Fascist Spectacle.pdf

Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v...
75. "While socialist syndicalism through class struggle leads to politics with a final program that foresees the suppression of
private property and individual initiative, fascist syndicalism, through class collaboration, leads to corporations. Corporations
make that collaboration systematic and harmonic by safeguarding property but elevating it to a social function, by respecting
individual initiative but within the frame of the Nation's life and economy" ( Scritti e discorsi , vol. VII, p. 193).
76. Amintore Fanfani, "Declino del capitalismo e significato del corporativismo," in Oreste del Buono, ed., Eja, Eja, Alalà! La
stampa Italiana sotto il fascismo 1919-1943 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1971), pp. 223-224.
77. See the entry "Sindacalismo fascista" in Dizionario di Politica , vol. IV (Rome, 1940), now in Casucci, op. cit.
78. Ibid., p. 129.
79. Carlo Costamagna, "Stato e corporazioni," in Dizionario di Politica (Rome, 1940), now in Casucci, op. cit.
80. On corporativism also see Giuseppe Bottai, Esperienza corporativa, 1929-1934 (Florence: Vallecchi, 1934).
81. Alfredo Rocco, Scritti e discorsi politici (Milan: Giuffré, 1938).
82. "Il corporativismo come liberalismo assoluto e socialismo assoluto," in Casucci, op. cit., p. 148.
83. In his speech of November 14, 1933, to the General Assembly of the National Council of Corporations, Mussolini stated: "It is
perfectly conceivable that a national Council of Corporations substitute 'in toto' for the actual Chamber of Deputies: I never liked
the Chamber of Deputies. . . . The Chamber of Deputies presupposes a world that we have demolished: it presupposes a
plurality of parties, and more often than not the attack of diligence. Ever since we annulled this plurality, the Chamber of
Deputies has lost the essential reason for which it was born" ( Scritti e discorsi , vol. VIII, p. 270).
84. In 1928 Mussolini had already forecast the end of capitalism. See speech of May 7 to the Third National Congress of Fascist
Syndicates, Scritti e discorsi , vol. VI, pp. 161-166.
85. Scritti e discorsi , vol. VIII, pp. 219-222.
86. Ibid., p. 121.
87. Ibid., pp. 257-273.
88. Ibid., p. 259.
89. Ibid. Mussolini condemned the bourgeoisie as a moral category. In 1938, when the polemic against the bourgeoisie became
harsher, Mussolini defined the bourgeoisie as a "political-moral category," not as an economic class ( Opera Omnia , vol. XXIX, p.
187, speech to the Grand Council of October 25).
90. Scritti e discorsi , vol. VIII, p. 263.
91. Ibid., p. 264.
92. Ibid., p. 263.
93. Scritti e discorsi , vol. IX, p. 20 (speech of January 13, 1934, to the General Assembly of the National Council of
Corporations).
94. Many fascists from the conservative-nationalist faction feared the development of industrial capitalism and standardization
identified with American Fordism. See Melograni, Gli industriali e Mussolini: Rapporti tra Confindustria e fascismo dal 1919 al
1929 (Milan: Longanesi, 1972), especially pp. 258-276.
95. Gualberto Gualerni, Lo Stato industriale in Italia, 1890-1940 (Milan: Etas Libri, 1982), pp. 53-54. Also see Luigi Salvatorelli
and Giovanni Mira, Storia d'Italia nel periodo fascista (Turin: Einaudi, 1957), pp. 538-542, and Salvemini, op. cit., chapters
11-14. According to Salvatorelli and Mira, the consumption of meat lowered from 22 kilos in 1928 to 18 in 1932; the
consumption of sugar went from 9.2 kilos in 1930 to 6.9 in 1932. Also see Cesare Vannutelli, "The Living Standards of Italian
Workers, 1929-1939," in Roland Sarti, ed., The Ax Within: Italian Fascism in Action (New York: New Viewpoints, 1974).
96. Autarchy implied high import tariffs, import quotas, and embargoes on industrial products. On autarchy, see Shepard B.
Clough, The Economic History of Modern Italy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), and Salvatore La Francesca, La
politica economica del fascismo (Bari: Laterza, 1972), Chapter II.
97. Scritti e discorsi , vol. IX, p. 97.
98. Scritti e discorsi , vol. VIII, p. 273.
99. Ibid., p. 271.
100. In his speech of January 13, 1934, to the General Assembly of the National Council of Corporations, Mussolini affirmed that
the state represented the consumer, "[t]he anonymous mass which, since it is not organized as consumers in specific
organizations, has to be guarded by the organ that represents the collectivity of citizens" ( Scritti e discorsi , vol. IX, p. 21).
101. Cited in Giovanni Salvemini, op. cit., p. 138.
102. Rachel Bowlby, Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing, and Zola (New York: Methuen, 1985).
103. John F. Kasson, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978); Lewis A.
Erenberg, Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890-1930 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1981); Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York
(Philadelphia: Temple, 1986); Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer
Culture (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976).
104. Kasson, op. cit.
105. William Leach, "Strategists of Display and the Production of Desire" in Simon J. Bonner, ed., Consuming Visions:
Accumulation and Display of Goods in America, 1880-1920 (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1989).
106. Other senses, such as touch, were also involved.
107. Leach, op. cit., p. 202. The "satisfaction of desires" was a formula pioneered by the sociologist Lester Ward in his 1903
work Pure Sociology: A Treatise on the Origin and Spontaneous Development of Society.
108. Leach, op. cit. Also see his "Transformations in a Culture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890-1925,"
Journal of American History , vol. 71, no. 2 (September 1984), pp. 319-342.
109. The word did not exist until World War I: "Before 1890 display as a term denoting systematic treatment of goods did not
exist, nor would it be part of everyday merchandising language until World War I. What display did exist was primitive, as
trimmers crowded goods together inside the windows or, weather permitting, piled them up outside on the street" (Leach,
"Strategists of Display," op. cit., p. 106).
110. Ibid., p. 109. In a secular manner, which contemptuously challenged established religions, Baum recommended earthly
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