After graduating in
mathematics and
physics at the
University of Florence in 1926, Ricci became a professor of these disciplines in Florence itself,
Prato and
Palermo. In his youth he was attracted to
anarchism, but in 1927, the year in which he carried out his
military service, he started developing an interest towards
Fascism, joining the
National Fascist Party in 1932. During the 1930s he dialogued or collaborated with intellectuals such as
Indro Montanelli (of whom he became a close friend),
Giuseppe Bottai,
Julius Evola,
Ernesto De Martino,
Romano Bilenchi,
Ottone Rosai, and
Aldo Palazzeschi. Drawing from his anarchist background, Ricci proposed his own version of fascism, one with a strong social imprint and uncompromising towards the
bourgeoisie; he became the advocate of "a future Italian modernity, the very first condition of our national power" and the affirmator a "civil tradition, enriched with millenary
Christianity but substantially and robustly
pagan". Severely condemning
classism, he had no qualms in saying that he looked positively or, at least, in a non-a priori negative way at the Bolshevism: "
Russia did good for itself with the
Communist revolution [...] The anti-Rome exists but it is not
Moscow. Against Rome, the city of the soul, stands
Chicago, the capital of the pig". Ricci invoked a "perpetual revolution" that would fight those who had found a place in the regime despite having a substantially a-fascist or even
anti-fascist mentality, bringing there, according to him, a bourgeois mentality extraneous to the spirit of the "Fascist revolution". A battle against the "English from the inside" was to be fought contemporarily to that aimed at "the English from the outside". In
philosophy, Ricci opposed
Giovanni Gentile's
idealism, and on 10 January 1933 he published a "Realist Manifesto" which aroused the interest of Julius Evola. In 1940 he participated in the first national conference of the
School of Fascist Mysticism, arguing that "
fascist mysticism constantly proposes to the Party, the Militia, the State Bodies, the Regime Institutes, the theme of social unity, a dynamic unity that is not limited to economic assistance and the improvement of the conditions of workers – in short, to a demophilic practice –, but focuses on the civilization of work, tending to achieve a higher morality and at the same time a greater collective return (governance of production and consumption, gradual redistribution of wealth, reclamation and autarchy, the worker made into a business partner and co-responsible for the company, the worker made owner) and for this reason, like every mystic called to work concretely on history and to erect lasting foundations, it also satisfies rational requirements". ==References==