Genesis and Structure of Society

The Doctrine of Fascism was a political statement published in 1932 under Mussolini's name, designed to present fascism as a coherent doctrine. Genesis and Structure of Society, written in 1943 after Mussolini's fall, is a work of philosophy in Gentile's own voice. It addresses the individual-society relationship through the lens of actual idealism rather than fascist apologetics. Reviewers have noted that the book stands 'quite free of the trammels of the Fascism in whose service he died' and constitutes an immanent criticism of fascism by its foremost philosophical spokesman.

Gentile argues that the individual and society are not separate entities confronting one another, but dialectical moments within the same act of thinking. The family, school, and State represent ascending stages of self-formation in which the individual gradually recognizes the universal will as his own. Authority and freedom are reconciled when the individual voluntarily acknowledges that the teacher or sovereign expresses his own rational will. This is not the State absorbing the individual, but the individual realizing that his true self is already social.

Gentile's subtitle, 'saggio di filosofia pratica,' signals that this is not a work of political program but a philosophical inquiry into the nature of action and will. He argues that the traditional distinction between theoretical knowing and practical doing is false: the act of will already contains knowledge, and knowledge is itself a form of self-creation. The book explores how the subject creates its own moral world through the act of volition, and how social institutions—family, school, State—emerge as objectifications of that creating will.

The 1960 English translation by H. S. Harris, published by the University of Illinois Press, was described in reviews as 'an invaluable addition to the scant corpus of Gentilean works available to the English reader'. Reviewers noted that the book functions as a bridge between Gentile's metaphysical works and his fascist apologetics, casting light on how his philosophy of the State derived from his broader idealism. One reviewer characterized it as 'a searching political self-criticism' written with the intensity of a man 'consciously nearing the end of his life'.

The book is often read as a straightforward fascist tract, but reviewers have argued the opposite: it can be read as an immanent critique of fascism from within Gentile's own philosophical framework. The dialectic of authority and freedom he describes requires voluntary recognition, not coercion—a standard that fascist practice failed to meet. One reviewer concluded that if the book is 'the sole coherent rationale of Fascist thought in English,' it also 'affords something like a conscience against which Fascist tactics can be measured'.

Gentile wrote Genesis and Structure of Society in August and September 1943, immediately after Mussolini's deposition and the collapse of the regime. He dedicated it 'to the relief of the soul in anguished days for every Italian' and as 'a civic duty' toward 'the future Italy' for which he claimed to have spent his whole life. He remained loyal to the Fascist Social Republic established by the Germans at Salò and was killed by anti-Fascist partisans in Florence in April 1944, before the book was published posthumously in 1946.