{"id":1115,"date":"2009-06-29T06:34:44","date_gmt":"2009-06-29T11:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1115"},"modified":"2010-07-19T00:28:17","modified_gmt":"2010-07-19T05:28:17","slug":"misconstruing-mussolini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1115","title":{"rendered":"Misconstruing Mussolini"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been reviewing the history of fascism recently, because the Republic of Iran has many structural features in common with fascism and I think the history of fascism in Europe holds lessons about its future.  And recently I ran across a quote beloved of American leftists in an email signature:<\/p>\n<p>From Benito Mussolini: &#8220;Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This quote is often misconstrued nowadays by leftists who view profit-making corporations under capitalism (especially multinational corporations) as instruments of the devil. They love the implied image of capitalist fat-cats and fascist dictators conspiring in gilded opulence.  Alas for them that this quote actually doesn&#8217;t imply anything like that; the terminological ground under it has shifted.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;corporatism&#8221; Mussolini to which was referring had, actually, nothing to do with corporations, joint-stock or otherwise (in the 1920s the word &#8220;corporation&#8221; did not yet have its modern sense, either in English or Italian).  His use of the word had to do with a feature of fascist theory forgotten by almost everybody but specialist historians.<\/p>\n<p>In fascist theory, &#8220;corporations&#8221; were bodies like unions, craft guilds, professional societies, and grange associations. See http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Corporatism for discussion; see especially the section &#8220;Italian fascist corporativism&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>What Mussolini was actually enunciating was a sort of organic statism in which the state would bless or admit representatives of various &#8220;corporations&#8221; into its governing councils &#8212; and no, that didn&#8217;t mean Fiat or Beretta but (say) the Abruzzo Building Trades Association, or the Society of University Professors.  <\/p>\n<p>While corporations-in-the-modern sense were not outright excluded from being legitimized &#8220;corporations&#8221; in the fascist sense, neither did they have any special status or power in the system.  Actually, it was rather the reverse&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s worth remembering that the founders of fascism were mainly Leninists like Mussolini with a sprinkling of anarcho-syndicalists (George Sorel being the best known of those).  Actual fascism retained the founders&#8217; doctrinal hostility to what modern leftists would call &#8220;corporate power&#8221;, never renouncing its state-socialist roots and being (in fact) hostile to <em>all<\/em> centers of power other than the state itself.<\/p>\n<p>The modern idea that German and Italian fascism were conservative or pro-business ideologies is essentially a fantasy constructed by pro-Soviet propagandists during and after World War II.  In fact, classical fascism never wandered very far from its left-wing origins; corporatism can be seen as an elaboration of the theoretical role of worker&#8217;s soviets in Leninist theory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been reviewing the history of fascism recently, because the Republic of Iran has many structural features in common with fascism and I think the history of fascism in Europe holds lessons about its future. And recently I ran across a quote beloved of American leftists in an email signature: From Benito Mussolini: &#8220;Fascism should&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1115\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Misconstruing Mussolini<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1115"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2318,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions\/2318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}