Pan-latinismo e reti di intellettuali tra le due guerre

The topic of this chapter is the political and cultural evolution of the Association de la Presse Latine (APL). Between 1923 and 1935 the APL organised 13 conferences both in Europe and in Central America, becoming a point of reference and a place to share ideas for right wings intellectuals across the Atlantic. Analysing the meetings’ proceedings and the Association’s monthly magazine, this chapter intends to shed a new light both on the study of the political project of pan-Latinism in a broader transnational perspective and on the reactionary intellectuals networks during the interwar period.

Sulle origini del corporativismo

The purpose of the present chapter is to provide some hints to the history of the concept of ‘corporation’. It aims to illustrate the meaning of corpus in Roman law and the characteristics of medieval guilds, to examine the semantic constants of the concept and its variants up to, and in part beyond, the First World War. The chapter will briefly discuss the ideas of Bentham and Saint-Simon, Mill’s concept of ‘economic democracy’, the communitarian alternatives to late-nineteenth-century liberalism, and the early theories of management and the firm that developed partly in parallel with the rise of fascist policies in Europe and the Technocracy movement in America, which cannot be treated here.

Le corporazioni oltre lo Stato

During the Great Depression, projects for exporting corporativism and its institutions abroad as a universal way to economic recovery and social justice were not only propaganda tools of Mussolini’s regime. They were debated as real options within some fascist circles up until the Ethiopian war and the planning for an Italian ‘Imperial Autarchy’. After Italy’ intervention into the Second World War, the possibility of exporting corporativism and its institutions was reconsidered with renewed attention in the perspective of the ‘New Order’. This essay aims to analyse the main developments and outcomes of such a debate, concentrating on some projects for international corporations since the thirties up until the Second World War.

Dalle origini del capitalismo all’ordinamento corporativo

Before rising to political prominence in the post-war Italian Republic as one of the defining leaders of the Christian Democracy, Amintore Fanfani distinguished himself as an academic economist and economic historian. Trained at the Università Cattolica in Milan, he was a pupil of its founder and rector, Agostino Gemelli. The essay examines Fanfani’s writings, starting from his dissertation, which addressed the role of religion in the origins of capitalism and discussed Marx’s and Weber’s views. In this and his following articles, reviews and books, during the thirties, Fanfani argued in favour of the subordination of economic activity to superior moral ends provided by religion. Such a ‘voluntaristic’ perspective was embodied by the corporatist experiment. Following in the footsteps of Gemelli’s proposal of an alliance between Catholicism and Fascism, Fanfani went on to support many aspects of the regime, notably its imperial wars in Africa.

Di fronte alla crisi

The impact of the 1929 economic depression affected on the debate on corporatism at its peak, when the corporatist framework was still under construction and Giuseppe Bottai was Minister of the Corporations. By tracing the discussions stimulated by some key figures in the economic culture of the time – Gino Arias, Agostino Lanzillo, Francesco Vito – this contribution aims to to outline how the dispute about the new corporative economy might disclose some interesting features: namely, through the asserted primacy of ethics over liberal individualism, it would acknowledge the need for an active intervention of the State in the economic life, virtually capable of outliving the Fascist period.

Trasformazioni del lavoro e antidemocrazia negli anni tra le due guerre

The present contribution is divided into two parts: the first is the transformations of the world of labour between the two wars, tracing the context in which totalitarian impulses of a fascist nature were affirmed; the second, closely connected to the first, tries to outline the methods and contents with which counter-democracy tried to gain consensus, even in the world of labour. We will try to retrace, in broad terms, some trajectories of change induced by the First World War, their evolution in the inter-war period, the influence that these changes exerted on the Second World War and beyond, with some reference to the post-war period.

Storia in corso della democrazia autoritaria

The essay presents a diachronic approach to the political issues underway in present-time Europe, focusing on the global economic crisis that started in 2008, on emerging social problems, on the symptoms of possible disintegration of the European Union, on populist nationalisms in Central Europe and in Italy. Of these intertwined phenomena, an interpretation from a historical perspective is suggested.

Fascist Italy’s Illiberal Cultural Networks

Italian fascists presented corporatism, a system of sector-wide unions bringing together workers and employers under firm state control, as a new way to resolve tensions between labour and capital, and to reincorporate the working classes in national life. ‘Cultural corporatism’ – the fascist labour model applied to the realm of the arts – was likewise presented as a historic resolution of the problem of the artist’s role in modern society. Focusing on two art conferences in Venice in 1932 and 1934, this article explores how Italian leaders promoted cultural corporatism internationally, creating illiberal international networks designed to help promote fascist ideology and Italian soft power.