THE FASCIST SYSTEM
for "as nature induces those who dwell in close proximity to unite into municipalities, so those who practice the same trade or profes- sions, economic or otherwise, combine into vocational groups.
for "as nature induces those who dwell in close proximity to unite into municipalities, so those who practice the same trade or profes- sions, economic or otherwise, combine into vocational groups.
Brady - Business as a System of Power
GERMAN INDUSTRY
governing" trade and industrial central policy-controlling bodies, which should be endowed with legal or quasi-legal power to en- force decisions in the name of the state, and which, finally, would be guaranteed successful results through an elaborate system of governmental subsidies, allowances, and guarantees. In the inter- lude of peace, business leaders had acquired the habit of looking back at the experience of the war as the training ground and the ger- minal source of ideas for the coordinative efforts which time and circumstance were persuading them to extend to the outermost reaches of the German economic system.
At the critical juncture the Nazi solution, with its abolition of trade unions and its wholesale destruction of democratic institu- tions, seemed a necessary and logical fulfillment of these processes of growth. Therefore, though not without some occasional mis- givings, German business leaders embraced it. Now they face the prospect of being able to expand their private economic empires, by the aid, advice, and consent of the new German-dominated to- talitarian system which they expect shortly to extend to the outer- most bounds of Europe and Africa, upon a continental and inter- continental basis.
How far such expansion will mean further modification of part capitalistic forms of organization remains to be seen. Regimenta- tion through the instrumentality of the state will doubtless con- tinue, but there is as yet no reason for believing that it will depart far from the present principles of "self-government in business" " which did so much to bring the regimentation on. But it is impor-
ts The wartime control of industry rests today: a) with the general deputies under the Four Year Plan, primarily concerned with nationalization (now coordinated by Wilhelm Fanger, president of the Mannesman combine and leader of the national group industry); b) with the Reichsstellen for raw-material allocation. The Reichs- stellen are now merely raw-material allocation offices; however, they are slowly being dissolved and their functions taken over by the existing cartels or by newly created cartels (coal and cellulose, wool and steel). See Economist, April 4, 1942 (radio broad- cast from Germany); c) with the national Price Commissioner; d) with the general commissioner for labor supply; e) with the Reichsbank (for capital issues); f) with the Wehrwirtschaft (Riistungsamt) of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, which is represented especially in the combing-out commission for the adequate dis- tribution of labor; g) with the National Economic Chamber; h) the supreme au- thority is vested in the ministerial council for the defense of the nation. This has i) delegated a large part of its authority to the minister of economics, W. Funk, as gen- eral commissioner for economic affairs. See Neumann, op. cit. , p. 252, and the scheme, P- 253-
54
? GERMAN INDUSTRY
tant to note that given this principle fused with the companion Nazi ideology of class and racial predation it follows from extension of the old patterns over the new terrain that Wirtschaft and Krieg become but two internally related phases of the many faceted and inherently expansionist Herrenstaat.
55
? Chapter II
THE FASCIST SYSTEM OF COLLATERAL SYNDICATES
THE ROLE and significance of the Fascist Confederation of Indus- tries is inextricably bound up with the development of Fas- cism and the unfolding of its appropriate institutional expression, the Corporate State. This is true because, at bottom, it is not only fair but also entirely accurate to speak of Fascism as a "revolution from the right," or, more simply, as "counterrevolution. " ^ And in counterrevolution the forces centered around the more compactly organized, possessing classes must of necessity choose the issues and shape--with whatever compromises the Realpolitik of Domination
may enforce--the course of future events.
But why should such vigorous and sweeping counterrevolution-
ary action occur first in Italy, one of the least industrialized amongst the capitalistic states? There is an interesting historical analogy here with the contemporary situation in Russia, which helps to throw the Italian situation at the end of the war into sharp relief. In Fascism capitalistic institutions were able to triumph; in Com- munism they faced defeat. Yet both Italy and Russia were among the "weakest links" in the chain of capitalist nations. In each case, at a critical point the pendulum seems barely to have swung the way it did. It is probably not too far from the truth to say that had Russia not turned Socialist in 1917 it would have adopted some form of "Fascism," and had Italy in 1922 not fallen unexpectedly to the Fascists it would have become a Socialist state (though the "March on Rome" came after the high tide of postwar revolution- ary Socialism).
iSee Carl Schmidt, The Plough and the Sword (New York, 1938), Chapter III, "Counterrevolution. "
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
Both countries were primarily agricultural. ^ In both, rural life was characterized by deep contrasts between vast estates owned by politically powerful and immensely wealthy families on the one hand, and an overwhelming majority of more or less propertyless, poverty-stricken, ignorant, and repressed peasantry on the other. In both, important feudal carry-overs survived intact down to the outbreak of the World War. In neither had Parliamentary institu- tions or the first grudging concessions to popular sovereignty seri- ously affected the vast proportion of the population. Both were still political patchworks, and in neither had largely borrowed, nation- alistic sentiments penetrated far beneath the thin upper layers of class-conscious jingoism. ^
In both, the level of industrialization was, comparatively speak- ing, low, and what industrial nuclei had developed were highly localized. Of these, most were foreign transplantations, represent- ing primarily English, French, and German capital. What local capital was involved in each case came largely from the great land- owning families, with which rising industrial, trading, and finance capital was, consequently, closely associated from the beginning. * Industrialization came comparatively late, and in both cases, once begun, the pace of growth and development was unsually swift. At a time when industrial technique of its own momentum was be-
2 See the summary given in Robert Michels, Italien von Heute (Leipzig, 1930), pp. 19-20, of Bakunin's description of Italian social classes in 1870. It needs only minor alterations to be held valid for Italy of 1914 or 1940.
3 "Before the World War Italian nationalism was the concern of a group of snob- bish writers rather than of serious thinkers. Every effort was made to adapt the philosophy of the German imperialist Treitschke, or that of French prototypes such as Maurras and Barr^s, to Italian conditions. " William Ebenstein, Fascist Italy (New York, 1939), p. 4. "The state has been dominated by classes. But now we begin to conceive of the state as an emanation of the entire nation. The state is the active organ of the entire nation, for the entire nation. " E. Corradini (founder of the Na- tionalist Association) // volere d'ltalia (Naples, 1911), p. 175. The lack at that time of any deeply felt national or articulate and cohesive social ideologies among the two peoples goes far to explain why, of all the soldiers fighting in the World War, the Italians and the Russians were equally and by all odds the worst. The slaughter of the Masurian Lakes was paralleled by the demoralizing catastrophe of Caporetto --a catastrophe which appears to have been repeated in but slightly different form on the plains below the Guadarramas during the Spanish Civil War.
4 The more important and more highly organized latifondi were located in the rich Po Valley. At the two ends of the Valley are to be found the more important in- dustrial and commercial centers of Italy. The great landowners constituted the social and economic aristocracy in the great cities where industrial undertakings first struck root. From the same closely knit social circles came the leadership for the great em- ployers' associations in both agriculture and industry.
67
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
coming large-scale, and capitalism of its own native driving power was resorting everywhere to monopoly devices, this forced-draft growth tended at once to sharpen the social cleavages and to strengthen and unify the forces of antidemocratic reaction. By the "accidents of history" monopoly forms of capitalism, mercantilistic sentiments, and feudal social institutions were in both immediately juxtaposed.
In Russia proletarian forces won the throw of the die; in Italy, property. For the spread of the Socialist-Communist state Russia lacked industrialism; for the dominance of capitalist institutions and controls Italy lacked a widespread business system. Russia undertook to solve her problem by a backward step into NEP, in order to lead more easily into the industrialization program of the Socialist Five Year Plan. Italy devised the Corporate System. ^ And the Corporate System is to be understood as that morganatic alli- ance between organized, Italian, patrimonial capitalism and the type of feudal controls long advocated by the Papacy, from which it was hoped to find at once an end to class war and full defense of the existing social-economic status quo.
ANTECEDENTS OF THE CORPORATE STATE
Without dipping farther into the historical background than is necessary to make clear the component elements out of which this apparently novel "experiment" was compounded, attention may be focused on three factors of unique importance; ^ (a) the "social program" of the Catholic hierarchy; (b) the rise and peculiar com- position of the pre-Fascist labor movement; and (c) the strategic power of the closely cooperating central associations of industry and agriculture.
The social program of the Catholic hierarchy. --This was evolved as means for counteracting the rise of class-conscious trade unions dominated by left wing and materialistic--in particular by Marx-
5 The essence of the Fascist corporate system is found in hierarchical implementa- tion of patrimonial class domination by monopolistically oriented and compactly organized vested-interest groups.
6 The "Nationalist" movement, though important, can be ignored for our present purposes. Like Fascism, which it preceded, it was not in itself a causal or contributory force, but the result of such force. Nor was its strength, as expressed in numbers or influence, of much importance.
58
--
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
59
ian--social philosophies. It may be divided into three phases: from the first third of the 19th century to the delivery of the Papal Encyclical Rerurri Novarum in 1891; from Rerum Novarum to the inauguration of the Fascist system in 1922; after the Papal Ency- clical in commemoration of Rerum Novarum, delivered in 1931 and known as Quadragesimo AnnoJ Beginning, in the first phase, as a general criticism of conditions created out of the capitalistic milieu, the papal position had shifted until by 1931 it not only for- mally endorsed Mussolini's fascism per se, but also recommended the formula as a panacea for all other industrial countries as well.
In the first phase. Catholic writers took their place among vari- ous proponents who hoped to solve the issues of class conflict and industrialism by recourse to doctrines inspired by Christianity. ^ Le Play, the French engineer, hoped to transform the employer into a benevolent master who would care for his workmen as father to his children. Protestant writers such as Kingsley, Carlyle, and Ruskin wanted something less patriarchal, but saw in various forms of class collaboration good Tory means for turning the lion of indus- trial capitalism into the lamb of social harmony. The leading Cath- olic writers, however, went straight to the Middle Ages--the period in which the Church dominated the whole of European society for their inspiration.
Under one form or another a series of Catholic spokesmen ^ ad- vocated recrudescence of the medieval conception of a corporatively organized society. Many of these initial expositions were the work of French emigres returning to the homeland following the Treaty of Vienna in 1815 and the inauguration of the Holy Alliance. On the
7 The intervening period, 1922 to 1931, might, in turn, be divided into two inter- vals: a period of partial and at times bitter conflict between church and state reach- ing from the inauguration of Fascism to the Lateran Accord in 1929; and from the Lateran Accord, which recognized Catholicism as the official religion in return for Papal support of Fascist leadership in the upbuilding of the new Roman Empire, to recommendation of corporate ideas by the papacy as'the solution of the "Social question" in general. Most notable of its successes has been the "clerical fascism" of the ill-starred Austrian totalitarians, Dollfuss and Schuschnigg, and the system of General Franco which emerged from the Spanish Civil War.
8 See "Doctrines Inspired by Christianity," in C. Gide and C. Rist, History of Economic Doctrines, pp. 483-514.
9 An early representative of these was Philip Buchez, Essai d'un traite complet de philosophic, du point de vue du catholicisme et du progres (Paris, 1838-40), and Abb^ de Lamennais, La Question du travail (1848).
? 6o THE FASCIST SYSTEM
other wing a few were highly reminiscent of the social-communism
advocated so vehemently by the early church fathers/^ since they
appeared in large part as attacks on the institution of private prop-
erty and in defense of workers' rights to a fair wage and a decent
standard of living. But Catholic writers of a more "practical" turn
of mind advocated simply mixed or collateral syndicates in which
the principles of hierarchy would dominate and the employer would
play the role of "leader" or "master" to his flock. The model was the
Church/^ and "the corporations which would be set up under the
aegis of religion would aim at making all their members contented
with their lot, patient in toil, and disposed to lead a tranquil, happy
^2
life. "
Though never entirely free of important schismatic differences,
the Social-Catholic movement maintained almost from the begin- ning a fairly coherent reform program. Prior to the revolutionary upheavals of 1848 it was predominantly antiliberal, generally op- posing both laissez faire and free competition on the grounds that the doctrines of the Physiocrats and the early French liberals on the one hand and the socially irresponsible practices of certain traders and manufacturers on the other largely accounted for the French Revolution, its tempestuous aftermath, the rise of anticlericalism, and the spread of class antagonisms. The "free thinking" bour- geoisie were distrusted almost as much as the popular democracy for which it appeared inevitably to prepare the way. ^^
The events of 1 848 convinced Catholic thinkers that socialism, as the residuary legatee of liberal and democratic doctrines, was the
10 Such as Tertullian, St. Ambrose, St. Cyprian, Gregory of Nazianze. See the pro- gram of Vicomte de Villeneuve-Bargemont as outlined by Thomas Parker Moon, The Labor Problem and the Social Catholic Movement in France (New York, 1921), pp. 19-25. See also Paul K. Grosser, Ideologies and American Labor, New York, 1941.
11 "The corporation is simply the model of the Ghurch. Just as for the Ghurch all the faithful are equal in the sight of God, so here. But equality ends there. For the rest of it is a hierarchy. " Quoted by Gide and Rist, op. cit. , p. 500, from Segur- Lamoignon, L'Association catholique, July 13, 1894.
12 Gide and Rist, loc. cit. , quoted from the Encyclical of Leo XII, December 28, 1878, called Quod Apostolici.
13 Veuillot, a clerical journalist, was opposed to the "free thinking bourgeoisie" but held that, while misery must be destroyed, "poverty is a divine institution" and charity the true social science. He proposed a Holy Roman Democracy to parallel the Holy Roman Empire; the latter, of course, was to lead the former by authorita- tive principles and both were to be hierarchically directed from above. The Confed- eration of Italian Industries was later to refer to its own program, patterned along these lines, as "authoritarian democracy. " Moon, op. cit. , p. 30.
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM 61
greatest of all the Church's enemies. Moderates like Melun and Le Play lost out, and, under the stimulus of the official patronage of Napoleon the Third, the movement began to take more definite shape around three leading objectives; first, to overcome the radical- ization of the working classes through an ideological conquest of the "workers' souls"; second, to transform the employer from a hard- hearted profit seeker into an aristocratic and paternal "leader" of his men; and third, to revive the medieval guild or corporate form of organization.
The first objective called for universal indoctrination with official Catholic Christianity, the second for various forms of benevolent social legislation, and the third for integral or mixed syndicalism. Under Count Albert De Mun and Count La Tour du Pin, these three phases were forged into an effective political program which was shortly taken up abroad--particularly in Germany under the leadership of Baron Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler
soon received official papal blessing.
Industrial organization, De Mun held, should take the form of
"the Catholic Guild, which is neither a trade-union, nor a tribunal of arbitration, but a center of Christian activity where the interest of the profession is superior to private interest, where antagonism between capitalist and workingman gives way to patronage exercised in a Christian spirit and freely accepted. . . . It is always the same thought: limit competition, associate common interests, impose upon the employer the duty of patronage, uplift labor and the con- dition of the laborer. " ^*
Contemporaneously with De Mun's agitation (in the seventies and eighties), a great deal of interest in programs for class collabora- tion was aroused by the "experiment" of the French spinning firm of Harmel at Val-des-Bois. In the words of a very sympathetic ob- server, the "Christian Guild" of the Harmels was evolved as follows:
The simple principle of union by itself was considered inadequate; it tended to create labor-unions hostile to capital and bent on class war- fare. The principle of democratic control of industry would logically lead to the elimination of the employer. The principle of capitalistic paternalism, if taken alone, was inadequate because it failed to awaken any vital response among the workingmen. The Harmels attempted to
14 Ibid. , pp. 99-100.
--and which
--
? 62 THE FASCIST SYSTEM
make a Christian synthesis of these principles. In the first place, the workers were permitted, nay encouraged, to form various associations
a men's club, a woman's association, a girls' society, a mutual benefit society. Democratic control was practiced in the management of these associations, and was represented by elected shop-committees, but was not carried to the extreme. The Guild Board, an elective council of workingmen, was consulted on such questions as shop-management and wage-schedules, but had no sovereign authority in these matters; the policy of the employers was to act with democratic advice and consent, but not to abdicate their authority. The third principle, paternalism, received expression in manifold efforts on the part of the employers to promote the material and moral welfare of the workingmen, to foster and guide even the institutions controlled by the workers. The paternal influence may be seen in the fact that one of the employers acted as chairman of the Guild Board, and the supervision of general guild in-
terests was entrusted to a committee composed of the members of the firm, the chaplain, the school-director, and representatives of the vari- ous workingmen's associations. In this fashion the three principles of association, democratic control, and capitalist paternalism were com- bined and balanced in a complex organism consisting of first, employ- ers, second, the general committee of employers and representatives of the workingmen's institutions, third the workingmen's Guild Board, fourth, shop committees, fifth, various economic, social and religious associations among the work-people. ^^
Here is a precis not only for much of the social legislation that was to follow, but also for the more benevolent type of company union as well as the more violently counterrevolutionary Fascist syndicates of the Mussolini regime. Gone completely was the attitude of hos- tility toward capitalist and employer wherever he could be per- suaded to add to his entrepreneurial functions those of father and leader to his employees. And also, by the same token, gone com- pletely was the hostility to labor organization wherever workers could be gathered into associations, governed and directed by em- ployer interests from above in a fixed hierarchy of command and subordination and deliberately modeled after the pattern of the
Universal Church.
Until late in the century the papacy had paid relatively little at-
tention to the Social-Catholic movement. The general idea, of course, of universal guild organization under the benevolent super- vision of the Church has never been abandoned. From time to time
15 Ibid. , pp. 1 14-15.
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
references had been made to guilds in various papal utterances, such as, for example, Humanum genus in 1854, Quod Apostolici mu- neris in 1878, and Aeterni Patris in 1879. But it was with the ency- clical letter of Pope Leo XIII on "The Condition of Labor" (Rerum Novarum)in1891 thatrecrudescenceofthecorporateorganization of society became the official doctrine. The Encyclical was directed specifically at the Socialists, and in condemning their social doc- trines Leo XIII saw fit for the first time to commit the Church to full support of capitalistic institutions. Social inequality, private ownership of the means of production, free competition, laissez faire, the accumulation of great wealth, and the rest, were justified as "just" and according to the "laws of nature. " Conversely, "class war" was declared "irrational," since "in a state it is ordained by nature that these two classes (the rich and the poor) should exist in harmony and agreement. " The employer was to treat his labor "justly" and render him that which was due. The multitudes must, he said, be kept "within the line of duty. " Organization along lines of medieval guilds provided at once the ideal solution for social con- flict, an offset for the greed of the poor, and a solvent for the cupid- ity of the rich. ^^
Various Catholic Social-Action groups took up the new program with great enthusiasm. Shortly, some of these groups began to look forward to the "corporative reorganization of society" ^^ as a whole. All masters and men were to be organized, preferably, in mixed syn- dicates, consisting of both employers and labor, or collateral syndi- cates, in which the two groups would be organized separately for purposes of group collaboration. ^^ The state was not to interfere
16 See in particular, Rerum Novarum, paragraphs 53 to 65, inclusive, reproduced in full in Henry George, The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII (New York, 1891), pp. 121-57.
17 "We must direct all our private initiative and concentrate public attention upon this one reform--the corporative reorganization of society. " Cited by Gide and Rist, History of Economic Doctrines, p. 497, from Programme de I'oeuvre des cercles ouvriers, April, 1894.
18 "In 1894 the Congress of Catholic Circles which met at Rheims declared that, 'without minimizing the difficulties which stand in the way of extending the mixed syndicats, the formation of such syndicats must be our chief aim. ' In 1904, Father Rutten, one of the leaders of the Belgian Catholic Syndical movement, in a report on the syndicalist movement writes as follows: 'We do not despair of the mixed syndicat, which in theory we certainly think is nearest perfection. But we must not blind ourselves to facts, and whether we will or no we have to admit that at the present moment the mixed syndicat in ninety industries out of every hundred seems
63
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
with such autonomous associations except to see that they were duly protected and did not use their pooled strength to the detriment of the general community. They were, in short, to be self-governing associations for the promotion of class collaboration. ^^
In the subsequent period of organization, the idea of collateral syndicates, sometimes referred to as ''integral syndicalism," defi- nitely gained the upper hand. It is interesting to note that this idea was taken over unaltered to form the basis of the Fascist system of organization by social-economic categories.
The early years of Fascist rule found Mussolini and the Pope fre- quently at swords' points. But just as accession to power stilled the former's lingering radicalism, so the immense ideological strength of the latter amongst the mass of the Italian peasantry coupled to the expansive power of the papal hierarchy blunted the anticlerical edge of Fascist propaganda. In the Lateran Accord of 1929 Fascism adopted the papacy on condition that the papacy concede popular allegiance to the objectives of Fascism and the State and Empire in which those objectives were embodied. ^^
It was hardly to be expected that the Accord, widely acclaimed as it was, would settle all the issues at dispute. Quadragesimo Anno was condemned by many Fascists for some of its implied criticisms of their system. But in the main the document possesses historical sig- nificance primarily for its wholesale acceptance of the tenets under- lying the Fascist social program.
"Harmony between ranks in society" now became the dominant theme: "Now this is the primary duty of the state and of all good citizens," the Pontiff declared, "to abolish conflict between classes with divergent interests, and thus foster and promote harmony be- tween the various ranks of society. " ^^ Instrumental to this objec- tive "must be therefore the reestablishment of vocational groups,"
quite Utopian. ' " Gide and Rist, op. cit. , pp. 76, 498, quoted from Duchesne, Syndicats ouvriers beiges (1906).
19 This early statement of the principle becomes explicable when it is recalled that Rerum Novarum was directed against Socialism as much for its apotheosis of the power of the state in opposition to private capitalism as for its support of heretical social and moral principles.
20 For the text of the Lateran Accord, see Walter C. Langsam and
Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since ipi8 (Chicago, 1939), pp. 557-66.
21 All quotations are from copy of the text reproduced in Langsam and Eagan, op. cit. , pp. 567-72.
64
J.
M. Eagan,
?
THE FASCIST SYSTEM
for "as nature induces those who dwell in close proximity to unite into municipalities, so those who practice the same trade or profes- sions, economic or otherwise, combine into vocational groups. "
While such organization of social-economic categories is to be "autonomous," Pius definitely rejected "free competition" and the past "errors of the 'Individualistic' school" as "the true guiding prin- ciples of economics. " They had their place, to be sure, but "it is very necessary that economic affairs be once more subjected to and gov- erned by a true and efEective guiding principle. " This the state is alone competent to determine, and in taking notice of "special syn- dical and corporative organization . . . inaugurated . . . within recent times," the Encyclical declares that "little reflection is re- quired to perceive the advantages of the institution [Fascist institu- tion] thus summarily described: ^^ peaceful collaboration of the classes, repression of Socialist organizations and efforts, the moder- ating influence of a special ministry. " Fixity of status and occupa- tion, the outlawing of strikes and lockouts, and the location of the ultimate powers of umpire and reconciliation in a theologically ac- ceptable totalitarian state assured to His Holiness that "social har- mony" and "class collaboration" of which Leo XIII had dreamed forty years before.
There was some bitter -^ to be taken with the sweet, but in the
22 "The state here grants legal recognition to the syndicate or union, and thereby confers on it some of the features of a monopoly, for in virtue of this recognition, it alone can represent respectively Workingmen and employers, and it alone can con- clude labor contracts and labor agreements. Affiliation to the syndicate is optional for everyone; but in this sense only can the syndical organization be said to be free, since the contribution to the union and other special taxes are obligatory for all who be- long to a given branch, whether workingmen or employers, and the labor-contracts drawn up by the legal syndicate are likewise obligatory. It is true that it has been authoritatively declared that the legal syndicate does not exclude the existence of un- recognized trade associations.
"The corporations are composed of representatives of the unions of workingmen and employers of the same trade or profession, and as true and genuine organs and institutions of the state, they direct and coordinate the activities of the unions in all matters of common interest. " Quadragesimo Anno, Langsam, op. cit. , p. 569. This language is practically identical with that employed in the official propaganda min- istry of the Fascist party. Cf. The Law of April 21, 192'j, known as the Labour Char- ter, reproduced in Langsam, op. cit. , pp. 519-25.
23 In particular that "concentration of power" which "has led to a threefold strug- gle for domination" for power within the dictatorship, for control over the state, and amongst the states, which leads to war. Also, "the intermingling and scandalous con- fusing of the duties and offices of civil authority and of economics" which not only degrades "the majesty of the state" but leads to "economic imperialism. " Quadra- gesimo Anno, loc. cit.
65
? 66 THE FASCIST SYSTEM
light of subsequent events it would appear that the rapprochement between the papacy and the New Roman Empire has been growing steadily closer. ^* Even the Axis accord does not seem to be wholly unwelcome in papal circles. ^'^
The composition of the pre-Fascist labor movement. --There is no need here to recapitulate the voluminous expository and argu- mentative literature on this phase of the Italian corporate-state background. 2<< It will suffice to indicate in rough outline a few of the peculiarities of the Italian labor movement which made it so readily and generally adaptable to the type of controls which the organized "right" sought, under Fascism, to place on it.
1. Though of comparatively recent origin, the labor movement in Italy had begun to form central federations and confederations early in its history. There was practically no such thing as a labor move- ment in any part of the country before 1874. Yet by 1890 first efforts were already being made to federate. After a number of reverses, these efforts had succeeded, at the outbreak of the war, in bringing the vast bulk of organized labor into three great confederations: The General Confederation of Labor (CGL), with about 321,000 members; the Catholic Italian Confederation of Labor (CIL), with around 103,000 members; and the Italian Syndicalist Association (USI), with some 100,000 members. ^^ By 1920, after a period of de- cline during the war, membership had risen until the CGL and the CIL were able to claim a membership of 2,150,000 and 1,205,447, respectively. This represents not only an unusually high level of
24 In the Abyssinian venture it was commonly believed that the papacy lent its financial support, and in the Spanish Civil War it allied itself openly on II Duce's side.
25 The new totalitarian system in process of formation in France appears to enjoy papal blessing. Only belatedly, and then only under considerable pressure, was re- proof for the utterances of Father Coughlin forthcoming.
26 To mention but a few, favorable summaries are given in the semi-official volume by Fausto Pitigliani (now in exile). The Italian Corporative State (London, 1933); Michael T. Florinsky, Fascism and National Socialism (New York, 1936); Benito Mussolini, The Corporate State (Florence, 1936); various publications (in mimeo- graph) of the Italian Library of Information; and Michels, Italien von Heute. Criti- cal summaries are found in Ebenstein, Fascist Italy; Gaetano Salvemini, Under the Axe of Fascism (New York, 1936); George Seldes, Sawdust Caesar (New York, 1935); and Carl T. Schmidt, The Corporate State in Action (New York, 1939).
27 I find no two authorities who agree on these figures. The data for the CGL and the USI are taken from Freedom of Association (Series A, No. 31, International Labor Office, Geneva), IV, 4-5. The figures for the CIL are from Wladimir Woytinsky, Die Welt in Zahlen (Berlin, 1926). II, 123.
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM 67
unionization, but also an unusually high degree of centralized direc- tion. On this footing trade unionism loomed large.
2. Membership was drawn primarily from agricultural and hand- icraft labor. Data taken from official sources,^^ showed 453,000 in- dustrial workers belonging to trade unions in 1912 for 408,000 agricultural workers. Subsequent years did not greatly alter the pic- ture. ^^ Even as late as 1921 probably not more than one-third of organized Italian labor could be classified as "industrial. " ^^ The strength of the labor movement, in other words, was much less than it appeared to be. The reasons were as follows:
(a) Themovementwaswidelyscatteredgeographically,andthe typical unit was small, localized, provincial, and more or less inde- pendent and self-contained.
(b) Organized agricultural labor was property minded: its prin- cipal grievance was the perpetuation of the system of metayagej and its members were neither very conscious of their own class nor conscious of having a great deal in common with the industrial workers.
(c) Thepositionofthelargenumberofhandicraftandshopem- ployees was not greatly different. Their lingering feudal attach- ments and partially articulated middle-class sentiments made them at best poor and unreliable partners in a militant, class-conscious struggle for political power. ^^
3. A third and even more fatal weakness in the Italian labor move- ment was centered in more or less irreconcilable doctrinal differ-
28 Woytinsky, op. cit. , II, 124; cited from Annuario Statistico Italiano, Series 2, VII (1917-18), 330.
29 The war years were an exception; there was then a tendency for agricultural members to increase over industrial membership, indicating a relatively heavier war draft on the latter group.
30 Even the most militant and class-conscious of the central associations, the CGL, had 294,000 out of 1,206,000 members listed as attached to agriculture. In addition, many other crafts, e. g. , the bulk of those listed as textile workers (78,000 in 1921) should really be called agricultural laborers. For another viewpoint on agricultural workers and trade unionism in Italy consult the writings of Ignazio Silone, who has developed the subject in detail and who takes a somewhat different position.
81 The number included in this category must have been numerically more im- portant than Woytinsky's figures indicate. It is possible that when due allowance is made for those listed under industrial categories who worked as handicraftsmen the number would be as large or larger than those properly classed as industrial workers. In addition, close to 100,000 workers were employed in governmental or semigovern- mental (railways, post and telegraph, etc. ) activities and who were, consequendy, at least partially controlled by governmental authorities under dvil-service regulations.
? 68 THE FASCIST SYSTEM
ences. The largest of the three more important general groups, the General Confederation of Labor, was led, perhaps more clearly than any other continental trade-union group, by politically minded socialists of the more orthodox (not revisionist, as in Germany) school. The second largest group, the Italian Confederation of La- bor, followed the line laid down by Rerum Novarum and was, con- sequently, in the main quite hostile to the CGL. Its mixed-syndicates program bears a very close resemblance to the "company union" in the United States, and its alternative, integral syndicates, was erected on the substitute foundation of organized "class collaboration. " The third group, the Italian Syndicalist Association, followed a mixture of ideas adapted from Bakunin, the anarchist, and from theorists of the Sorel persuasion. Their position was similar in a number of respects to the anarchist trade unions of Barcelona as shown in the early stages of the Spanish Civil War. They favored, in the main, economic as against political action, and they had a tendency to be very militant upon an insubstantial organizational structure--that is, they submitted badly to group discipline and the centralization of authority.
Thus, while Italian labor movement was simultaneously numeri- cally imposing, fired in at least two camps with revolutionary doc- trines, and sufficiently centralized to be able to move rapidly on occasion, it was hampered because (a) it was compounded of largely dissentient occupational groupings of widely varying sense of group solidarity, political education, and social attachments, and (b) it was split into three groups, which differed from one another on objec- tives and methods. To this should be added the fact that at the criti- cal moment, during the postwar period before the coming of the Fascists, leadership was complicated by two additional difficulties: on the one hand, militant leaders were divided between the more violent, Sorelian syndicalist type (of which Mussolini was an out- standing example) and the Marxists; and, on the other hand, the Marxists were split between those who had devoted and still wished to dedicate the bulk of their energies to the gaining of political privi- leges for labor, and those who were prepared to face a distinctly revolutionary situation with a revolutionary program of action. ^^
32 Even amongst these latter, there was no clear realization of the revolutionary possibilities of the years 1920-22 until it was too late. Palme Dutt in Fascism and
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
It is not necessary here to trace again ^^ the results of this posture of affairs on the labor side during the period of occupation of the factories and the spread of general-strike tactics in the two years preceding the political triumph of Fascism. Suffice it to say that the unions then came so close to complete triumph that the organized opposition was determined to strike at the root of the matter by destroying for all time all power of independent union initiative and that they found in Fascism an acceptable formula for trans- lating intent into action. And the Fascists in turn, with ambivalent eclat, evolved this program by deftly fusing Sorelian ideas, happily bereft of all revolutionary sentiment, with catholic integral syndi- calism as evolved by the CIL--but now sheared from its popular moorings.
The Central Employers' Associations. --The employers' associa- tion movement in Italy likewise possessed three peculiarities which, in combination, go far towards explaining the early adoption of such a relatively mature employer's solution of their labor problems. In the first place, alongside of--and in some respects preceding--indus- trial organization came organization of agricultural employers, dom- inated by the feudal-minded and closely knit owners of the great latifondi. In the second place, both associations, while working very closely together on many matters, never divided their interests in political and economic affairs from their interests in social and labor matters. And thirdly, dominant influence among industrial em- ployers was held by groups both highly localized in the industrial north and operating on a (relatively) large scale in new, swiftly growing, and technologically modern industries.
Under the first point, it is interesting to note that organization of agricultural employers was started by and grew to exercise great influence under the owners of the spreading latifondi in the Po
Social Revolution (London, 1934), p. 96, quotes Serrati, from whom most followers of the Leninist persuasion hoped a great deal, as declaring at a subsequent Con- gress of the Communist International that "Our fault is that we never sufficiently prepared ourselves for the events that have overtaken us. . . . Today we believe it essential to abandon the democratic illusion, and to create a combative, active, and audacious Party. " Additional aspects of the problem were the impact of Bolshevism, the growth of the Maximalist movement and the corresponding confusion.
33 See, in particular, the very pro-Fascist book by Pietro Gorgolini (with a foreword by Mussolini), The Fascist Movement in Italian Life (London, 1923), and the very anti-Fascist book by Angelo Rossi, The Rise 0/ Italian Fascism (London, 1938).
69
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
Valley. As the movement spread to other parts of Italy, it stimulated organization of small farmer holdings around a variety of social and economic objectives. But, from the beginning, the leadership of the great landowners of the north (together with an increasing pressure towards federation and unification) tended to repress interests and objectives in conflict with their own.
The General Confederation of Agriculture was finally brought into existence in 1911 as a coordinating body for all Italian agricul- tural-employer interests, but, although its membership was said to be around 700,000 landed proprietors, its program was centered largely around the single-minded defense of the system of metay- age ^*--a system not unlike the recently much publicized share- cropper relationship of the American South. ^^ What this indicated, of course, was first that the vast bulk of the Italian agricultural popu- lation--and Italy is primarily a rural country even today ^^--was made up of laborers and tenant farmers ^^ and that ownership of land was highly concentrated. ^^ And secondly, that the social rela-
34 At its first congress the Confederation "defined its guiding rules" as follows: "That all the affiliated associations should support and extend the system of metayage, as being the most effective instrument for creating a stable social basis for agricul- tural progress and for the economic and moral improvement of the workers them- selves, and that, while observing in the drafting of the economic clauses of such contracts [with organized agricultural workers] a liberal and modern spirit, they should defend the necessity for safeguarding the technical direction of the owner against the efforts of any who may seek, whether by the limitation of this power or by insisting on the substitution of farming leases for contracts of metayage, to with- draw the administration of rural undertakings from the hands of those technical experts who have done good service to the cause of agricultural progress and pro- duction. . . . That the principle of co-partnership should be extended even to the class of occasional workers and to that of workers with fixed wages. " Quoted in ILO, Freedom of Association, IV, 8.
35 "Metayage, a system of land tenure in Western Europe and also in the United States, in which the farmer pays a certain proportion (generally half) of the produce to the owner (as rent), the owner generally furnishing the stock and seed or a part thereof. " Murray, New English Dictionary.
36 "The economic life of Italy is basically rural. . . . The total gainfully occupied population of ten and more years of age is 17,262,521; 8,083,332 are occupied in agriculture. The total population of the country in 1931 was 41,176,671, of which num- ber nearly 48 percent was comprised in families whose head was employed in agri- culture. . . . Data for any of the last thirty or forty years would not give a substan- tially different picture of the economic structure of the rural population. " Schmidt, The Plough and the Sword, pp. 1, 10.
37 "According to the occupational census of 1931, roughly 8,000,000 persons over the age of 10 are engaged in agriculture. Of this number about 3,000,000 are classed as 'operating owners,' 900,000 as 'cash-tenants,' 1,700,000 as 'share-tenants,' 2,500,000 as 'wage-workers,' and 27,000 as 'managers. ' " Idem.
38 "The 3,800,000 dwarf and small holdings comprise but 32. 7 percent of all the
70
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
tionship between the possessing and the landless classes was of a distinctly feudal stamp.
This feudal stamp was not lost when the great Po Valley estates went over to modern forms of highly mechanized industrial agri- culture during and following the war. Relationships between mas- ter and men continued in much the same atmosphere as before, with the main difference that the latter had lost whatever social claims they had once possessed, and that the former, much as in the case of large-scale agriculture on the American Pacific Coast, had been freed of certain more or less compelling obligations assumed under the technically more primitive arrangement. That is to say, the mood, the social outlook, the plans and programs of the leading figures in the General Confederation of Agriculture were of the patronal, patrimonial, feudal stamp.
Not until after the war did employer interests in the industrial field succeed in attaining the level of central organization achieved by agricultural employers in 1911. Earlier efforts had been made from time to time, the last preceding attempt in 1910 having, even at that late date, proved premature. ^^ In 1920 the General Confed- eration of Italian Industry was organized as a central policy-forming body for some one hundred member bodies,
divided among federal organizations [of which twenty-five were na- tional] and local organizations and was made up of two sections:
(a) The Economic Section, which protected all kinds of industrial in-
terests and set up as its aim the defense of those interests by means of direct co-operation in the drafting of laws and also by supporting the interests of its members against the state;
(b) The Trade Union Section, which studied and solved problems connected with the relationships between industrialists and the staff dependent on them, and also problems connected with social legislation. *^
All commentators agree that the Confederation was a highly or-
ganized institution, exercising "a powerful influence on the whole
farm land in the country, whereas the 400,000 large farms control 67. 3 percent thereof. These figures evince the extreme concentration of land ownership in rela- tively few hands. " Ibid. , p. 13.
39 A parallel attempt made in that year to form the Association of Italian Joint Stock Companies (Associazone fra le Societa Italiana per Acione) was more success- ful. It maintained an independent existence through the war, and was instrumental in the accouchement of the Confederation of Italian Industry. See Pitigliani, The Italian Corporative State, pp. 144-45.
40 ILO, Freedom of Association, IV, 9.
71
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
of national life" from the day of its inception. As with its agricul- tural counterpart, it united in a single body both social (primarily antilabor) and economic interests. Headquarters were maintained at Milan, the leading industrial city of north Italy, which, being located in the center of the upper Po Valley, brought them into immediate juxtaposition with the Agricultural Confederation. And the leading figures in the Confederation were the captains in com- mand of that impressive network of large-scale industrial enterprises which were concentrated in that area.
Not only did the big industrialists lead in the inner councils of the Confederation, but the establishments over which they held control fell largely, and in some respects entirely, in the general classification of the *'new" industries which had arisen out of chemi- cal and engineering research after the turn of the century. Italy was a comparatively late industrial arrival, and she lacked, furthermore, material resources for the large-scale development of many of the older industries. The newer industries required large initial out- lays in scientific research and experimental development; their capi- tal needs were heavy and, once launched, they were closely protected under patent and similar monopoly controls.
Within the northern Italian manufacturing nucleus the most im- portant industries were heavy chemicals, machines, textiles, and engineering. Most of the big concerns, such as Snia Viscosa in rayon. Fiat and Isotta Fraschini in automobiles and allied lines, Ercole Marelli and Pirelli in electrical manufacturing, Breda in railroad equipment, and the giant Montecatini in the chemicals, ordnance and metal field, date either from immediately before the First World War, or rose to importance during and immediately after that catastrophe. *^ Most of them were financed in whole or in part
41 Snia Viscosa: founded July 18, 1917, headquarters and larger plants at Milan, capital in 1938, 525,000,000 lire; Fiat: founded in 1906, headquarters in Milan (auto- mobiles, diesel engines, parts, railroad stock, airplanes and engines, etc. ), capital in 1939, 400,000,000 lire, employed 54,000 workmen; Montecatini: founded in 1888, headquarters in Milan (copper, pyrites, sulphur, fertilizers, dyes, varnishes, rayon, aluminum, pharmaceutica, etc. ), capital in 1938, 1,300,000,000 lire; Ercole Marelli: successor in 1920 to parent company founded 1891, headquarters in Milan (electrical equipment, motors, generators, pumps, etc. ), capital in 1938, 80,000,000 lire; Isotta Fraschini: headquarters in Milan (steel, automobiles, engineering, ordnance, bronze, aluminum, magnesium, etc. ), capital in 1938, 120,000,000 lire; Pirelli: founded in 1920, headquarters in Milan (electrical cables, automobile tires, etc. ), capital in 1938, 263,981,500 lire, 20,400 employees; Breda: successor in 1899 to parent company or-
72
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
73 by foreign capital/^ catered directly or in large part to a demand dominated by the rapidly expanding transportation, communica- tion, and power networks which were of at least a semipublic char- acter on the one hand, or sold directly to the various governmental bodies concerned with public construction and war needs on the other. All of these factors made not only for large scale develop- ment, but also for expansion on a monopolistic or semimonopolistic
footing from the very beginning. *^
Under auspices such as these--and it cannot be too strongly em-
phasized that in Italian industrial councils the great preponderance of power and influence lay in these circles--the natural, normal, matter-of-course attitude of the leadership of the General Confed- eration of Italian industries should have been monopoly-oriented in all economic affairs, and patronal or feudal in all social matters. That is to say, the exigencies of background and organization were such as to cause complete accord with the General Confederation of Agriculture (most conservative and reactionary and at the same time most highly developed of agricultural employer associations any- where in the world) in the normal course of peacetime events. How much more logical then, that, given the recent, vivid experience with the autocratic controls of war-time, they should face a new emergency with the mood, the outlook, and the will to improvise the necessary weapons for consolidating a common front of em- ployer interests against the threat of revolutionary action from below.
ganized in 1850, headquarters in Milan (steam and electric locomotives, railroad rolling stock, ships, airplanes, etc. ) capital in 1938, 127,800,000 lire, 17,073 employees. 42 There were, in addition, a good many important, wholly foreign owned, subsidi- aries, such as the Societa Generale Italiana Viscosa (capital in 1938 of 75,000,000 lire, and wholly owned by the British firm. General Rayon Ltd. ) and the branch systems of Ford and General Motors. Most of these concerns have branches and affiliates scattered all over Europe, and corporate holdings, spheres of influence, etc. , interlace with other foreign holdings until it is practically impossible at any one point to
unravel the skein.
43 A situation arose, in other words, not greatly unlike that which W. Sombart
traces at such length in Der Moderne Kapitalismus (Leipzig, 1902), I, Part II, through the early mercantilistic and cameralistic phases of capitalism, when the army and public authorities dominated so many of the leading supply industries. Added to this is the point Veblen has argued so cogently for Germany--in his Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1915)--that the borrowing country borrows the latest, most advanced techniques of production and marketing. The Italians borrowed from abroad large-scale production methods and monopoly forms of organization.
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
74
Not, of course, that there is any direct proof that the General Con-
federation of Italian Industries singly or in association with other employer bodies did actually "think up" the Fascist state. Nor, even, that there was uniform agreement within these circles on just exactly what and how to face the critical situation that arose in the postwar confusion. ** But that they did find in Fascism something which they could support and from which they could derive great advantages to themselves there is no longer any question whatsoever. For present purposes, the significant fact is that the organizational structure, spun after much trial and error under the Fascist regime, is a straight-line development from that which had been evolved out of these employer circles in the past, and that the system which fol- lowed the March on Rome was coherent not only with former growth trends, but also with the attitudes and ideologies which had become dominant in organized Italian business.
The Corporate State. --Again it is not necessary to recapitulate in detail the numerous, and for present purposes, largely accurate sum- maries that have been made of the machinery of the corporate state, or the steps by which this machinery has been brought to its current state of development. The system is not yet complete, enthusiastic proponents avow, and is not likely to reach that state for a long time to come, if ever. Many of them like to stress that it is of the very nature of Fascist institutions that these neither do nor can achieve settled and permanent forms, since they are devised as flexible in- struments to encourage growth and change and not as glove-fits for a static condition.
It may be in point, however, to indicate briefly a few of the fea- tures of the new system which make it appear not so new or out of line with recognizable trends abroad.
governing" trade and industrial central policy-controlling bodies, which should be endowed with legal or quasi-legal power to en- force decisions in the name of the state, and which, finally, would be guaranteed successful results through an elaborate system of governmental subsidies, allowances, and guarantees. In the inter- lude of peace, business leaders had acquired the habit of looking back at the experience of the war as the training ground and the ger- minal source of ideas for the coordinative efforts which time and circumstance were persuading them to extend to the outermost reaches of the German economic system.
At the critical juncture the Nazi solution, with its abolition of trade unions and its wholesale destruction of democratic institu- tions, seemed a necessary and logical fulfillment of these processes of growth. Therefore, though not without some occasional mis- givings, German business leaders embraced it. Now they face the prospect of being able to expand their private economic empires, by the aid, advice, and consent of the new German-dominated to- talitarian system which they expect shortly to extend to the outer- most bounds of Europe and Africa, upon a continental and inter- continental basis.
How far such expansion will mean further modification of part capitalistic forms of organization remains to be seen. Regimenta- tion through the instrumentality of the state will doubtless con- tinue, but there is as yet no reason for believing that it will depart far from the present principles of "self-government in business" " which did so much to bring the regimentation on. But it is impor-
ts The wartime control of industry rests today: a) with the general deputies under the Four Year Plan, primarily concerned with nationalization (now coordinated by Wilhelm Fanger, president of the Mannesman combine and leader of the national group industry); b) with the Reichsstellen for raw-material allocation. The Reichs- stellen are now merely raw-material allocation offices; however, they are slowly being dissolved and their functions taken over by the existing cartels or by newly created cartels (coal and cellulose, wool and steel). See Economist, April 4, 1942 (radio broad- cast from Germany); c) with the national Price Commissioner; d) with the general commissioner for labor supply; e) with the Reichsbank (for capital issues); f) with the Wehrwirtschaft (Riistungsamt) of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, which is represented especially in the combing-out commission for the adequate dis- tribution of labor; g) with the National Economic Chamber; h) the supreme au- thority is vested in the ministerial council for the defense of the nation. This has i) delegated a large part of its authority to the minister of economics, W. Funk, as gen- eral commissioner for economic affairs. See Neumann, op. cit. , p. 252, and the scheme, P- 253-
54
? GERMAN INDUSTRY
tant to note that given this principle fused with the companion Nazi ideology of class and racial predation it follows from extension of the old patterns over the new terrain that Wirtschaft and Krieg become but two internally related phases of the many faceted and inherently expansionist Herrenstaat.
55
? Chapter II
THE FASCIST SYSTEM OF COLLATERAL SYNDICATES
THE ROLE and significance of the Fascist Confederation of Indus- tries is inextricably bound up with the development of Fas- cism and the unfolding of its appropriate institutional expression, the Corporate State. This is true because, at bottom, it is not only fair but also entirely accurate to speak of Fascism as a "revolution from the right," or, more simply, as "counterrevolution. " ^ And in counterrevolution the forces centered around the more compactly organized, possessing classes must of necessity choose the issues and shape--with whatever compromises the Realpolitik of Domination
may enforce--the course of future events.
But why should such vigorous and sweeping counterrevolution-
ary action occur first in Italy, one of the least industrialized amongst the capitalistic states? There is an interesting historical analogy here with the contemporary situation in Russia, which helps to throw the Italian situation at the end of the war into sharp relief. In Fascism capitalistic institutions were able to triumph; in Com- munism they faced defeat. Yet both Italy and Russia were among the "weakest links" in the chain of capitalist nations. In each case, at a critical point the pendulum seems barely to have swung the way it did. It is probably not too far from the truth to say that had Russia not turned Socialist in 1917 it would have adopted some form of "Fascism," and had Italy in 1922 not fallen unexpectedly to the Fascists it would have become a Socialist state (though the "March on Rome" came after the high tide of postwar revolution- ary Socialism).
iSee Carl Schmidt, The Plough and the Sword (New York, 1938), Chapter III, "Counterrevolution. "
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
Both countries were primarily agricultural. ^ In both, rural life was characterized by deep contrasts between vast estates owned by politically powerful and immensely wealthy families on the one hand, and an overwhelming majority of more or less propertyless, poverty-stricken, ignorant, and repressed peasantry on the other. In both, important feudal carry-overs survived intact down to the outbreak of the World War. In neither had Parliamentary institu- tions or the first grudging concessions to popular sovereignty seri- ously affected the vast proportion of the population. Both were still political patchworks, and in neither had largely borrowed, nation- alistic sentiments penetrated far beneath the thin upper layers of class-conscious jingoism. ^
In both, the level of industrialization was, comparatively speak- ing, low, and what industrial nuclei had developed were highly localized. Of these, most were foreign transplantations, represent- ing primarily English, French, and German capital. What local capital was involved in each case came largely from the great land- owning families, with which rising industrial, trading, and finance capital was, consequently, closely associated from the beginning. * Industrialization came comparatively late, and in both cases, once begun, the pace of growth and development was unsually swift. At a time when industrial technique of its own momentum was be-
2 See the summary given in Robert Michels, Italien von Heute (Leipzig, 1930), pp. 19-20, of Bakunin's description of Italian social classes in 1870. It needs only minor alterations to be held valid for Italy of 1914 or 1940.
3 "Before the World War Italian nationalism was the concern of a group of snob- bish writers rather than of serious thinkers. Every effort was made to adapt the philosophy of the German imperialist Treitschke, or that of French prototypes such as Maurras and Barr^s, to Italian conditions. " William Ebenstein, Fascist Italy (New York, 1939), p. 4. "The state has been dominated by classes. But now we begin to conceive of the state as an emanation of the entire nation. The state is the active organ of the entire nation, for the entire nation. " E. Corradini (founder of the Na- tionalist Association) // volere d'ltalia (Naples, 1911), p. 175. The lack at that time of any deeply felt national or articulate and cohesive social ideologies among the two peoples goes far to explain why, of all the soldiers fighting in the World War, the Italians and the Russians were equally and by all odds the worst. The slaughter of the Masurian Lakes was paralleled by the demoralizing catastrophe of Caporetto --a catastrophe which appears to have been repeated in but slightly different form on the plains below the Guadarramas during the Spanish Civil War.
4 The more important and more highly organized latifondi were located in the rich Po Valley. At the two ends of the Valley are to be found the more important in- dustrial and commercial centers of Italy. The great landowners constituted the social and economic aristocracy in the great cities where industrial undertakings first struck root. From the same closely knit social circles came the leadership for the great em- ployers' associations in both agriculture and industry.
67
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
coming large-scale, and capitalism of its own native driving power was resorting everywhere to monopoly devices, this forced-draft growth tended at once to sharpen the social cleavages and to strengthen and unify the forces of antidemocratic reaction. By the "accidents of history" monopoly forms of capitalism, mercantilistic sentiments, and feudal social institutions were in both immediately juxtaposed.
In Russia proletarian forces won the throw of the die; in Italy, property. For the spread of the Socialist-Communist state Russia lacked industrialism; for the dominance of capitalist institutions and controls Italy lacked a widespread business system. Russia undertook to solve her problem by a backward step into NEP, in order to lead more easily into the industrialization program of the Socialist Five Year Plan. Italy devised the Corporate System. ^ And the Corporate System is to be understood as that morganatic alli- ance between organized, Italian, patrimonial capitalism and the type of feudal controls long advocated by the Papacy, from which it was hoped to find at once an end to class war and full defense of the existing social-economic status quo.
ANTECEDENTS OF THE CORPORATE STATE
Without dipping farther into the historical background than is necessary to make clear the component elements out of which this apparently novel "experiment" was compounded, attention may be focused on three factors of unique importance; ^ (a) the "social program" of the Catholic hierarchy; (b) the rise and peculiar com- position of the pre-Fascist labor movement; and (c) the strategic power of the closely cooperating central associations of industry and agriculture.
The social program of the Catholic hierarchy. --This was evolved as means for counteracting the rise of class-conscious trade unions dominated by left wing and materialistic--in particular by Marx-
5 The essence of the Fascist corporate system is found in hierarchical implementa- tion of patrimonial class domination by monopolistically oriented and compactly organized vested-interest groups.
6 The "Nationalist" movement, though important, can be ignored for our present purposes. Like Fascism, which it preceded, it was not in itself a causal or contributory force, but the result of such force. Nor was its strength, as expressed in numbers or influence, of much importance.
58
--
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
59
ian--social philosophies. It may be divided into three phases: from the first third of the 19th century to the delivery of the Papal Encyclical Rerurri Novarum in 1891; from Rerum Novarum to the inauguration of the Fascist system in 1922; after the Papal Ency- clical in commemoration of Rerum Novarum, delivered in 1931 and known as Quadragesimo AnnoJ Beginning, in the first phase, as a general criticism of conditions created out of the capitalistic milieu, the papal position had shifted until by 1931 it not only for- mally endorsed Mussolini's fascism per se, but also recommended the formula as a panacea for all other industrial countries as well.
In the first phase. Catholic writers took their place among vari- ous proponents who hoped to solve the issues of class conflict and industrialism by recourse to doctrines inspired by Christianity. ^ Le Play, the French engineer, hoped to transform the employer into a benevolent master who would care for his workmen as father to his children. Protestant writers such as Kingsley, Carlyle, and Ruskin wanted something less patriarchal, but saw in various forms of class collaboration good Tory means for turning the lion of indus- trial capitalism into the lamb of social harmony. The leading Cath- olic writers, however, went straight to the Middle Ages--the period in which the Church dominated the whole of European society for their inspiration.
Under one form or another a series of Catholic spokesmen ^ ad- vocated recrudescence of the medieval conception of a corporatively organized society. Many of these initial expositions were the work of French emigres returning to the homeland following the Treaty of Vienna in 1815 and the inauguration of the Holy Alliance. On the
7 The intervening period, 1922 to 1931, might, in turn, be divided into two inter- vals: a period of partial and at times bitter conflict between church and state reach- ing from the inauguration of Fascism to the Lateran Accord in 1929; and from the Lateran Accord, which recognized Catholicism as the official religion in return for Papal support of Fascist leadership in the upbuilding of the new Roman Empire, to recommendation of corporate ideas by the papacy as'the solution of the "Social question" in general. Most notable of its successes has been the "clerical fascism" of the ill-starred Austrian totalitarians, Dollfuss and Schuschnigg, and the system of General Franco which emerged from the Spanish Civil War.
8 See "Doctrines Inspired by Christianity," in C. Gide and C. Rist, History of Economic Doctrines, pp. 483-514.
9 An early representative of these was Philip Buchez, Essai d'un traite complet de philosophic, du point de vue du catholicisme et du progres (Paris, 1838-40), and Abb^ de Lamennais, La Question du travail (1848).
? 6o THE FASCIST SYSTEM
other wing a few were highly reminiscent of the social-communism
advocated so vehemently by the early church fathers/^ since they
appeared in large part as attacks on the institution of private prop-
erty and in defense of workers' rights to a fair wage and a decent
standard of living. But Catholic writers of a more "practical" turn
of mind advocated simply mixed or collateral syndicates in which
the principles of hierarchy would dominate and the employer would
play the role of "leader" or "master" to his flock. The model was the
Church/^ and "the corporations which would be set up under the
aegis of religion would aim at making all their members contented
with their lot, patient in toil, and disposed to lead a tranquil, happy
^2
life. "
Though never entirely free of important schismatic differences,
the Social-Catholic movement maintained almost from the begin- ning a fairly coherent reform program. Prior to the revolutionary upheavals of 1848 it was predominantly antiliberal, generally op- posing both laissez faire and free competition on the grounds that the doctrines of the Physiocrats and the early French liberals on the one hand and the socially irresponsible practices of certain traders and manufacturers on the other largely accounted for the French Revolution, its tempestuous aftermath, the rise of anticlericalism, and the spread of class antagonisms. The "free thinking" bour- geoisie were distrusted almost as much as the popular democracy for which it appeared inevitably to prepare the way. ^^
The events of 1 848 convinced Catholic thinkers that socialism, as the residuary legatee of liberal and democratic doctrines, was the
10 Such as Tertullian, St. Ambrose, St. Cyprian, Gregory of Nazianze. See the pro- gram of Vicomte de Villeneuve-Bargemont as outlined by Thomas Parker Moon, The Labor Problem and the Social Catholic Movement in France (New York, 1921), pp. 19-25. See also Paul K. Grosser, Ideologies and American Labor, New York, 1941.
11 "The corporation is simply the model of the Ghurch. Just as for the Ghurch all the faithful are equal in the sight of God, so here. But equality ends there. For the rest of it is a hierarchy. " Quoted by Gide and Rist, op. cit. , p. 500, from Segur- Lamoignon, L'Association catholique, July 13, 1894.
12 Gide and Rist, loc. cit. , quoted from the Encyclical of Leo XII, December 28, 1878, called Quod Apostolici.
13 Veuillot, a clerical journalist, was opposed to the "free thinking bourgeoisie" but held that, while misery must be destroyed, "poverty is a divine institution" and charity the true social science. He proposed a Holy Roman Democracy to parallel the Holy Roman Empire; the latter, of course, was to lead the former by authorita- tive principles and both were to be hierarchically directed from above. The Confed- eration of Italian Industries was later to refer to its own program, patterned along these lines, as "authoritarian democracy. " Moon, op. cit. , p. 30.
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM 61
greatest of all the Church's enemies. Moderates like Melun and Le Play lost out, and, under the stimulus of the official patronage of Napoleon the Third, the movement began to take more definite shape around three leading objectives; first, to overcome the radical- ization of the working classes through an ideological conquest of the "workers' souls"; second, to transform the employer from a hard- hearted profit seeker into an aristocratic and paternal "leader" of his men; and third, to revive the medieval guild or corporate form of organization.
The first objective called for universal indoctrination with official Catholic Christianity, the second for various forms of benevolent social legislation, and the third for integral or mixed syndicalism. Under Count Albert De Mun and Count La Tour du Pin, these three phases were forged into an effective political program which was shortly taken up abroad--particularly in Germany under the leadership of Baron Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler
soon received official papal blessing.
Industrial organization, De Mun held, should take the form of
"the Catholic Guild, which is neither a trade-union, nor a tribunal of arbitration, but a center of Christian activity where the interest of the profession is superior to private interest, where antagonism between capitalist and workingman gives way to patronage exercised in a Christian spirit and freely accepted. . . . It is always the same thought: limit competition, associate common interests, impose upon the employer the duty of patronage, uplift labor and the con- dition of the laborer. " ^*
Contemporaneously with De Mun's agitation (in the seventies and eighties), a great deal of interest in programs for class collabora- tion was aroused by the "experiment" of the French spinning firm of Harmel at Val-des-Bois. In the words of a very sympathetic ob- server, the "Christian Guild" of the Harmels was evolved as follows:
The simple principle of union by itself was considered inadequate; it tended to create labor-unions hostile to capital and bent on class war- fare. The principle of democratic control of industry would logically lead to the elimination of the employer. The principle of capitalistic paternalism, if taken alone, was inadequate because it failed to awaken any vital response among the workingmen. The Harmels attempted to
14 Ibid. , pp. 99-100.
--and which
--
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make a Christian synthesis of these principles. In the first place, the workers were permitted, nay encouraged, to form various associations
a men's club, a woman's association, a girls' society, a mutual benefit society. Democratic control was practiced in the management of these associations, and was represented by elected shop-committees, but was not carried to the extreme. The Guild Board, an elective council of workingmen, was consulted on such questions as shop-management and wage-schedules, but had no sovereign authority in these matters; the policy of the employers was to act with democratic advice and consent, but not to abdicate their authority. The third principle, paternalism, received expression in manifold efforts on the part of the employers to promote the material and moral welfare of the workingmen, to foster and guide even the institutions controlled by the workers. The paternal influence may be seen in the fact that one of the employers acted as chairman of the Guild Board, and the supervision of general guild in-
terests was entrusted to a committee composed of the members of the firm, the chaplain, the school-director, and representatives of the vari- ous workingmen's associations. In this fashion the three principles of association, democratic control, and capitalist paternalism were com- bined and balanced in a complex organism consisting of first, employ- ers, second, the general committee of employers and representatives of the workingmen's institutions, third the workingmen's Guild Board, fourth, shop committees, fifth, various economic, social and religious associations among the work-people. ^^
Here is a precis not only for much of the social legislation that was to follow, but also for the more benevolent type of company union as well as the more violently counterrevolutionary Fascist syndicates of the Mussolini regime. Gone completely was the attitude of hos- tility toward capitalist and employer wherever he could be per- suaded to add to his entrepreneurial functions those of father and leader to his employees. And also, by the same token, gone com- pletely was the hostility to labor organization wherever workers could be gathered into associations, governed and directed by em- ployer interests from above in a fixed hierarchy of command and subordination and deliberately modeled after the pattern of the
Universal Church.
Until late in the century the papacy had paid relatively little at-
tention to the Social-Catholic movement. The general idea, of course, of universal guild organization under the benevolent super- vision of the Church has never been abandoned. From time to time
15 Ibid. , pp. 1 14-15.
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
references had been made to guilds in various papal utterances, such as, for example, Humanum genus in 1854, Quod Apostolici mu- neris in 1878, and Aeterni Patris in 1879. But it was with the ency- clical letter of Pope Leo XIII on "The Condition of Labor" (Rerum Novarum)in1891 thatrecrudescenceofthecorporateorganization of society became the official doctrine. The Encyclical was directed specifically at the Socialists, and in condemning their social doc- trines Leo XIII saw fit for the first time to commit the Church to full support of capitalistic institutions. Social inequality, private ownership of the means of production, free competition, laissez faire, the accumulation of great wealth, and the rest, were justified as "just" and according to the "laws of nature. " Conversely, "class war" was declared "irrational," since "in a state it is ordained by nature that these two classes (the rich and the poor) should exist in harmony and agreement. " The employer was to treat his labor "justly" and render him that which was due. The multitudes must, he said, be kept "within the line of duty. " Organization along lines of medieval guilds provided at once the ideal solution for social con- flict, an offset for the greed of the poor, and a solvent for the cupid- ity of the rich. ^^
Various Catholic Social-Action groups took up the new program with great enthusiasm. Shortly, some of these groups began to look forward to the "corporative reorganization of society" ^^ as a whole. All masters and men were to be organized, preferably, in mixed syn- dicates, consisting of both employers and labor, or collateral syndi- cates, in which the two groups would be organized separately for purposes of group collaboration. ^^ The state was not to interfere
16 See in particular, Rerum Novarum, paragraphs 53 to 65, inclusive, reproduced in full in Henry George, The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII (New York, 1891), pp. 121-57.
17 "We must direct all our private initiative and concentrate public attention upon this one reform--the corporative reorganization of society. " Cited by Gide and Rist, History of Economic Doctrines, p. 497, from Programme de I'oeuvre des cercles ouvriers, April, 1894.
18 "In 1894 the Congress of Catholic Circles which met at Rheims declared that, 'without minimizing the difficulties which stand in the way of extending the mixed syndicats, the formation of such syndicats must be our chief aim. ' In 1904, Father Rutten, one of the leaders of the Belgian Catholic Syndical movement, in a report on the syndicalist movement writes as follows: 'We do not despair of the mixed syndicat, which in theory we certainly think is nearest perfection. But we must not blind ourselves to facts, and whether we will or no we have to admit that at the present moment the mixed syndicat in ninety industries out of every hundred seems
63
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with such autonomous associations except to see that they were duly protected and did not use their pooled strength to the detriment of the general community. They were, in short, to be self-governing associations for the promotion of class collaboration. ^^
In the subsequent period of organization, the idea of collateral syndicates, sometimes referred to as ''integral syndicalism," defi- nitely gained the upper hand. It is interesting to note that this idea was taken over unaltered to form the basis of the Fascist system of organization by social-economic categories.
The early years of Fascist rule found Mussolini and the Pope fre- quently at swords' points. But just as accession to power stilled the former's lingering radicalism, so the immense ideological strength of the latter amongst the mass of the Italian peasantry coupled to the expansive power of the papal hierarchy blunted the anticlerical edge of Fascist propaganda. In the Lateran Accord of 1929 Fascism adopted the papacy on condition that the papacy concede popular allegiance to the objectives of Fascism and the State and Empire in which those objectives were embodied. ^^
It was hardly to be expected that the Accord, widely acclaimed as it was, would settle all the issues at dispute. Quadragesimo Anno was condemned by many Fascists for some of its implied criticisms of their system. But in the main the document possesses historical sig- nificance primarily for its wholesale acceptance of the tenets under- lying the Fascist social program.
"Harmony between ranks in society" now became the dominant theme: "Now this is the primary duty of the state and of all good citizens," the Pontiff declared, "to abolish conflict between classes with divergent interests, and thus foster and promote harmony be- tween the various ranks of society. " ^^ Instrumental to this objec- tive "must be therefore the reestablishment of vocational groups,"
quite Utopian. ' " Gide and Rist, op. cit. , pp. 76, 498, quoted from Duchesne, Syndicats ouvriers beiges (1906).
19 This early statement of the principle becomes explicable when it is recalled that Rerum Novarum was directed against Socialism as much for its apotheosis of the power of the state in opposition to private capitalism as for its support of heretical social and moral principles.
20 For the text of the Lateran Accord, see Walter C. Langsam and
Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since ipi8 (Chicago, 1939), pp. 557-66.
21 All quotations are from copy of the text reproduced in Langsam and Eagan, op. cit. , pp. 567-72.
64
J.
M. Eagan,
?
THE FASCIST SYSTEM
for "as nature induces those who dwell in close proximity to unite into municipalities, so those who practice the same trade or profes- sions, economic or otherwise, combine into vocational groups. "
While such organization of social-economic categories is to be "autonomous," Pius definitely rejected "free competition" and the past "errors of the 'Individualistic' school" as "the true guiding prin- ciples of economics. " They had their place, to be sure, but "it is very necessary that economic affairs be once more subjected to and gov- erned by a true and efEective guiding principle. " This the state is alone competent to determine, and in taking notice of "special syn- dical and corporative organization . . . inaugurated . . . within recent times," the Encyclical declares that "little reflection is re- quired to perceive the advantages of the institution [Fascist institu- tion] thus summarily described: ^^ peaceful collaboration of the classes, repression of Socialist organizations and efforts, the moder- ating influence of a special ministry. " Fixity of status and occupa- tion, the outlawing of strikes and lockouts, and the location of the ultimate powers of umpire and reconciliation in a theologically ac- ceptable totalitarian state assured to His Holiness that "social har- mony" and "class collaboration" of which Leo XIII had dreamed forty years before.
There was some bitter -^ to be taken with the sweet, but in the
22 "The state here grants legal recognition to the syndicate or union, and thereby confers on it some of the features of a monopoly, for in virtue of this recognition, it alone can represent respectively Workingmen and employers, and it alone can con- clude labor contracts and labor agreements. Affiliation to the syndicate is optional for everyone; but in this sense only can the syndical organization be said to be free, since the contribution to the union and other special taxes are obligatory for all who be- long to a given branch, whether workingmen or employers, and the labor-contracts drawn up by the legal syndicate are likewise obligatory. It is true that it has been authoritatively declared that the legal syndicate does not exclude the existence of un- recognized trade associations.
"The corporations are composed of representatives of the unions of workingmen and employers of the same trade or profession, and as true and genuine organs and institutions of the state, they direct and coordinate the activities of the unions in all matters of common interest. " Quadragesimo Anno, Langsam, op. cit. , p. 569. This language is practically identical with that employed in the official propaganda min- istry of the Fascist party. Cf. The Law of April 21, 192'j, known as the Labour Char- ter, reproduced in Langsam, op. cit. , pp. 519-25.
23 In particular that "concentration of power" which "has led to a threefold strug- gle for domination" for power within the dictatorship, for control over the state, and amongst the states, which leads to war. Also, "the intermingling and scandalous con- fusing of the duties and offices of civil authority and of economics" which not only degrades "the majesty of the state" but leads to "economic imperialism. " Quadra- gesimo Anno, loc. cit.
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light of subsequent events it would appear that the rapprochement between the papacy and the New Roman Empire has been growing steadily closer. ^* Even the Axis accord does not seem to be wholly unwelcome in papal circles. ^'^
The composition of the pre-Fascist labor movement. --There is no need here to recapitulate the voluminous expository and argu- mentative literature on this phase of the Italian corporate-state background. 2<< It will suffice to indicate in rough outline a few of the peculiarities of the Italian labor movement which made it so readily and generally adaptable to the type of controls which the organized "right" sought, under Fascism, to place on it.
1. Though of comparatively recent origin, the labor movement in Italy had begun to form central federations and confederations early in its history. There was practically no such thing as a labor move- ment in any part of the country before 1874. Yet by 1890 first efforts were already being made to federate. After a number of reverses, these efforts had succeeded, at the outbreak of the war, in bringing the vast bulk of organized labor into three great confederations: The General Confederation of Labor (CGL), with about 321,000 members; the Catholic Italian Confederation of Labor (CIL), with around 103,000 members; and the Italian Syndicalist Association (USI), with some 100,000 members. ^^ By 1920, after a period of de- cline during the war, membership had risen until the CGL and the CIL were able to claim a membership of 2,150,000 and 1,205,447, respectively. This represents not only an unusually high level of
24 In the Abyssinian venture it was commonly believed that the papacy lent its financial support, and in the Spanish Civil War it allied itself openly on II Duce's side.
25 The new totalitarian system in process of formation in France appears to enjoy papal blessing. Only belatedly, and then only under considerable pressure, was re- proof for the utterances of Father Coughlin forthcoming.
26 To mention but a few, favorable summaries are given in the semi-official volume by Fausto Pitigliani (now in exile). The Italian Corporative State (London, 1933); Michael T. Florinsky, Fascism and National Socialism (New York, 1936); Benito Mussolini, The Corporate State (Florence, 1936); various publications (in mimeo- graph) of the Italian Library of Information; and Michels, Italien von Heute. Criti- cal summaries are found in Ebenstein, Fascist Italy; Gaetano Salvemini, Under the Axe of Fascism (New York, 1936); George Seldes, Sawdust Caesar (New York, 1935); and Carl T. Schmidt, The Corporate State in Action (New York, 1939).
27 I find no two authorities who agree on these figures. The data for the CGL and the USI are taken from Freedom of Association (Series A, No. 31, International Labor Office, Geneva), IV, 4-5. The figures for the CIL are from Wladimir Woytinsky, Die Welt in Zahlen (Berlin, 1926). II, 123.
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unionization, but also an unusually high degree of centralized direc- tion. On this footing trade unionism loomed large.
2. Membership was drawn primarily from agricultural and hand- icraft labor. Data taken from official sources,^^ showed 453,000 in- dustrial workers belonging to trade unions in 1912 for 408,000 agricultural workers. Subsequent years did not greatly alter the pic- ture. ^^ Even as late as 1921 probably not more than one-third of organized Italian labor could be classified as "industrial. " ^^ The strength of the labor movement, in other words, was much less than it appeared to be. The reasons were as follows:
(a) Themovementwaswidelyscatteredgeographically,andthe typical unit was small, localized, provincial, and more or less inde- pendent and self-contained.
(b) Organized agricultural labor was property minded: its prin- cipal grievance was the perpetuation of the system of metayagej and its members were neither very conscious of their own class nor conscious of having a great deal in common with the industrial workers.
(c) Thepositionofthelargenumberofhandicraftandshopem- ployees was not greatly different. Their lingering feudal attach- ments and partially articulated middle-class sentiments made them at best poor and unreliable partners in a militant, class-conscious struggle for political power. ^^
3. A third and even more fatal weakness in the Italian labor move- ment was centered in more or less irreconcilable doctrinal differ-
28 Woytinsky, op. cit. , II, 124; cited from Annuario Statistico Italiano, Series 2, VII (1917-18), 330.
29 The war years were an exception; there was then a tendency for agricultural members to increase over industrial membership, indicating a relatively heavier war draft on the latter group.
30 Even the most militant and class-conscious of the central associations, the CGL, had 294,000 out of 1,206,000 members listed as attached to agriculture. In addition, many other crafts, e. g. , the bulk of those listed as textile workers (78,000 in 1921) should really be called agricultural laborers. For another viewpoint on agricultural workers and trade unionism in Italy consult the writings of Ignazio Silone, who has developed the subject in detail and who takes a somewhat different position.
81 The number included in this category must have been numerically more im- portant than Woytinsky's figures indicate. It is possible that when due allowance is made for those listed under industrial categories who worked as handicraftsmen the number would be as large or larger than those properly classed as industrial workers. In addition, close to 100,000 workers were employed in governmental or semigovern- mental (railways, post and telegraph, etc. ) activities and who were, consequendy, at least partially controlled by governmental authorities under dvil-service regulations.
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ences. The largest of the three more important general groups, the General Confederation of Labor, was led, perhaps more clearly than any other continental trade-union group, by politically minded socialists of the more orthodox (not revisionist, as in Germany) school. The second largest group, the Italian Confederation of La- bor, followed the line laid down by Rerum Novarum and was, con- sequently, in the main quite hostile to the CGL. Its mixed-syndicates program bears a very close resemblance to the "company union" in the United States, and its alternative, integral syndicates, was erected on the substitute foundation of organized "class collaboration. " The third group, the Italian Syndicalist Association, followed a mixture of ideas adapted from Bakunin, the anarchist, and from theorists of the Sorel persuasion. Their position was similar in a number of respects to the anarchist trade unions of Barcelona as shown in the early stages of the Spanish Civil War. They favored, in the main, economic as against political action, and they had a tendency to be very militant upon an insubstantial organizational structure--that is, they submitted badly to group discipline and the centralization of authority.
Thus, while Italian labor movement was simultaneously numeri- cally imposing, fired in at least two camps with revolutionary doc- trines, and sufficiently centralized to be able to move rapidly on occasion, it was hampered because (a) it was compounded of largely dissentient occupational groupings of widely varying sense of group solidarity, political education, and social attachments, and (b) it was split into three groups, which differed from one another on objec- tives and methods. To this should be added the fact that at the criti- cal moment, during the postwar period before the coming of the Fascists, leadership was complicated by two additional difficulties: on the one hand, militant leaders were divided between the more violent, Sorelian syndicalist type (of which Mussolini was an out- standing example) and the Marxists; and, on the other hand, the Marxists were split between those who had devoted and still wished to dedicate the bulk of their energies to the gaining of political privi- leges for labor, and those who were prepared to face a distinctly revolutionary situation with a revolutionary program of action. ^^
32 Even amongst these latter, there was no clear realization of the revolutionary possibilities of the years 1920-22 until it was too late. Palme Dutt in Fascism and
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
It is not necessary here to trace again ^^ the results of this posture of affairs on the labor side during the period of occupation of the factories and the spread of general-strike tactics in the two years preceding the political triumph of Fascism. Suffice it to say that the unions then came so close to complete triumph that the organized opposition was determined to strike at the root of the matter by destroying for all time all power of independent union initiative and that they found in Fascism an acceptable formula for trans- lating intent into action. And the Fascists in turn, with ambivalent eclat, evolved this program by deftly fusing Sorelian ideas, happily bereft of all revolutionary sentiment, with catholic integral syndi- calism as evolved by the CIL--but now sheared from its popular moorings.
The Central Employers' Associations. --The employers' associa- tion movement in Italy likewise possessed three peculiarities which, in combination, go far towards explaining the early adoption of such a relatively mature employer's solution of their labor problems. In the first place, alongside of--and in some respects preceding--indus- trial organization came organization of agricultural employers, dom- inated by the feudal-minded and closely knit owners of the great latifondi. In the second place, both associations, while working very closely together on many matters, never divided their interests in political and economic affairs from their interests in social and labor matters. And thirdly, dominant influence among industrial em- ployers was held by groups both highly localized in the industrial north and operating on a (relatively) large scale in new, swiftly growing, and technologically modern industries.
Under the first point, it is interesting to note that organization of agricultural employers was started by and grew to exercise great influence under the owners of the spreading latifondi in the Po
Social Revolution (London, 1934), p. 96, quotes Serrati, from whom most followers of the Leninist persuasion hoped a great deal, as declaring at a subsequent Con- gress of the Communist International that "Our fault is that we never sufficiently prepared ourselves for the events that have overtaken us. . . . Today we believe it essential to abandon the democratic illusion, and to create a combative, active, and audacious Party. " Additional aspects of the problem were the impact of Bolshevism, the growth of the Maximalist movement and the corresponding confusion.
33 See, in particular, the very pro-Fascist book by Pietro Gorgolini (with a foreword by Mussolini), The Fascist Movement in Italian Life (London, 1923), and the very anti-Fascist book by Angelo Rossi, The Rise 0/ Italian Fascism (London, 1938).
69
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
Valley. As the movement spread to other parts of Italy, it stimulated organization of small farmer holdings around a variety of social and economic objectives. But, from the beginning, the leadership of the great landowners of the north (together with an increasing pressure towards federation and unification) tended to repress interests and objectives in conflict with their own.
The General Confederation of Agriculture was finally brought into existence in 1911 as a coordinating body for all Italian agricul- tural-employer interests, but, although its membership was said to be around 700,000 landed proprietors, its program was centered largely around the single-minded defense of the system of metay- age ^*--a system not unlike the recently much publicized share- cropper relationship of the American South. ^^ What this indicated, of course, was first that the vast bulk of the Italian agricultural popu- lation--and Italy is primarily a rural country even today ^^--was made up of laborers and tenant farmers ^^ and that ownership of land was highly concentrated. ^^ And secondly, that the social rela-
34 At its first congress the Confederation "defined its guiding rules" as follows: "That all the affiliated associations should support and extend the system of metayage, as being the most effective instrument for creating a stable social basis for agricul- tural progress and for the economic and moral improvement of the workers them- selves, and that, while observing in the drafting of the economic clauses of such contracts [with organized agricultural workers] a liberal and modern spirit, they should defend the necessity for safeguarding the technical direction of the owner against the efforts of any who may seek, whether by the limitation of this power or by insisting on the substitution of farming leases for contracts of metayage, to with- draw the administration of rural undertakings from the hands of those technical experts who have done good service to the cause of agricultural progress and pro- duction. . . . That the principle of co-partnership should be extended even to the class of occasional workers and to that of workers with fixed wages. " Quoted in ILO, Freedom of Association, IV, 8.
35 "Metayage, a system of land tenure in Western Europe and also in the United States, in which the farmer pays a certain proportion (generally half) of the produce to the owner (as rent), the owner generally furnishing the stock and seed or a part thereof. " Murray, New English Dictionary.
36 "The economic life of Italy is basically rural. . . . The total gainfully occupied population of ten and more years of age is 17,262,521; 8,083,332 are occupied in agriculture. The total population of the country in 1931 was 41,176,671, of which num- ber nearly 48 percent was comprised in families whose head was employed in agri- culture. . . . Data for any of the last thirty or forty years would not give a substan- tially different picture of the economic structure of the rural population. " Schmidt, The Plough and the Sword, pp. 1, 10.
37 "According to the occupational census of 1931, roughly 8,000,000 persons over the age of 10 are engaged in agriculture. Of this number about 3,000,000 are classed as 'operating owners,' 900,000 as 'cash-tenants,' 1,700,000 as 'share-tenants,' 2,500,000 as 'wage-workers,' and 27,000 as 'managers. ' " Idem.
38 "The 3,800,000 dwarf and small holdings comprise but 32. 7 percent of all the
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tionship between the possessing and the landless classes was of a distinctly feudal stamp.
This feudal stamp was not lost when the great Po Valley estates went over to modern forms of highly mechanized industrial agri- culture during and following the war. Relationships between mas- ter and men continued in much the same atmosphere as before, with the main difference that the latter had lost whatever social claims they had once possessed, and that the former, much as in the case of large-scale agriculture on the American Pacific Coast, had been freed of certain more or less compelling obligations assumed under the technically more primitive arrangement. That is to say, the mood, the social outlook, the plans and programs of the leading figures in the General Confederation of Agriculture were of the patronal, patrimonial, feudal stamp.
Not until after the war did employer interests in the industrial field succeed in attaining the level of central organization achieved by agricultural employers in 1911. Earlier efforts had been made from time to time, the last preceding attempt in 1910 having, even at that late date, proved premature. ^^ In 1920 the General Confed- eration of Italian Industry was organized as a central policy-forming body for some one hundred member bodies,
divided among federal organizations [of which twenty-five were na- tional] and local organizations and was made up of two sections:
(a) The Economic Section, which protected all kinds of industrial in-
terests and set up as its aim the defense of those interests by means of direct co-operation in the drafting of laws and also by supporting the interests of its members against the state;
(b) The Trade Union Section, which studied and solved problems connected with the relationships between industrialists and the staff dependent on them, and also problems connected with social legislation. *^
All commentators agree that the Confederation was a highly or-
ganized institution, exercising "a powerful influence on the whole
farm land in the country, whereas the 400,000 large farms control 67. 3 percent thereof. These figures evince the extreme concentration of land ownership in rela- tively few hands. " Ibid. , p. 13.
39 A parallel attempt made in that year to form the Association of Italian Joint Stock Companies (Associazone fra le Societa Italiana per Acione) was more success- ful. It maintained an independent existence through the war, and was instrumental in the accouchement of the Confederation of Italian Industry. See Pitigliani, The Italian Corporative State, pp. 144-45.
40 ILO, Freedom of Association, IV, 9.
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of national life" from the day of its inception. As with its agricul- tural counterpart, it united in a single body both social (primarily antilabor) and economic interests. Headquarters were maintained at Milan, the leading industrial city of north Italy, which, being located in the center of the upper Po Valley, brought them into immediate juxtaposition with the Agricultural Confederation. And the leading figures in the Confederation were the captains in com- mand of that impressive network of large-scale industrial enterprises which were concentrated in that area.
Not only did the big industrialists lead in the inner councils of the Confederation, but the establishments over which they held control fell largely, and in some respects entirely, in the general classification of the *'new" industries which had arisen out of chemi- cal and engineering research after the turn of the century. Italy was a comparatively late industrial arrival, and she lacked, furthermore, material resources for the large-scale development of many of the older industries. The newer industries required large initial out- lays in scientific research and experimental development; their capi- tal needs were heavy and, once launched, they were closely protected under patent and similar monopoly controls.
Within the northern Italian manufacturing nucleus the most im- portant industries were heavy chemicals, machines, textiles, and engineering. Most of the big concerns, such as Snia Viscosa in rayon. Fiat and Isotta Fraschini in automobiles and allied lines, Ercole Marelli and Pirelli in electrical manufacturing, Breda in railroad equipment, and the giant Montecatini in the chemicals, ordnance and metal field, date either from immediately before the First World War, or rose to importance during and immediately after that catastrophe. *^ Most of them were financed in whole or in part
41 Snia Viscosa: founded July 18, 1917, headquarters and larger plants at Milan, capital in 1938, 525,000,000 lire; Fiat: founded in 1906, headquarters in Milan (auto- mobiles, diesel engines, parts, railroad stock, airplanes and engines, etc. ), capital in 1939, 400,000,000 lire, employed 54,000 workmen; Montecatini: founded in 1888, headquarters in Milan (copper, pyrites, sulphur, fertilizers, dyes, varnishes, rayon, aluminum, pharmaceutica, etc. ), capital in 1938, 1,300,000,000 lire; Ercole Marelli: successor in 1920 to parent company founded 1891, headquarters in Milan (electrical equipment, motors, generators, pumps, etc. ), capital in 1938, 80,000,000 lire; Isotta Fraschini: headquarters in Milan (steel, automobiles, engineering, ordnance, bronze, aluminum, magnesium, etc. ), capital in 1938, 120,000,000 lire; Pirelli: founded in 1920, headquarters in Milan (electrical cables, automobile tires, etc. ), capital in 1938, 263,981,500 lire, 20,400 employees; Breda: successor in 1899 to parent company or-
72
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
73 by foreign capital/^ catered directly or in large part to a demand dominated by the rapidly expanding transportation, communica- tion, and power networks which were of at least a semipublic char- acter on the one hand, or sold directly to the various governmental bodies concerned with public construction and war needs on the other. All of these factors made not only for large scale develop- ment, but also for expansion on a monopolistic or semimonopolistic
footing from the very beginning. *^
Under auspices such as these--and it cannot be too strongly em-
phasized that in Italian industrial councils the great preponderance of power and influence lay in these circles--the natural, normal, matter-of-course attitude of the leadership of the General Confed- eration of Italian industries should have been monopoly-oriented in all economic affairs, and patronal or feudal in all social matters. That is to say, the exigencies of background and organization were such as to cause complete accord with the General Confederation of Agriculture (most conservative and reactionary and at the same time most highly developed of agricultural employer associations any- where in the world) in the normal course of peacetime events. How much more logical then, that, given the recent, vivid experience with the autocratic controls of war-time, they should face a new emergency with the mood, the outlook, and the will to improvise the necessary weapons for consolidating a common front of em- ployer interests against the threat of revolutionary action from below.
ganized in 1850, headquarters in Milan (steam and electric locomotives, railroad rolling stock, ships, airplanes, etc. ) capital in 1938, 127,800,000 lire, 17,073 employees. 42 There were, in addition, a good many important, wholly foreign owned, subsidi- aries, such as the Societa Generale Italiana Viscosa (capital in 1938 of 75,000,000 lire, and wholly owned by the British firm. General Rayon Ltd. ) and the branch systems of Ford and General Motors. Most of these concerns have branches and affiliates scattered all over Europe, and corporate holdings, spheres of influence, etc. , interlace with other foreign holdings until it is practically impossible at any one point to
unravel the skein.
43 A situation arose, in other words, not greatly unlike that which W. Sombart
traces at such length in Der Moderne Kapitalismus (Leipzig, 1902), I, Part II, through the early mercantilistic and cameralistic phases of capitalism, when the army and public authorities dominated so many of the leading supply industries. Added to this is the point Veblen has argued so cogently for Germany--in his Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1915)--that the borrowing country borrows the latest, most advanced techniques of production and marketing. The Italians borrowed from abroad large-scale production methods and monopoly forms of organization.
? THE FASCIST SYSTEM
74
Not, of course, that there is any direct proof that the General Con-
federation of Italian Industries singly or in association with other employer bodies did actually "think up" the Fascist state. Nor, even, that there was uniform agreement within these circles on just exactly what and how to face the critical situation that arose in the postwar confusion. ** But that they did find in Fascism something which they could support and from which they could derive great advantages to themselves there is no longer any question whatsoever. For present purposes, the significant fact is that the organizational structure, spun after much trial and error under the Fascist regime, is a straight-line development from that which had been evolved out of these employer circles in the past, and that the system which fol- lowed the March on Rome was coherent not only with former growth trends, but also with the attitudes and ideologies which had become dominant in organized Italian business.
The Corporate State. --Again it is not necessary to recapitulate in detail the numerous, and for present purposes, largely accurate sum- maries that have been made of the machinery of the corporate state, or the steps by which this machinery has been brought to its current state of development. The system is not yet complete, enthusiastic proponents avow, and is not likely to reach that state for a long time to come, if ever. Many of them like to stress that it is of the very nature of Fascist institutions that these neither do nor can achieve settled and permanent forms, since they are devised as flexible in- struments to encourage growth and change and not as glove-fits for a static condition.
It may be in point, however, to indicate briefly a few of the fea- tures of the new system which make it appear not so new or out of line with recognizable trends abroad.
