Fascist Spectacle.pdf

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Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v... upholding the strength and power of a country. If, as the syndicalists believed, the value of the nation overshadowed any other value, then opposing sides in labor disputes should strive toward reconciling their conflicts when these might negatively affect national interests. In contrast to the socialists, who had protested the world conflict in the name of proletarian internationalism, the syndicalists proclaimed their loyalty to the fatherland. In June 1918, as an alternative to the socialist organizations of workers, they founded their own confederation, the Unione Italiana del Lavoro (UIL). In 1919, when he founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, Mussolini supported UIL, as he had previously done from the columns of Il Popolo d'Italia . During the following two years, the relations between the fascists and UIL underwent several problems: some syndicalist leaders refused to align with Mussolini's movement and thus lose autonomy, and the fascists ― 130 ― took an increasingly antiworker position. [45] But when on January 1922 fascists and syndicalists promoted the National Confederation of Syndicate Corporations under the auspices of the newly formed Fascist Party, the organization inherited much of the originary impulse at the basis of national syndicalism. [46] Edmondo Rossoni, previously the head of UIL and an opponent of syndicalism's politicization, came to be elected general secretary of the new confederation. Still vowing antisocialism and anti-Catholicism, the organization included five national corporations upon which all provincial sections depended. As in the original formula of the revolutionary syndicalists, the corporations were supposed to bring together all professional activities that identified their own "moral and economic elevation . . . with the indispensable duty of the citizen towards the Nation." [47] Thus, Article 4 of the corporations' principles proclaimed: "The nation—considered a superior synthesis of all material and spiritual values of the race—is above individuals, groups and classes. Individuals, groups and classes are instruments, made use of by the nation to gain a better position. The interests of individuals and of groups acquire legitimacy on condition that they are maintained within the frame of the superior national interests." [48] The corporations rejected class struggle and replaced it with collaboration between producers; labor conflicts needed to be overcome through cooperation. The national solidarity thus established would further the primary goal of the development of production and benefit the whole country, the fatherland. Hence, at the first congress of the National Confederation of Syndicate Corporations, in June 1922, Mussolini affirmed that the fascist syndicates would not replace the socialist workers' organizations. [49] They would not foster hatred and promote conflict, because the resolution of workers' struggles guaranteed the grandeur of the nation through social order, class collaboration, and maximum productivity. [50] National syndicates would still sponsor workers' claims but would do so within the limits set by the primary pursuit of the nation's successful growth. Between 1922 and 1926, during Mussolini's ascent to power and the regime's totalitarian turn, fascist syndicalism evolved. [51] Through a series of violent acts, laws, pacts, and decrees, it preempted the existence of other syndicates—via the elimination of socialist labor organizations and the marginalization of Catholic ones—and became the exclusive representative of workers. At the same time, relations between the National Confederation of Fascist Syndicates and the Fascist Party became tighter, and Mussolini's government continued a policy that overwhelmingly favored the interests of the industrial classes over those of workers. An important event in this transitional phase was the Pact of Palazzo Vidoni of October 2, 1925, in which ― 131 ― delegates of the General Confederation of Industry and of the National Confederation of Fascist Syndicates recognized each other as the only official representatives of, respectively, the industrialists' and the workers' interests. [52] The syndical law of April 3, 1926 (Law Number 563), drafted under the direction of Minister of Justice Alfredo Rocco, legally authorized the fascist syndicates' monopoly over worker representation. The law ruled that only one association of workers and one of employers would be recognized for each branch of production (and such recognition was only extended to fascist organizations), and these associations would be supervised and controlled by the state. [53] The law also eliminated the right to strikes and lockouts, and it instituted labor courts as a system of arbitration in case the involved parties failed to reach agreement. Furthermore, the statute proposed the future creation of provincial corporations that would connect employers, workers, and experts involved in the same field of production. [54] The idea of a fascist corporative system began to take shape. [55] On July 2, 1926, a royal decree established the Ministry of Corporations, charged with overseeing syndicate activity and corporate organizations. On April 21, 1927, the Labor Charter consecrated the main principles upon which the system of corporations was supposed to build. The charter emphasized class collaboration and the preeminence of private initiative over state intervention 78 of 199 7/11/2006 12:54 AM
Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v... in the economy, [56] and it reaffirmed the value of the nation and the role of the state as the ultimate guardian of the nation's interests. In 1928, after the May congress of the National Confederation of Fascist Syndicates, the opinion circulated among fascist elites that the antipathy between opposed class interests, against which national syndicalists supposedly fought, had yet to be overcome in the new regime. [57] Rossoni's syndicates, as the General Confederation of Industry claimed, had not been able to "educate the masses." [58] Within this context, and because of the internal politics of the Fascist Party, which resented Rossoni's autonomous role in the syndicates, and the residual hostility of the labor providers toward workers' organizations, the National Confederation of Fascist Syndicates was dismantled on November 1928. It was fragmented into six associations corresponding to the different branches of production. [59] The original unity of the syndicalist movement definitively collapsed along with what little was left of the principle of class solidarity. In the following years, the corporative structure of the regime continued to grow through a series of laws that contributed to its bureaucratic building and extended corporativism's control from labor relations to economic relations. In 1930 the National Council of Corporations was constituted within the Ministry of Corporations and assigned primarily consulting functions. In 1934 twenty-two corporations ― 132 ― were created for agriculture, industry, commerce, and service. [60] Not until 1939, however, one year before Italy's intervention in World War II, did the Chamber of Corporations replace the Chamber of Deputies. In effect, the corporative system, which the regime seemingly took great pains to organize and plan, never had a real chance to unfold and succeed. Ideally, the corporations were supposed to function as "organs of self-government for issues relating to the specific category as well as the basis for participation with other corporatively organized interests in policy decisions affecting the whole society." [61] However, the centralized and authoritarian system of the regime greatly hampered the production units' ability to govern themselves. [62] The internal composition of the corporations contributed to the elimination of this role. Membership was most often founded on political and clientelistic principles. Workers, in particular, ended up having as spokespersons professors, lawyers, journalists, and other supposedly "technical" people who were unmotivated or unqualified to defend the interests of those they represented. The clash of interests corporativism intended to resolve turned out to be an insurmountable obstacle. Political contrasts underlay the various, apparently coextensive theories of corporativism and resulted in a stalling of substantial transformations. Trends typical of a traditional market economy, rather than any corporative principle, characterized the fascist state's intervention in economic management. Private industries and oligarchies flourished, and the interests of entrepreneurs were favored over those of workers. [63] The corporations ensured class collaboration by annexing to the state all social and political groups that might oppose the fascist organization. Corporative institutions managed to suppress an independent labor movement even while being stripped of their own authority. [64] From the point of view of economic policy, then, the corporations played a very limited, almost decorative, role. The National Council of Corporations mostly discussed matters that had already been decided. By January 1937 the council no longer met. [65] Though a failed system in its practical applications, corporativism was invoked and exalted in fascist discourse and played an immense role in fascism's self-representation and definition. In a May 1925 article published in Gerarchia , Mussolini hailed corporativism as one of the "novelties" of the fascist revolution. [66] On March 11, 1926, he described the newly approved law on the juridical discipline of collective labor relations as "the most courageous, the most audacious, the most innovative, thus the most revolutionary" of laws. [67] On May 7, 1928, on the occasion of the third congress of the National Confederation of Fascist Syndicates, Mussolini forecast the twentieth century as the century in which the corporative economy would sub- ― 133 ― stitute for the previous century's capitalist economy. [68] And when the National Council of Corporations was inaugurated on April 22, 1930, Mussolini defined it in his speech as the "thinking brain that prepares and coordinates" the Italian economy. [69] Despite all the contradictions crippling its development, the corporative system produced its own theorists and supporters, economic theorems and philosophical reflections. [70] References to what was defined as a novel approach to political economy abounded in fascism and helped delineate and communicate the principles and ideals to which the regime subscribed. In particular, via the semantics of corporativism, the regime constructed a symbolic representation of the fascist individual, the relations between spiritualism and 79 of 199 7/11/2006 12:54 AM
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