The fascist element in A.M. Ludovici's defence of conservatism

Abstract

By the study of the writings of Anthony Mario Ludovici, his affiliates, and other fascists, it is demonstrated that it is the traditions of ideologies that are incommensurable, not ideologies pet se. That it is not logically impossible for fascism to be introduced into a party system, which it intends to succeed, through rendering the ideology of an established political party commensurable with fascism. That fascists have attempted to render established ideologies commensurable with fascism, and have succeeded. The study of the doctrine of Anthony Mario Ludovici demonstrates the latter in relation to conservatism. That the fascists who rendered established ideologies commensurable with fascism, like Anthony Mario Ludovici and his affiliates, contingently failed to get their innovations accepted by the adherents of established ideologies. They failed because ideologies are traditions, and the respective traditions of established ideologies are incommensurable visions of how men should be associated and authority and power distributed. Incommensurable ideologies are both cause and consequence of the political divisions of party systems whose political parties deploy them as the language of their adherence. The practical success of an innovation in any ideology is always and everywhere decided by its contingent acceptance or rejection by the custodians of the traditions of an ideology, political parties and their constitutents. Political ideologies tend to inertia because they are traditions that are incommensurable. It is this inertia that the fascists who rendered established ideologies commensurable with fascism, could not overcome. Ludovici and his affiliates never succeeded in getting themselves regarded as conservatives because the traditions of conservatism, and the consensus among conservatives about its meanings as its traditions, created sufficient inertia that the innovations which the former sought could not be effected in the contemporary party system. If they had succeeded conservatism would have become commensurable with fascism.