Abstract
It is common knowledge that State intervention in Italy in the Twenties and the Thirties developed outside of corporative institutions. The history of Fascist corporatism, however, is not only an unsuccessful story. Despite the failure of the “corporatist revolution” and “Fascist third way”, Fascist corporatism since the mid-Twenties helped the progressive development of a new political system to regulate relationship between State and private interests. The paper examines not only the institutional framework (the systems of formal laws, regulations, and procedures, and informal norms) but also their acts and real activities. It dwells upon internal debates, political and institutional importance acquired by corporative institutions in Fascist regime and behaviours of entrepreneurial organizations and labour unions. In this way, the paper aims to point out the “real” consequences of Fascist corporatism, different from the ideological ones.
Highlights
It is common knowledge that State intervention in Italy in the Twenties and the Thirties developed outside of corporative institutions
With the creation of corporatism, Fascism promised to bring about a profound transformation of the economy and the state: on the one hand, it sought to subject the market and private enterprises to political control; on the other, it aimed to establish a new system of representation, completely different from the liberal one, and a new relationship between rulers and ruled
Syndicalist organisations thereby became fully and officially part of the increasingly broad range of powers wielded by the new state, with significant – if ambiguous – repercussions: while on the one hand the new system stripped trade unions of their power of representation and limited their operational sphere, on the other hand it lent them complete and unprecedented institutional legitimation. This ambiguity was already noted by Antonio Gramsci, the Marxist theorist and Secretary of the Italian Communist Party who was arrested a few months after the issuing of the new law: in what is probably the most lucid and sharp analysis of corporatism stemming from the anti-Fascist ranks, Gramsci speaks of the state's “incorporation” of subjects external, if not opposed, to it (GAGLIARDI, 2010b)
Summary
With the creation of corporatism, Fascism promised to bring about a profound transformation of the economy and the state: on the one hand, it sought to subject the market and private enterprises to political control; on the other, it aimed to establish a new system of representation, completely different from the liberal one, and a new relationship between rulers and ruled. Not much of this project was implemented. The present article aims to offer a brief overview of the experience of corporatism in Fascist Italy, starting precisely from the question of the relation between words and reality
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