[PEN-L:30605] RE: Moussolini's Corporation

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: RE: [PEN-L:30591] Moussolini's Corporation

My understanding is that the more pleasant part of the ideology of fascism was "corporatism," in which tri-partite boards were set up that united business, government, and labor, as a way of avoiding class conflict and managing the common concerns of society. Something similar appeared during World War I in the U.S. and (more famously) in Franklin Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act.  (It is not the same as a "corporation," which is simply a way of organizing business.)

Of course, in practice, Mussolini's corporatism was severely biased against labor, because the "bully boys" broke up unions, especially the commmunist and socialist ones, encouraging those that survived (especially craft unions) to be company unions or collaborators of other sorts. As usual, a pleasant ideology covered up a nasty reality.

------------------------
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lisa Stolarski [mailto:lisa.stolarski@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2002 9:10 PM
> To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [PEN-L:30591] Moussolini's Corporation
>
>
> Found this at this site
>
> http://cityhonors.buffalo.k12.ny.us/city/aca/hist/ibhist/ibhis
> tstud/histlit.
> html
>
>
>
> Under his new government policy, every economic activity in
> the country was
> put under a government-appointed panel, called a corporation.
> Representatives of management and labor, in each industry
> served on these
> panels. All profits under the corporate state went to the
> government. The
> Parliament became nothing more than a instrument for the corporations.
>
>
> It seems that Moussolini's "corporation" was one that was
> created by the
> state. 
>
> Still unraveling this mystery.
>
> Lisa S.
>
>