The meaning of "right" in Italian Fascism

Question

In laying out the foundation for fascism, Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini wrote two essays in the 1920s and 30s known as, "La Dottrina del Fascismo".

Gentile authored the first essay titled "Idee Fondamentali".

Mussolini is credited with the second, "Dottrina politica e sociale" (some sources suggest that Gentile also authored this essay, ghostwriting for Mussolini).

The essays were published in the Enciclopedia Italiana in 1932.

_{sources: (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treccani, (2) https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_dottrina_del_fascismo, (3) https://www.amazon.com/Doctrine-Fascism-Benito-Mussolini-ebook/dp/B00II9F7N0/ref=sr_1_2}

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Here's an excerpt from Mussolini's "Dottrina politica e sociale" that is the subject of my question:

Ammesso che il sec. XIX sia stato il secolo del socialismo, del liberalismo, della democrazia, non è detto che anche il sec. XX debba essere il secolo del socialismo, del liberalismo, della democrazia. Le dottrine politiche passano, i popoli restano. Si può pensare che questo sia il secolo dell’autorità, un secolo di «destra», un secolo fascista; se il XIX fu il secolo dell’individuo (liberalismo significa individualismo), si può pensare che questo sia il secolo «collettivo» e quindi il secolo dello Stato.

^{sources:
(1) https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/La_dottrina_del_fascismo (2) http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/fascismo_(Enciclopedia-Italiana)/ (3) https://web.archive.org/web/20141213102821/http://litgloss.buffalo.edu/mussolini/text2.shtml}

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The first and only authorized translation of Mussolini's essay was written by British author and historian Jane Soames. Her work was published in 1933. Here's her interpretation:

Granted that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism, and Democracy. Political doctrines pass, but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority, a century of the left, a century of Fascism; for if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism (Liberalism always signifying individualism) it may be expected that this will be a the century of collectivism, and hence the century of the state.

_{sources:
http://www.pauladaunt.com/books/Banned%20books%20and%20conspiracy%20theories/The%20Doctrine%20of%20Fascism%20-%20by%20Benito%20Mussolini%20%28Printed%201933%29.pdf}

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It appears that Mussolini wrote: "...this will be the century of authority, a century of the right, a century of Fascism..."

But the translation reads: "...this will be the century of authority, a century of the left, a century of Fascism..."

Why did Soames see "Right" to mean "Left"?

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A "mistranslation"

In researching an answer to this question I discovered various related discussions online, including one post on Skeptics.SE.

All of these discussions have two things in common:

1. they arrive at the same conclusion, that Soames made a mistake; and,
2. they are built entirely on speculation and opinion (none provide corroborating evidence).

For example, in the Skeptics.SE post, the author of the primary answer asserts "This is a mistranslation", but later admits,"I have been unable to discover how or why Soames managed to mistranslate "destra" as "left". Not authoritative. Not referenced. Not complete.

It's easy to make the claim that Soames was sloppy and incompetent. If you consider the full context, however, buying into that theory is not so easy.

1. How could an accomplished author and historian, tasked with translating a foundational document of fascism, fail to properly translate the simplest of terms in the Italian language?

2. If she could not properly translate "left" and "right", how can we expect the rest of the work, containing more complex language, to be accurate?

3. Why did Soames never issue a correction?

4. Why didn't anybody (including the Italian government) demand a correction?

So if we look at the bigger picture, and make the reasonable assumption that somebody of her caliber is unlikely to make such an elementary mistake, why would she choose "left" over "right"? Thank you.

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Source Authentication

It's important to note that we are reviewing Soames' original work. I have posted images above of the pages from Political Quarterly (1933), the hard-copy publication containing her translation.

Not so for Mussolini. All discussion about this matter – in this post and other online discussions – is based on digital copies of his essay (I've listed three sources above in the Italian language section). I'm not saying these digital copies are incorrect or corrupt. But for the sake of verification, I will attempt to post images of Mussolini's original essay in the Encyclopedia Italiana (1932).

Answer 1

Note that the 1933 booklet that Jane Soames supposedly translated was published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Leonard Woolf was known for his left wing (not fascist) leaning. In fact he deplored fascism as early as 1935. Here's a quote to that effect from a 2018 PhD thesis

The Woolfs’ Hogarth Press published numerous tracts on pacifism, the League, socialism, communism, and colonialism. In particular, two key pamphlets were published in juxtaposition in 1933: the Hispanist H. R. G. Greaves’s explication and defense of the new Spanish Constitution and Jane Soames’s translation of Benito Mussolini’s anti-socialist, anti-pacifist polemic The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism. Hogarth’s Day-to-Day Pamphlet series featured regular commentaries on topics including fascism and Spain, while studies and commentaries from Leonard Woolf, H. G. Wells, Edgar H. Brooks, R. M. Fox, Florence Wilson (of the Association for International Understanding), John S. Stephens, Freud (Civilization and Its Discontents), Viscount Cecil, Louis Golding, C. L. R. James, and the Friends Anti-War Group extended the Press’s cultural and political work.

Additionally, Leonard edited a set of essays for Victor Gollancz (founder of the Left Book Club in 1936), The Intelligent Man’s Way to Prevent War (1933), which outlines the aims of a number of leftist movements in Europe and advocates the League of Nations as a “road to peace,” reprinting the League’s founding covenant at the end. Its title frames the central question of Virginia’s Three Guineas—how to prevent war—and Leonard’s introduction emphasizes that “War is not a ‘natural’ catastrophe … It is not inevitable; it is preventable in Europe [by way of] … civilization.” In 1935, Leonard traced in Quack, Quack! the “primitive” elements of Europe’s re-descent toward barbarism, represented politically by Mussolini and Hitler and philosophically by Spengler and Bergson. His studies continued once civil war broke out in Spain, and with the flood of pro-Republican propaganda from the Left Book Club, the Labour Party, and numerous small publishers, the British left coalesced as what Neal Wood calls Britain’s “nearest equivalent of a popular front.”30 With its multi-faceted advocacy of an internationalization of the Spanish Republic’s freedoms, Bloomsbury’s work exemplifies the conviction that the battle for Spain was part of the battle for civilization in Europe. Their vision of what Christine Froula describes as “modernity’s permanent revolution,” which sought to “reclaim the purpose and vitality of the Enlightenment project” against twentieth-century barbarism and war, now extended to Spain and to the project of refashioning the country within a new Europe.

(Emphasis mine.) Virginia would also publicly deplore fascism a bit later in 1938.

Her 1938 book Three Guineas was an indictment of fascism and what Woolf described as a recurring propensity among patriarchal societies to enforce repressive societal mores by violence.

How the first "authorized" translation of a fascist tract was published by ideological enemies of fascism is a bit beyond me... but not completely.

There's a much more in-depth article on the early days of Hogarth Press, and it does mention that fostering political discussions on timely topics was the Press' self-given mandate, but alas the 20-page article doesn't say much about Mussolini's work translation. There's a list of political publications in the Day to Day series considered noteworthy on pp.73-74 of the paper, but Mussolini's work is only briefly mentioned as

Benito Mussolini's The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism (1933; the most aberrant of the Hogarth pamphlets) Arthur Ponsonby's tract of Disarmament (1932), and Leonard Woolf's the League and Abyssinia (1936), among others, posed the globe rather than the nation as the site of both auspicious and threatening political battles.

Make of that "most aberrant" what you will; it's not explained any further in the paper. The paper does mention (p.72) that the Day to Day series of political pamphlets had low sales, despite Leonard's expectation that they would be successful. I guess that also means that few people back then even read the "authorized" translation of Mussolini's tract.

Also, since Wikipedia has such a sketchy bio of Jane Soames, the official translator... I checked her WorldCat page. I could find no other translation from Italian among her published works listed there. In fact it's hard to find any other translations by her from any language, besides this Mussolini work. (I did find one other work of her's that is a translation "The Causes of the World War. An historical summary", which is a translation from French; the original author of that book being Camille Bloch.)

Answer 2

Not only Wikipedia says that

Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of radical right-wing, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.

Mussolini himself wrote that in his native tongue Italian.

The Skeptics post is referenced in going ad fontes and comparing the Italian original with this Soames translation. If you compare other translations, also into other languages, it becomes very clear that Soames made a mistake here. Such things happen and can be found in the bible as well. Demanding corrections for that usually takes a few centuries…

It might be a deliberate decision by Soames to change the words and thus meanings. But that seems unlikely.

A simple scribal error is much more probable and the simpler explanation. The translation is in error.

The original reads:

Si può pensare che questo sia il secolo dell’autorità, un secolo di «destra», un secolo fascista...

Google translates that as

One may think that this is the century of authority, a century of "right", a fascist century ...

A good English translation reads:

That is to say, it rejects the idea of a doctrine suited to all times and to all people. Granted that the XIXth century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the XXth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the "right", a Fascist century. If the XIXth century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the State.

The German version also translates correctly destra as "right":

A French version (B. Mussolini: "Le Fascisme", Paris, 1933, p. 19) has it as also "century of the right".

And interestingly in Noel O’Sullivan: "Fascism", London: Dent, 1983, p138, we read that Mussolini ordered in 1940 all remaining copies of the document, which had different editions and different translations anyway be retracted, 'because he changed his mind about certain points'.

How can such an error occur, even if the author is otherwise trustworthy, well respected?

The most common types of alteration made by scribes to the texts that they copy are these:

Of Omission:
homeoteleuton: the scribe paused, then resumed writing but skipped ahead because of the similarity of the endings of two lines, thus leaving out a passage.
homeoarchy: eye-skip because of the similarity of the beginnings of two lines. haplography: copying once what appeared in the exemplar twice ("pewterer" reduced to "pewter," or "that that" reduced to "that").

Of Addition: dittography: mechanical repetition, by trick of memory ("that that" when original had only "that").
contamination: extraneous element from elsewhere appears on the page.

Of Transposition: metathesis: reversing letters, words, phrases.

Of Alteration:
unwitting.
Unwitting mistranscription: the First Folio Anthony and Cleopatra, in V.ii.87, gives "an Antonie twas" where Shakespeare had written "an autumn twas"; the typesetter "saw" "Antonie" there, partly because the name had appeared so often already, and partly because it made "sense" in the passage, so the initial error was not immediately caught.
deliberate: the scribe acts as editor to correct and improve the original.

This means that a number of psychological errors is greater than deliberate politically motivated alterations. Given that the original spoke of socialism multiple times before the error, I guess it's easily explained.

What is an authorised translation?

Variously, most explanations go like this:

What is an authorized translation?

It is a document which has been translated or verified by a translator authorized by the Ministry of Justice from Romania and it bears his/her stamp and signature.

Attention! The authorized translation cannot be subsequently certified! It has to be requested even from the beginning at the translation office.

Wikiquote is only needed to clear up the English version of Soames text alone, no other language features this debate, as the original says "right" and all follow-up errors in English seem to depend on Soames:

Attributed

It may be expected that this will be a century of authority, a century of the Left, a century of Fascism.

From Jane Soames’s authorized translation of Mussolini’s “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” Hogarth Press, London, (1933), p. 20. Julius Evola reproduced the original Italian as "un secolo della 'Destra'" ("a century of the right"); see Evola, Fascismo e Terzo Reich. Several English translations agree with Evola's wording, including one published by the Fascist government in 1935 and transcribed online.

"depending" meaning here for example The Challenge To Liberty by Herbert Hoover, p 66.

But this was evidently not the only English version in circulation, as other English speaking fascists preferred the correct ("right") translation at the time.

It seems unfounded to suspect that "authorisation" means 'proofread by Mussolini himself for correctness before or after it went into print.'

So it seems that instead of requesting errata to be published in what Soames had permission to do, the Fascists decided "if you want it 'right' do it yourself"?

That this small error of Soames now feeds confused English speaking pundits that want to distract from their own right-wing extremism and thus closeness to fascism is tragic. But the fascist Mussolini simply wrote about his movement's promising future as "a century of the right", since he knew and told honestly what he was when he wrote that down: a fascist and thus a right-winger.

Answer 3

Right and left had different meanings. For example,

"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder is a work by Vladimir Lenin attacking assorted critics of the Bolsheviks who claimed positions to their left. Most of these critics were proponents of ideologies later described as left communism.

The original meaning of "left" was the left side of the French parliament, which was antimonarchy. The "right" before about 1930-40 was antidemocracy- which is why, for, example, there was a split between Churchill's pro-pension Tories and the Liberal left in the 1925 budget, or the anti-tariff Democrats in the 20s who cut public services. In the majority of Democratic countries at the time, the "left" was what would be described as free market liberals today, so "right" and "left" had opposite meanings. Remember that the common man in this time was a farmer, and economic theory was not relevant in the same way.

So the only possibility, besides a typo, is that the author was writing at a time when the terms were in such flux they weren't important.

Answer 4

The 1934 edition of Mussolini's "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism" is exactly the same as the 1933 edition. See the 1933 and 1934 editions at https://historyuncensored.wixsite.com/history-uncensored

Soames knew left from right in Italian, translating “Left” correctly on page 7 “a Left Revolutionary movement also appeared, which… laid the foundations of Bolshevism.”

Answer 5

People seem to forget that left-wing and right-wing have very vague definitions, but the definition of right-wing is "part of a political group that consists of people who support conservative or traditional ideas and policies". One of the things people forget about Mussolini is that he wanted to recreate the Roman Empire and hoped his fascist dictatorship would be able to recreate the 'glory' of the authoritarian Roman Imperial dictatorship that replaced the Roman republic. So, in that manner, the original text and others would describe Italian Fascism as 'right wing' because the end goal was to try & recreate the traditional ideas and policies of ancient Roman autocracy (Mussolini even helped to coin the term "fascism" in 1919 based on the symbol of ancient Roman fasces).

Answer 6

It should be noted that not only did Italian Fascists consider themselves on the "Left," but so did the National Socialists of Germany, especially Joseph Goebbels. He supported "social justice" and considered himself a "revolutionary socialist." See his quotes below.

“According to the idea of the NSDAP [Nazi party], we are the German left. Nothing is more hateful to us than the right-wing national ownership block.” – Joseph Goebbels, Der Angriff (The Attack), (6 December 1931), quoted in Wolfgang Venohr’s book: Documents of German existence: 500 years of German national history 1445-1945, Athenäum Verlag, 1980, p. 291, In German: „Der Idee der NSDAP entsprechend sind wir die deutsche Linke. Nichts ist uns verhaßter als der rechtsstehende nationale Besitzbürgerblock

“Lenin was the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between communism and the Hitler faith was very slight.” – Joseph Goebbels, The New York Times, “HITLERITE RIOT IN BERLIN: Beer Glasses Fly When Speaker Compares Hitler and Lenin,” (Nov. 28, 1925) p. 4.

“England is a capitalist democracy. Germany is a socialist people's state.” – Joseph Goebbels, “Englands Schuld,” Illustrierter Beobachter, Sondernummer, p. 14. The article is not dated, but is from the early months of the war, likely late fall of 1939. Joseph Goebbels’ speech in English is titled “England's Guilt.” https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb47.htm

Answer 7

In English, collectivism is left wing. So the simplest explanation is that Soames correctly translated the meaning of the statement rather than trying to translate literally. Other translations translated this literally.

This is consistent with how Italian fascism developed as a nationalist form of syndicalism, just as nazism was a nationalist form of socialism. It's confusing in that nationalism is often viewed as right-wing while syndicalism and socialism are left wing ideals.

This could either mean that right was incorrect in the Italian or that the Italians of the time defined right differently. Or even that Mussolini was emphasizing something different from what Soames was emphasizing.