwelt von Mussolini, doch selbst die aufgelegte Bescheidenheit kann weder seinen Narzissmus, seine Selbstverliebtheit noch seinen Größenwahn verstecken, die immer mal wieder zwischen den Zeilen aufblitzen.
Letztlich ist diese "Autobiographie" auch nur ein Stück Propaganda, die Mussolini und seinen Faschismus in einen positiven Licht darstellen soll.
Letztlich ist diese "Autobiographie" auch nur ein Stück Propaganda, die Mussolini und seinen Faschismus in einen positiven Licht darstellen soll.
Read
January 5, 2021Definitely propaganda at it's finest.
February 13, 2017
What better way to study the dynamics of despotism than to go to Il Duce himself? The book was written when he was 45, at the height of his powers, as fascism was rising as a new force in the world.
Much of it is remarkably dull, inside-baseball discussion of the personalities and conflicts in early 20th century Italian politics.
It's...well...better than Mein Kampf, I'll grant. Benito had none of the cold abstracted austerity of Adolph. Nor does he spend much time obsessing about Jews. None, in fact. Those demonic dynamics seem meaningless to him, at least at this point in his ascent.
What is interesting, and why I read this book, are those portions that illuminate Mussolini's sense of self.
He understands himself as a man of action, whose faith is the redemptive power of violence, the glory of war, the nobility of struggle. Mussolini has a writer's way with words, the florid embellishments of a far-right yellow journalist, the overwrought certainty of Breitbart. Where, if he were alive today, he'd surely be working.
His enemies, as he names them: Internationalists, liberal democrats and socialists, who are weak and sapping the national vigor of Italy. And the free press, so unwilling to laud the fascisti and their striving. His goal, explicitly stated: To make Italy great. He has, or so the scribe who received his dictation recounts, "..stubby, meaty, short-fingered hands." The only person he is truly close to? His daughter.
Obviously, there are...parallels. Which is why I've steeped myself in the seminal writings of 20th century fascists.
Even so, I found this book reassuring. Mussolini was a brutal, vibrant, radically egocentric man...but he'd been shaped in the crucible of the First World War. He had dueled men to the death. He had an intense, impatient, questing intellect, a love of education, philosophy, and reading. He flew planes, raced cars, and survived numerous assassination attempts.
He blustered and postured for the delight of the crowds, sure. But he doesn't come across as a blathering idiot. Mussolini was too smart for that, too in control of his image.
This was very worth the read.
Much of it is remarkably dull, inside-baseball discussion of the personalities and conflicts in early 20th century Italian politics.
It's...well...better than Mein Kampf, I'll grant. Benito had none of the cold abstracted austerity of Adolph. Nor does he spend much time obsessing about Jews. None, in fact. Those demonic dynamics seem meaningless to him, at least at this point in his ascent.
What is interesting, and why I read this book, are those portions that illuminate Mussolini's sense of self.
He understands himself as a man of action, whose faith is the redemptive power of violence, the glory of war, the nobility of struggle. Mussolini has a writer's way with words, the florid embellishments of a far-right yellow journalist, the overwrought certainty of Breitbart. Where, if he were alive today, he'd surely be working.
His enemies, as he names them: Internationalists, liberal democrats and socialists, who are weak and sapping the national vigor of Italy. And the free press, so unwilling to laud the fascisti and their striving. His goal, explicitly stated: To make Italy great. He has, or so the scribe who received his dictation recounts, "..stubby, meaty, short-fingered hands." The only person he is truly close to? His daughter.
Obviously, there are...parallels. Which is why I've steeped myself in the seminal writings of 20th century fascists.
Even so, I found this book reassuring. Mussolini was a brutal, vibrant, radically egocentric man...but he'd been shaped in the crucible of the First World War. He had dueled men to the death. He had an intense, impatient, questing intellect, a love of education, philosophy, and reading. He flew planes, raced cars, and survived numerous assassination attempts.
He blustered and postured for the delight of the crowds, sure. But he doesn't come across as a blathering idiot. Mussolini was too smart for that, too in control of his image.
This was very worth the read.
August 14, 2025
"There is in his walk something of a prowl, a faint suggestion of the tread of the cat. He likes cats-their independence, their decision, their sense of justice, and their appreciation of the sanctity of the individual. He even likes lions and lionesses, and plays with them until those who guard his life protest against their social set. His principal pet is a Persian feline which, being of aristocratic lineage, nevertheless exhibits a pride not only of ancestry, but, condescendingly, of belonging to Mussolini. And yet, in spite of his own prowl, as he walks along in his riding boots, springy, active, ready to leap, it seems, there is little else feline about him. One quality is feline, however-it is the sense of his complete isolation. One feels that he must always have had this isolation."
The only thing I got out of this book.
The only thing I got out of this book.
August 7, 2012
This guy wrote speeches? This book sounds like it was written by the world's most egocentric fourth-grader. Mussolini was definitely Mussolini's biggest fan, that's for sure.
I think reading a book ABOUT Mussolini as opposed to BY him would be the much better option.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews