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{{Infobox country|name=Kingdom of Italiy|native_name=Regno d'Italia|image_flag=Kingdom of Italy flag.png|image_coat=Fascist Italy coast of arms.png|capital=[[Rome]]|mode_of_production=[[Capitalism]] (decaying)|government_type=(1922-1925) Unitary Bourgeois Democracy under Fascist influence<br>(1925-1943) Unitary Fascist State|leader_title1=Monarch|leader_name1=Victor Emmanuel III|leader_title2=Duce|leader_name2=[[Benito Mussolini]]|life_span=1922-1943|image_flag2=NFP flag.png|flag_caption=Flags of Italy and the [[National Fascist Party|Ruling Party]]|motto=Credere, obbedire, combattere<br>(Motto of the [[National Fascist Party]])|image_map=Kingdom of Italy map.png|religion=Roman Catholicism|legislature=Parliament|established_event1=[[March on Rome]]|established_date1=31 October 1922|established_event2=Second Italo-Abyssinian War|established_date2=1935-1936|established_event3=Conquest of Albania|established_date3=April 7–12, 1939|established_event4=Intervention into the [[Second World War]]|established_date4=10 June 1940|established_event5=Deposition of Mussolini|established_date5=25 July 1943|area_km2=3,798,000|population_estimate=42,993,602|population_estimate_year=1936|currency=Italian Lira}}
{{Infobox country|name=Kingdom of Italy|native_name=Regno d'Italia|image_flag=Kingdom of Italy flag.png|image_coat=Fascist Italy coast of arms.png|capital=[[Rome]]|mode_of_production=[[Capitalism]] (decaying)|government_type=Unitary parliamentary monarchy (1861–1922)<br>Unitary [[bourgeois democracy]] under [[fascist]] influence (1922–1925)<br>Unitary fascist state (1925–1943)|leader_title1=Monarch|leader_name1=Victor Emmanuel III|leader_title2=Duce|leader_name2=[[Benito Mussolini]]|life_span=1861–1946|image_flag2=NFP flag.png|flag_caption=Flags of Italy and the [[National Fascist Party]]|motto=Credere, obbedire, combattere<br>(Motto of the [[National Fascist Party]])|image_map=Kingdom of Italy map.png|religion=Roman Catholicism|legislature=Parliament|established_event2=[[March on Rome]]|established_date2=31 October 1922|established_event3=Second Italo-Abyssinian War|established_date3=1935-1936|established_event4=Conquest of Albania|established_date4=April 7–12, 1939|established_event5=Intervention into the [[Second World War]]|established_date5=10 June 1940|established_event6=Deposition of Mussolini|established_date6=25 July 1943|area_km2=3,798,000|population_estimate=42,993,602|population_estimate_year=1936|currency=Italian Lira}}


The '''Kingdom of Italy''', from the [[March on Rome]] in 1922 until 1943, was under the rule of the first [[Fascist]] state in history, in a historical period commonly known as '''Fascist Italy'''. While in the years from 1922-1925, the regime still maintained a Liberal façade, after 1925, it soon fully formed into a militantly [[Anti-communism|anti-communist]] dictatorship headed by [[Benito Mussonlini]].<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Swansea University|title=What was the impact of Fascist rule upon Italy from 1922 to 1945?|url=https://www.swansea.ac.uk/history/history-study-guides/what-was-the-impact-of-fascist-rule-upon-italy-from-1922-to-1945/|retrieved=2022-7-19|quote=Mussolini’s appointment as prime minister in October 1922 did not see the immediate institution of dictatorial rule.  Characteristic of the means the Fascists had employed to come to power, Blackshirt squad violence helped to reduce the influence of parliamentary opposition without outlawing it altogether.  From the start of 1925, a fascist parliamentary majority (elected in April 1924 partly thanks to fascist intimidation) was able to pass a series of laws which dismantled the institutions of liberal democracy. Denoting a decline in squad power, the regular police forces together with the OVRA secret police (created in 1927) were now entrusted with the task of rooting out political opposition and controlling the population, with the assistance of Fascist Party organizations (including the Militia).}}</ref>
The '''Kingdom of Italy''' was a state in southern Europe. From the [[March on Rome]] in 1922 until 1943, it was under the rule of the first [[fascist]] state in history, in a historical period commonly known as '''Fascist Italy'''. While in the years from 1922–1925, the régime still maintained a [[Liberalism|liberal]] façade, after 1925, it soon fully formed into a militantly [[Anti-communism|anti-communist]] dictatorship headed by [[Benito Mussolini]].<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Swansea University|title=What was the impact of Fascist rule upon Italy from 1922 to 1945?|url=https://www.swansea.ac.uk/history/history-study-guides/what-was-the-impact-of-fascist-rule-upon-italy-from-1922-to-1945/|retrieved=2022-7-19|quote=Mussolini’s appointment as prime minister in October 1922 did not see the immediate institution of dictatorial rule.  Characteristic of the means the Fascists had employed to come to power, Blackshirt squad violence helped to reduce the influence of parliamentary opposition without outlawing it altogether.  From the start of 1925, a fascist parliamentary majority (elected in April 1924 partly thanks to fascist intimidation) was able to pass a series of laws which dismantled the institutions of liberal democracy. Denoting a decline in squad power, the regular police forces together with the OVRA secret police (created in 1927) were now entrusted with the task of rooting out political opposition and controlling the population, with the assistance of Fascist Party organizations (including the Militia).}}</ref>


Under the [[reactionary]] and despotic government, [[Communist party|socialist and communist organizations]], [[Trade union|trade unions]], and other organs of the [[working class]] saw massive repression and deprivation, with the economy being organized in accordance to the betterment of the [[Bourgeoisie|wealthy]], at the large expense of the workers. The fascist regime also impletmented the first modern privatization programs, as well as the mass cutting of social programs, in history.<ref>{{Citation|author=Germa Bel|year=2011|title=The first privatisation: selling SOEs and privatising public monopolies in Fascist Italy (1922–1925)|title-url=https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-abstract/35/5/937/1695860|quote=Italy's first Fascist government applied a large-scale privatisation policy between 1922 and 1925. The government privatised the State monopoly of match sale, eliminated the State monopoly on life insurances, sold most of the State-owned telephone networks and services to private firms, reprivatised the largest metal machinery producer, and awarded concessions to private firms to build and operate motorways. These interventions represent one of the earliest and most decisive privatisation episodes in the Western world. While ideological considerations may have had a certain influence, privatisation was used mainly as a political tool to build confidence among industrialists and to increase support for the government and the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Privatisation also contributed to balancing the budget, which was the core objective of Fascist economic policy in its first phase.|publisher=Cambridge Journal of Economics|doi=https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/beq051|volume=35|trans-lang=English}}</ref>
Under the [[reactionary]] and despotic government, [[Communist party|socialist and communist organizations]], [[Trade union|trade unions]], and other organs of the [[working class]] saw massive repression and deprivation, with the economy being organized in accordance to the betterment of the [[Bourgeoisie|wealthy]], at the large expense of the workers. The Fascist régime also implemented the first modern privatization programs, as well as the mass cutting of social programs, in history.<ref>{{Citation|author=Germa Bel|year=2011|title=The first privatisation: selling SOEs and privatising public monopolies in Fascist Italy (1922–1925)|title-url=https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-abstract/35/5/937/1695860|quote=Italy's first Fascist government applied a large-scale privatisation policy between 1922 and 1925. The government privatised the State monopoly of match sale, eliminated the State monopoly on life insurances, sold most of the State-owned telephone networks and services to private firms, reprivatised the largest metal machinery producer, and awarded concessions to private firms to build and operate motorways. These interventions represent one of the earliest and most decisive privatisation episodes in the Western world. While ideological considerations may have had a certain influence, privatisation was used mainly as a political tool to build confidence among industrialists and to increase support for the government and the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Privatisation also contributed to balancing the budget, which was the core objective of Fascist economic policy in its first phase.|publisher=Cambridge Journal of Economics|doi=https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/beq051|volume=35|trans-lang=English}}</ref> Fascist Italy occupied [[Ethiopian Empire (1270–1974)|Ethiopia]] in addition to its earlier colonies of [[Somalia]] and [[Eritrea]].<ref>{{Citation|author=Stephen Gowans|year=2018|title=Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom|chapter=Imperialism|page=58–59|pdf=https://ipfs.io/ipfs/bafykbzaced4iiga4ngtxusr2civjxewbili5jne2sbpefbx2s3im2kphattzc?filename=Stephen%20Gowans%20-%20Patriots%2C%20Traitors%20and%20Empires_%20The%20Story%20of%20Korea%E2%80%99s%20Struggle%20for%20Freedom-Baraka%20Books%20%282018%29.pdf|city=Montreal|publisher=Baraka Books|isbn=9781771861427|lg=https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=8435F6FF91279531705764823FDC2A7F}}</ref>


Fascist Italy allied itself with another [[Far-right politics|extreme right]] [[capitalist]] regime, the [[German Reich (1933–1945)|German Reich]], and joined into the [[Second World War]] after Italian forces invaded the [[French Republic]], during the final days of the main German invasion of that nation. While seeing some territorial gains in Southern Europe in the initial part of the war, Fascist Italy would later prove itself to be an ineffectual military force, particularly in regards to the military events in [[Africa]] and [[Sicily]].
Fascist Italy allied itself with another [[Far-right politics|extreme right]] [[capitalist]] regime, the [[German Reich (1933–1945)|German Reich]], and joined into the [[Second World War]] after Italian forces invaded the [[French Republic]], during the final days of the main German invasion of that nation. From 1940 to mid-1943 Fascist Italy was the primary Axis power in both Africa and the Balkans.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Simon Gonsalves|title=The Italian Army in the Second World War: A Historiographical Analysis|title-url=https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/gljuh/vol5/iss1/2|date=10-9-2017}}</ref> While seeing some territorial gains in Southern Europe in the initial part of the war, Fascist Italy would eventually prove itself to be an inadequate military force, particularly in regards to the military events in [[Africa]] and [[Sicily]].


By 1943, after the [[World War II|Allies]] had invaded mainland Italy, the long-time dictator, Benito Mussonlini, was removed from power after a soft-coup. However, he would later be put back into power, by the [[Greater German Reich|Germans]], and lead a puppet-state, known as the [[Italian Social Republic]].
By 1943, after the [[World War II|Allies]] had invaded mainland Italy, the long-time dictator, Benito Mussolini, was removed from power after a soft-coup. However, the Third Reich later returned him to power to lead a puppet state, known as the [[Italian Social Republic]].


[[Fascism]] in Italy would end in 1945, after Mussonlini was killed, and his puppet state fell. The Kingdom of Italy itself was replaced by the modern [[Italian Republic|Republic of Italy]], after a referendum was held.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=historians.org|title=The Rise and Fall of Fascism|url=https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-18-what-is-the-future-of-italy-(1945)/the-rise-and-fall-of-fascism|retrieved=2022-7-19|quote=The final collapse of fascism, though set off when Mussolini’s frightened lieutenants threw him overboard, was brought about by allied military victories plus the open rebellion of the people. Among the latter the strikes of industrial workers in Nazi-controlled northern Italy led the way. Nothing of this sort happened in Germany.}}</ref>
[[Fascism]] in Italy ended in 1945, after Mussolini was killed, and his puppet state fell. The Kingdom of Italy itself was replaced by the modern [[Italian Republic|Republic of Italy]] after a referendum was held.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=historians.org|title=The Rise and Fall of Fascism|url=https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-18-what-is-the-future-of-italy-(1945)/the-rise-and-fall-of-fascism|retrieved=2022-7-19|quote=The final collapse of fascism, though set off when Mussolini’s frightened lieutenants threw him overboard, was brought about by allied military victories plus the open rebellion of the people. Among the latter the strikes of industrial workers in Nazi-controlled northern Italy led the way. Nothing of this sort happened in Germany.}}</ref>


== See also ==
== History ==


* [[Nazi Germany]]
=== Background ===
* [[Spanish State (1939-1975)]]
After 1821, the French [[bourgeoisie]] had a significant influence on the Italian peninsula, particularly through liberalism and nationalism. A national upsurge, headed by commercial enterprisers, bureaucrats, and privileged intellectuals, unified numerous states on the peninsula, and major European foreign offices facilitated this process. North Italy’s emerging business community would profit immensely from this upsurge. The lower classes, however, generally acted passively throughout this transformation even though they constituted three fourths of the population, but captains and orators were useful in manufacturing consent.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Carl T. Schmidt|chapter=I|title=The Corporate State in Action|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1939|isbn=0 0001 0353909 4|page=4–5}}</ref>
* [[Empire of Japan (1931-1947)]]


== References ==
Italy experienced an incomplete [[bourgeois revolution]] following the [[French Revolution]]. The French overthrew the old Italian monarchies and installed liberal republican governments, which came under the rule of the Bonaparte family after [[Napoleon Bonaparte|Napoleon]]'s rise to power. Absolute monarchist rule returned in 1814 but could not restore [[feudalism]]. Italy remained divided and dominated by foreign powers despite attempted revolutions in 1820, 1831, and 1848. The [[aristocracy]] and Catholic Church largely excluded the bourgeoisie from power.<ref name=":0222">{{Citation|author=Neil Faulkner|year=2013|title=A Marxist History of the World: From Neanderthals to Neoliberals|chapter=The Age of Blood and Iron|page=152–154|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzacedljwr5izotdclz23o3c5p4di4t3ero3ncbfytip55slhiz4otuls?filename=Neil%20Faulkner%20-%20A%20Marxist%20History%20of%20the%20World_%20From%20Neanderthals%20to%20Neoliberals-Pluto%20Press%20%282013%29.pdf|publisher=Pluto Press|isbn=9781849648639|lg=https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=91CA6C708BFE15444FE27899217FBA8E}}</ref>
 
=== Unification ===
The [[Kingdom of Sardinia|Kingdom of Piedmont]] under [[Victor Emanuel]] formed an alliance with [[Second French Empire|France]] and defeated [[Austrian Empire (1804–1867)|Austria]] in northern Italy in 1859. It quickly defeated the Austrian-backed monarchs of minor Italian states, and the new liberal governments of Lombardy, Parma, Modena, Emilia, Romagna, and Tuscany voted to unify with Piedmont. In May 1860, [[Giuseppe Garibaldi]] landed in Sicily and overthrew the [[Kingdom of the Two Sicilies]], unifying it with the rest of Italy. Piedmont took control of Venice with [[Kingdom of Prussia|Prussian]] support in 1866 after defeating Austria in the Austro-Prussian War. Italy annexed the [[State of the Church|Papal States]] in 1870 after [[Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte|Louis-Napoleon]]'s defeat, which removed the Pope's main protector.
 
The Italian unification helped the country industrialize but did not improve life for the [[Peasantry|peasants]]. Garibaldi's troops killed rebellious peasants to gain support from southern [[Landlord|landlords]], who relied on mercenaries who would later become the mafia to prevent land redistribution.<ref name=":0222" />
 
As small and large businesses suffered during the 1910s and early 1920s, many wealthy antisocialists supported the Fascists for their counterrevolutionary violence,<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Roy Domenico|chapter=2|title=Remaking Italy in the Twentieth Century|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nj8DV_s8ZaYC|location=Lanham|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.|year=2002|page=36–53|ISBN=0-8476-9637-5}}</ref> including the MI5, a British intelligence agency that wanted the Italians to stay in [[WWI]].<ref name=Guardian2009-10-13>{{safesubst:citation|author=Kington Tom|date=13 October 2009|title=Recruited by MI5: the name's Mussolini.  Benito Mussolini documents reveal Italian dictator got start in politics in 1917 with help of £100 weekly wage from MI5|title-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160210105414/https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/13/benito-mussolini-recruited-mi5-italy|website=www.TheGuardian.com|publisher=[[The Guardian]]|location=London}}</ref>
 
===Fascism===
In their bid for political power, the Fascists killed over 3,000 other Italians from 1919 to 1922.<ref name=pg330>{{safesubst:citation|author=Micheal Clodfelter|title=Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures |title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kNzCDgAAQBAJ |edition=fourth |location= Jefferson, North Carolina |publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc.|year=2017|page=330|isbn=978-0-7864-7470-7}}</ref> After the March on Rome, the aristocracy appointed Mussolini as the head of state on October 28, 1922. Under the excuse of removing ‘government waste’, he removed the federal government from the Kingdom of Italy’s remote areas, thereby depriving peasants and other rural workers of protections from big business’s abuses.<ref>https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1922/11/03/99094169.html</ref> The bourgeois state also passed a law on December 3, 1922, intended to reduce the size and function of the government, reform tax laws, and reduce spending. In January 1923, the bourgeois state eliminated rent-control laws under the excuse that they prevented landlords from building new housing; now landlords were allowed to increase their profit and holdings. After tenants protested this, the bourgeois state eliminated their unions, inflating Rome’s rent, and depriving many families of their homes, some of whom chose to live in caves as substitutes.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|title=Mussolini Forbids Tenants’ Meeting|title-url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1923/02/10/issue.html|date=1923-02-10|publisher=New York Times Company}}</ref>
 
In July 1933, the Kingdom of Italy signed the Four-Power Pact with [[France]], the [[Third Reich]], and the [[United Kingdom]]. It also agreed to a non-aggression pact with the [[Soviet Union]] on September 2, 1933, but entered the [[Anti-Comintern Pact]] regardless on November 1937, and provided military assistance to Iberian anticommunists during the [[Spanish Civil War]]. In 1935, it reinvaded the [[Ethiopian Empire]], disturbing other Western powers, and massacred dozens of thousands of Ethiopians,<ref name=pg355>{{safesubst:citation|author=Micheal Clodfelter|title=Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kNzCDgAAQBAJ |edition=fourth |location= Jefferson, North Carolina |publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc.|year=2017|page=355|isbn=978-0-7864-7470-7}}</ref> 18,000–19,000 of whom were in Addis Ababa alone.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Adeyinka Makinde|title=History: Italy’s 1937 Ethiopian Massacre Finally Comes to Light|title-url=https://wp.me/p2vCQD-nFGH|date=2018-05-25}}</ref> In total, the anticommunists probably massacred over 276,000 people in the Horn of Africa from 1924 to 1940, and 100,000 Libyans from 1923 to 1932.<ref name=pg355/> The Kingdom of Italy signed the Pact of Steel with the Third Reich in May 1939, and invaded Albania during the same year, massacring 160 Albanians.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Owen Pearson|title=Albania and King Zog: Independence, Republic and Monarchy, 1908–1939|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3_Sh3y9IMZAC|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic|year=2004|page=445|ISBN=9781845110130}}</ref> The Kingdom of Italy cofounded the [[Axis]] with the Third Reich in 1940, and in 1941 the non-aggression pact with the Soviets expired and it participated in [[Operation Barbarossa]], massacring millions of Soviets.
 
==Politics==
With a few brief exceptions, the lower classes were passive in the Kingdom of Italy’s politics. Even after the electoral reform of 1882, most people were without franchise, and universal suffrage remained unavailable to men until 1912. The base of political power always rested with a minority of upper-class men, regardless of who exactly was heading the state.<ref name=pg7>{{safesubst:citation|author=Carl T. Schmidt|chapter=I|title=The Corporate State in Action|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1939|isbn=0 0001 0353909 4|page=7–8|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp#page/n22/mode/1up}}</ref> The parliamentary system resisted even the most modest of reforms, and the political system left the lower classes and some privileged intellectuals dissatisfied.<ref name=pg10>{{safesubst:citation|author=Carl T. Schmidt|chapter=I|title=The Corporate State in Action|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1939|isbn=0 0001 0353909 4|page=10|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp#page/n25/mode/1up}}</ref>
 
==Economy==
The lower classes lived meagerly at best and desperately poor at worst; an official enquiry indicated that their living conditions could hardly have been worse at any point during the previous two millennia. Many peasants owned no more than two tiny strips of land, if any, and had to get the rest of their income by working for the rural [[bourgeoisie]]. By the early 1910s, two-thirds of the farm land belonged to proprietors. The remaining farm land was divided in small-holdings among nearly five million peasants, and millions of other workers simply had no land at all. The bourgeoisie dominated the North’s fertile regions; most Italian land consisted of mountains, parched tablelands, swampy moors, and other areas unsuitable for agriculture. Consequently, the Kingdom of Italy had relatively little to offer in terms of natural resources.<ref name=pg6>{{safesubst:citation|author=Carl T. Schmidt|chapter=I|title=The Corporate State in Action|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1939|isbn=0 0001 0353909 4|page=6|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp#page/n21/mode/1up}}</ref> Unclean shelter, excessive taxes, tariffs, poverty, and other detrimental phenomena dominated the lower classes, especially those in the rural regions, and the proprietors did nothing to ameliorate their situation.<ref name=pg7/>
 
===Fascism===
{{quote|One contributor to a Shinseikai publication put it bluntly, charging that, for all its nationalistic boasting, Italian Fascism had failed to come to terms with finance capitalism—indeed, Fascism was but the “naked figure of capitalism.”|Reto Hofmann|<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Reto Hofmann|chapter=3|title=The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NO5IDwAAQBAJ|location=Ithaca and London|publisher=Cornell University Press|year=2015|page=79|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=NO5IDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA79|ISBN=978-0-8014-5341-0}}</ref>}}
 
Contrary to whatever the party programme suggested, the dictatorship of the Fascist bourgeoisie soon implemented history’s first modern privatization programme from 1922 to 1925. Phenomena such as tolled motorways, monopolies on match sales and life insurances, Italy’s telephone sector, and Italy’s largest machinery producer, were all transferred to the private sector.<ref name=Bel>{{safesubst:citation|author=Germà Bel|title=The First Privatization: Selling SOEs and Privatizing Public Monopolies in Fascist Italy (1922–1925)|title-url=http://www.ub.edu/graap/bel_Italy_fascist.pdf|location=Barcelona|publisher=Universitat de Barcelona (GiM-IREA) & Barcelona Graduate School of Economics|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120905202251/http://www.ub.edu/graap/bel_Italy_fascist.pdf|archivedate=2012-09-05|accessdate=2020-01-29}}</ref> It is true that after 1925 the bourgeois state committed more direct intervention in economic affairs, but it intended these regulations strictly for big business:
 
{{quote|Beyond the frontiers there has been a misunderstanding of the meaning of one of Mussolini’s phrases to the effect that three-quarters of the Italian economic system, both industrial and agricultural, is under State supervision. Almost all the medium-sized and little firms and the great majority of slightly larger firms, with the exception of a few categories, are completely outside the sphere of the State’s healing activity.|Signor Pirelli|<ref name>{{safesubst:citation|author=Carl T. Schmidt|chapter=VI|title=The Corporate State in Action|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1939|isbn=0 0001 0353909 4|page=131|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp#page/n146/mode/1up}}</ref>}}
 
The anticommunists did not institute regulations to protect the proletariat, nor to micromanage businesses, but simply to assist the pursuit of capital.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Carl T. Schmidt|chapter=VI|title=The Corporate State in Action|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1939|isbn=0 0001 0353909 4|page=133–4}}</ref> Powerful authorities looked upon the Corporations as useful auxiliaries to the going order:
 
{{quote|[O]ne must first and foremost exclude the State or any public body such as a syndicate, or more important still a Corporation, from taking upon itself the management of businesses and thus eliminating private enterprise or placing it in a thoroughly subordinate position. This would be in contradiction to the Charter of Labor.|Gino Arias|<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Carl T. Schmidt|chapter=VI|title=The Corporate State in Action|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1939|isbn=0 0001 0353909 4|page=132–3}}</ref>}}
 
The anticommunists replaced the syndicates and unions with pseudodemocratic organizations that could neither support strikes, nor negotiate wages, nor negotiate working conditions, and normally sided in favor of the capitalists<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Carl T. Schmidt|chapter=IV|title=The Corporate State in Action|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp|edition=|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1939|isbn=0 0001 0353909 4|page=76–79, 93–94}}</ref> (rendering them ‘unions’ in name only).<ref name=Quigley>{{safesubst:citation|author=Carrol Quigley|chapter=IX|title=Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time|title-url=https://ia903105.us.archive.org/30/items/CarrollQuigleyTragedyAndHope_201805/Carroll%20Quigley%20-%20Tragedy%20and%20Hope%20-%201974.pdf|location=Los Angeles|publisher=Angriff Press|year=1974|page=450–452|isbn=-0913022-14-4|oclc=}}</ref> Consequently, real wages stagnated.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|title=Labor Conditions in Fascist Italy|title-url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41817276|journal=Monthly Labor Review|year=1943|month=November|volume=57|number=5|page=911–931}}</ref>
 
===Liberal Phase===
In the liberal phase, the first privatizations were carried out, taxes were lowered, administrative reforms were carried out and the rent laws were changed considerably, which also abolished rent controls. In the beginning, the main aim was to please the wealthy classes. The finance minister was the liberal politician [[Alberto De Stefani]], who lowered market regulations and privatized state corporations during this brief, economically liberal phase. During this period there has been significant economic growth and unemployment has been reduced by 77 percent.<ref name=Powell>{{safesubst:citation|author=Jim Powell|title=The Economic Leadership Secrets of Benito Mussolin|title-url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimpowell/2012/02/22/the-economic-leadership-secrets-of-benito-mussolini/?sh=82cc3ae68e6c|date=2012-02-22|accessdate=2021-11-96}}</ref> It was not until the beginning of the Great Depression that the fascist regime abolished the laissez-faire regulations and sought the first initiatives for more self-sufficiency and protectionism. During the Great Depression, the fascist government followed a Keynesian fiscal policy.<ref name="Williams and Norgate">{{citation|title=Universal Aspects of Fascism|year=1928|author=James Strachey Barnes|publisher=De Gruyter Mouton|page=113-144}}</ref>
 
{{quote|To-day we can affirm that the capitalistic method of production is out of date. So is the doctrine of laissez-faire, the theoretical basis of capitalism… To-day we are taking a new and decisive step in the path of revolution. A revolution, in order to be great, must be a social revolution.|Benito Mussolini|<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=James Strachey Barnest|chapter= |title=Universal Aspects of Fascism|title-url= |location=London|publisher=Williams and Norgate|year=1928|isbn= |page=113-114}}</ref>}}
 
{{quote|Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter's prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes' excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (1926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud.|Benito Mussolini|<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Gaetano Salvemini|chapter= |title=Under the Axe of Fascism|title-url= |location=London|publisher=Victor Gollancz Ltd.|year=1936|isbn= |page=131}}</ref>}}
 
===Corporatist Phase===
The corporatist phase was mainly accompanied by labor reforms. The best-known example is the Carta del Lavoro (Labor Charter) which was introduced in 1927. The Charter hereby officially declares that it considers private initiatives to be economically effective, thereby preserving the right to private property..<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20110722063713/http://www.historia.unimi.it/sezione/fonti/codificazione/cartalavoro.pdf Labour Charter in italian]</ref> Although the charter promises to only take state interventions "where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient", the state nevertheless began to play a more statist role economically from the Great Depression through the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI).
The IRI was initially intended to rescue companies during the Depression, but the measures ensured that, for example, the Bank of Italy was transformed from a private to a public central bank through the banking law<ref>[https://www.bancaditalia.it/chi-siamo/storia/istituzione/index.html Dall'istituzione della Banca d'Italia alla legge bancaria del 1936]</ref> and also in other economic areas the state became a shareholder of large companies. In this way, the IRI - and with it the Italian state - became the owner of around 20% of the national share capital and large entrepreneurs (e.g. with Italsider in the steel and shipbuilding sector, and  with Alfa Romeo in the automotive sectors) in the Italian banking sector.<ref name="Editori Laterza">{{citation|title=Storia dell'Iri|year=2012|author=Velerio Castronovo|publisher=Editori Laterza|page=27}}</ref> In this way the fascist state, willingly or not, became the owner of a large part of the economy. This phase was also characterized by Mussolini himself as state capitalism.
 
{{quote|Three-fourths of the Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state. And if I dare to introduce to Italy state capitalism or state socialism, which is the reverse side of the medal, I will have the necessary subjective and objective conditions to do it.|Benito Mussolini|<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Gianni Toniolo|chapter= |title=The Oxford Handbook of the Italian Economy Since Unification|title-url= |location=London|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2013|isbn= |page=59}}</ref>}}
 
The corporate phase represents less of a holistic economic order, but more of a regulation of the mode of production. With the syndical laws, the Italian state initially created 12 corporations, which in turn were divided into employer and employee unions. The aim was to create cooperation between the classes, whereby large companies have repeatedly hindered this cooperation between the classes, whereby only a few successes could be achieved with the corporate system (see also: social policy).
 
===Socialization Laws===
Shortly after his dismissal by the Fascist Grand Council, Mussolini was arrested and later freed by German troops. Later, parts of the Wehrmacht, SS and fascist militias (later called the Black Brigades) constructed the Italian Social Republic.<ref name="Falanga, 2008, p. 229">{{citation|title=Mussolinis Vorposten in Hitlers Reich. Italiens Politik in Berlin 1933–1945|year=2008|author=Gianluca Falanga|publisher=Links Christoph Verlag|page=229}}</ref> The social republic again represented a phase in which the original radicalism of fascism was ''reawakened''. This was followed by the Verona Congress in Italy, in which, among other things, the ''socialization of the economy'' was established. The Socialization law<ref>[Decreto Legislativo del Duce 12 febbraio 1944, n. 375]</ref> included the expropriation of large enterprises which employ equity of more than one million lire or over a hundred workers. All state-owned corporations were also included in the socialization process. The law also regulated the secret election of employee representatives, who were elected by the employees, manufacturers, technicians and administrative employees. Only employees who are over 25 years old and have been employed in the company for five years would have been eligible to vote.
In the draft constitution for the Italian Social Republic<ref>[https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Italia,_Repubblica_Sociale_-_Progetto_di_Costituzione Progetto di Costituzione]</ref>, a parliament was also planned, the members of which would represent the respective syndicates (e.g. the syndicate of steel workers, craftsmen, artisans, farmers, etc.) and these syndicates would fill parliament instead of parties. Social groups such as mothers, veterans, the youth (through the youth organization of the fascist republican party) or people hindered by the war would have been allowed to vote for their respective representative groups in parliament. Mussolini hoped to regain the confidence of the working classes with these laws. The socialization laws were partially implemented. The actual expropriation also took place, e.g. B. the expropriation of FIAT.<ref>[https://digilander.libero.it/rsi_analisi/9.htm Socializzazione della “Fiat” Società per azioni con sede in Torino</ref> However, due to the war, socialization in the Social Republic was not implemented too intensely and after the war the efforts to socialize the economy were no longer taken into account by the new Italian republic.
 
===Social policies===
During the Fascist era there were some curtailments of social laws, as well as the abolition of a luxury tax. Nevertheless, some social policy laws were able to prevail in Fascist Italy, such as the occupational health protection for women and children,<ref>[Regio Decreto no. 653 04/26/1923]</ref> medical health insurance for people with low incomes,<ref>[Regio Decreto no. 2841 30/12/1923]</ref> the introduction of a public unemployment insurance,<ref>[Regio Decreto no. 3158 30/12/1923]</ref> the introduction of old-age and disability insurance,<ref>[Regio Decreto no. 3184 12/30/1923]</ref> compulsory employment insurance,<ref>[Regio Decreto no. 928 13/05/1929]</ref> a compulsory tuberculosis insurance,<ref>[Regio Decreto no. 2055 27/10/1927]</ref> the reduction of working hours to 40 hours a week (but including Wage cuts),<ref>[Regio Decreto no. 1768 05/29/1937]</ref> as well as the introduction of credit unions, whose borrowing was intended for farmers and artisans.<ref>[Regio Decreto no. 1706 08/26/1937]</ref>
 
===Consumerism===
The Fascists understood the power of advertising and actually established laboratories in Milan and Turin to study the responses of people subjected to publicity images.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Karen Pinkus|chapter=1|title=Bodily Regimes: Italian Advertising under Fascism|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5FCIHjGLiYUC|location=Minnesota|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|year=1995|page=10|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=5FCIHjGLiYUC&pg=PA10|ISBN=0-8166-2562-X}}</ref> The Duce himself often assisted businesses by officially endorsing their products, though he preferred to portray himself as a producer rather than a consumer. At one point he exclaimed ‘I say, and I authorize you to repeat it: your chocolate is really exquisite!’ when visiting the Perugina chocolate plant in 1923, which lead capitalists to circulate his exclamation as an endorsement of a particular brand name, but eventually Fascist officers forced Perugina to withdraw the slogan; it was directly conflicting with the mechanisms of Fascism’s market-driven competition.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Karen Pinkus|chapter=1|title=Bodily Regimes: Italian Advertising under Fascism|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5FCIHjGLiYUC|location=Minnesota|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|year=1995|page=17|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=5FCIHjGLiYUC&pg=PA17|ISBN=0-8166-2562-X}}</ref>
 
The revaluation of the lira, the higher import taxes on raw materials like sugar, and other economic factors, strained the confectionery industry during the 1930s. To overcome this, Perugina-Buitoni launched a campaign to promote consumer interest in their chocolates: including cheap figurines based on the various characters from the Four Musketeers radio programme. The campaign proved massively successful, to the point where the chocolates themselves were only secondary for collectors, and generated what was effectively another stock market: people often traded the figurines through newspapers, counterfeited them, stole them, trafficked them, and held contests involving them. Eventually, the Ministry of Finance severely restricted these contests in 1938, officially with the justification that they harmed the contestants and detracted from the value of labor itself, but the actual motive may have been to concentrate Fascist capital into the bourgeois state rather than between consumers.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Karen Pinkus|chapter=1|title=Bodily Regimes: Italian Advertising under Fascism|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5FCIHjGLiYUC|location=Minnesota|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|year=1995|page=18–19|ISBN=0-8166-2562-X}}</ref>
 
==Infrastructure==
The railway system was in poor shape during World War I, but shortly after 1918 the proletariat steadily restored it in working order,<ref name=Mikkelson>{{safesubst:citation|author=David Mikkelson|title=Mussolini and On Time Trains|title-url=https://www.snopes.com/?p=24755|date=2007-09-29|accessdate=2020-03-11}}</ref> perhaps in part because nobody managed to successfully privatize the railsways.<ref name=Bel/> Nonetheless, the much hyped adherence to timetables was probably quite average in reality.<ref name=Mikkelson/>
 
===Healthcare===
Illnesses such as malaria, tuberculosis, and pellagra were common among the lower classes.<ref name=pg7/> Nonetheless, death and morbidity rates were on the decline, even after the triumph of Fascism.<ref name=pg89>{{safesubst:citation|author=Carl T. Schmidt|chapter=IV|title=The Corporate State in Action|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1939|isbn=0 0001 0353909 4|page=89|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp#page/n104/mode/1up}}</ref>
 
In March 1933, the Fascist authorities selected the town of Gruaro to experiment with a newly developed diphtheria vaccine,<ref>{{safesubst:citation|title-url=http://www.laruotagruaro.it/download/ar_gruaro_pagg-234-235-236.pdf|title=Gruaro - Venti secoli di storia|page=234–236}}</ref> and 253 children aged between thirteen months and eight years were recruited in this prophylactic operation despite the village doctor’s opposition. Immediately after the vaccine’s administration, however, the patients began to experience symptoms of varying severity; they were promptly admitted to the hospital of Portogruaro and the pediatric hospital run by Prof. Gino Frontali in Padua where, despite the implementation of emergency measures, twenty-eight of the children died. Later it was discovered that a container of serum, prepared in a laboratory of the National Serum Therapy Institute of Naples, had been improperly boiled, thus exposing the patients to the still active and unattenuated bacterium. The Fascists let the incident go unpublished and no judicial inquiry was opened into it.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|title-url=https://www.ilgazzettino.it/nordest/venezia/bambini_cavie_vaccino_sperimentale_gruaro_venezia_1933_fascismo-224003.html|title=Bimbi usati come cavie: sparito il fascicolo sulla strage di Gruaro|date=2013-12-03}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:citation|title-url=http://www.veneziatoday.it/cronaca/strage-gruaro-2933-bambini-morti-vaccino.html|title="Noi, bambini scelti come cavie". La verità sulla strage di Gruaro del '33}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:citation|title-url=https://www.ilgazzettino.it/nordest/venezia/dottor_sergio_borellini_strage_gruaro_vaccini_anti_difterite_medico_salv_ograve_bimbi_1933_portogruaro_venezia-413307.html|title=Quel dottore che salvò migliaia di bimbi rifiutandosi di vaccinarli|date=2014-05-13}}</ref>
 
===Education===
Illiteracy was common among the lower classes, and shrunk at a slow rate.<ref name=pg7/> Worker’s unions increased literacy,<ref name=pg16>{{safesubst:citation|author=Carl T. Schmidt|chapter=I|title=The Corporate State in Action|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1939|isbn=0 0001 0353909 4|page=16|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/corporatestatein010773mbp#page/n31/mode/1up}}</ref> which the anticommunists later appropriated. The Fascist bourgeoisie spent more money on urban schools, but literacy increased only steadily, and schooling in rural communities remained very inadequate.<ref name=pg89/>
 
==Culture==
The Italian Fascists frequently referred to the Roman Empire as a source of inspiration, and sought to create a new sort of Roman Empire for the future. Nonetheless, they also referred to medieval elements as well. The National Fascist Party’s official anthem ''Giovinezza'', for example, referred to Dante Alighieri’s ‘vision’, specifically his marking of Italian borders on the Quarnaro River, thus including the province of Istria, a territory given to the Kingdom of Italy after World War I. Entertainment also served an important rôle for Fascism: the Fascist state supported some free concerts, sporting events and public works projects (designed to evoke civic pride) to appease the masses.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Michael Parenti|chapter=one|title=Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism & the Overthrow of Communism|title-url=https://cartiparenti.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf|location=San Francisco|publisher=City Light Books|year=1997|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190828235152/https://cartiparenti.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf|archivedate=2019-08-28|page=7|ISBN=0-87288-330-1}}</ref> It also promoted cinema, probably to compensate for the prevalence of illiteracy.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Alex Schmidt|coauthors=Ruth Ben-Ghiat & Adam Tod Brown|title=What Fascist Italy Reveals About Modern America|title-url=https://www.cracked.com/podcast/what-fascist-italy-reveals-about-modern-america|date=2019-04-22|accessdate=2020-04-24}}</ref> A particular medieval work that saw renewed interest, especially for the reinvasion of Ethiopia, was Petrarch’s Neo-Latin epic of the Second Punic War, ''Africa'', which inspired the famous fascist film ''Scipione l’Africano''.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Samuel Asad Abijuwa Agbamu|title=The Reception of Petrarch’s Africa in Fascist Italy|journal=International Journal of the Classical Tradition|date=05/February/2021|DOI=10.1007/s12138-020-00584-x}}</ref>
 
===Language===
With reunification in the 1860s the bourgeois state proceeded to standarize the Italian language and impose it where it had previously been rare. For example, the predominant languages in Aosta Valley had long been French and to a less extent Arpitan, but in the 1880s the state introduced Italian in tribunal and other official documents and Italian grew in further influence with the introduction of railways and industrialisation in general, slowly turning Italian into the common language among Aosta’s lower classes. However, the Fascist state of the 1920s began an aggressive campaign to eliminate all ‘foreign’ languages and dialects in national territory despite the objections of thousands. In 1923 the bourgeois state declared the suppression of certain schools and prohibited education of students in any language other than Italian. The state forcibly converted dozens of French toponyms into Italian ones.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|title=Histoire linguistique du Val d'Aoste, territoire francophone|title-url=http://sociolangue.canalblog.com/archives/2012/03/30/23889717.html|date=2012-03-30}}</ref> Even languages closely related to Italian (often called ‘dialects’), such as Emilian, Friulan,<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=James Minahan|title=One Europe, Many Nations: A Historical Dictionary of European National Groups|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NwvoM-ZFoAgC|location=Westport, Connecticut|publisher=Greenwood Press|year=2000|page=270|ISBN=0-313-30984-1}}</ref> Ladin<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=James Minahan|title=One Europe, Many Nations: A Historical Dictionary of European National Groups|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NwvoM-ZFoAgC|location=Westport, Connecticut|publisher=Greenwood Press|year=2000|page=394|ISBN=0-313-30984-1}}</ref>, Lombard, Ligurian, Neapolian<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Pasquale Verdicchio|title=Bound by Distance: Rethinking Nationalism Through the Italian Diaspora|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C5cyVqhHFLUC|location=Cranbury, New Jersey|publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson University Press|year=1997|page=57|ISBN=0-8386-3683-7}}</ref> , Piedmontese, Romagnolo, Sardinian, Sicilian, Venetian<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=James B. Minahan|title=Encyclopedia of Stateless Nations: Ethnic and National Groups around the World|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pGClDAAAQBAJ|location=Santa Barbara, California|publisher=Greenwood|year=2016|page=448|ISBN=978-1-61069-953-2}}</ref> and elsewhat, were all suppressed. The one notable exception to this homogenization was the promotion of Latin, which witnessed a new age of poetry, literature, journalism, inscriptions, prose competitions, and vocabulary, frequently with Fascist themes, as a result both of state and extrastate actors.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|last1=Lamers|first1=Han|last2=Reitz-Joosse|first2=Bettina|title=Lingua Lictoria: The Latin Literature of Italian Fascism|journal=Classical Receptions Journal|publisher=Oxford University Press|volume=8|issue=2|year=2015|page=216–252|DOI=10.1093/crj/clv001}}</ref>
 
Sardinian culture had only continued to decline in the 1860s and later,<ref>"In 1861 Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of Italy, and the island became part of the unified Italian state. Sardinia's distinct language and culture as well as its geographic isolation from the Italian mainland, made it something of a forgotten province, however." {{citation|title-url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Sardinia-island-Italy/Aragonese-domination#ref333582|title=Sardinia, History, People and Points of Interest. Sardinia in a united Italy|publisher=Britannica}}</ref> but the process of forced Italianization had only intensified during Fascism;<ref>"Il ventennio fascista – come ha affermato Manlio Brigaglia ‒ segnò il definitivo ingresso della Sardegna nel “sistema" nazionale. L’isola fu colonialisticamente integrata nella cultura nazionale: modi di vita, costumi, visioni generali, parole d’ordine politiche furono imposte sia attraverso la scuola, dalla quale partì un’azione repressiva nei confronti dell’uso della lingua sarda, sia attraverso le organizzazione del partito..." Garroni, M. (2010). [https://art.torvergata.it/retrieve/handle/2108/1380/6630/capitolo%201.pdf ''La Sardegna durante il ventennio fascista''], art.torvergata.it</ref> the bourgeois state repressed local cultural expressions, including Sardinian mask festivals<ref>Deidda, Giancarlo (1990). ''Folk festivals in Sardinia'', Janus, p. 7</ref> and improvised poetry competitions,<ref>L. Marroccu, ''Il ventennio fascista''</ref><ref>M. Farinelli, ''The Invisible Motherland? The Catalan-Speaking Minority in Sardinia and Catalan Nationalism'', p. 15</ref><ref>{{citation|title-url=http://www.manifestosardo.org/quando-a-scuola-si-insegnava-la-lingua-sarda/|title=Quando a scuola si insegnava la lingua sarda|work=Il Manifesto Sardo}}</ref><ref name="Remundu">[http://www.sardegnacultura.it/j/v/253?s=23661&v=2&c=2767&c1=2797&t=1 ''Remundu Piras'', Sardegna Cultura]</ref><ref>Massimo Pittau, ''Grammatica del sardo illustre'', Nuoro, [http://www.pittau.it/Sardo/sardoillustre.html Premessa]</ref><ref>Salvi, Sergio (1974). ''Le lingue tagliate'', Rizzoli, p. 191</ref> and a large number of Sardinian surnames were forcibly ‘Italianized’. After an argument between the Sardinian poet Antioco Casula and the fascist journalist Gino Anchisi, who claimed that ‘once the region is moribund or dead, so will the dialect [''sic'']’, the Fascists managed to prohibit Sardinian from the printing press as well.<ref>{{citation|title-url=https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/3400254.pdf|title=Casula, Francesco. ''Sa chistione de sa limba in Montanaru e oe''}}</ref><ref>{{citation|title-url=http://www.regione.sardegna.it/messaggero/1982_dicembre_21.pdf|title=Masala, Francesco. ''Est torradu Montanaru'', Messaggero, 1982}}</ref> Antioco Casula tied the significance of Sardinian to the practices of cultural resistance of an indigenous ethnic group,<ref>{{citation|title-url=https://www.manifestosardo.org/montanaru-e-la-lingua-sarda/|title=Montanaru e la lingua sarda|year=2019|website=Il Manifesto Sardo}}</ref><ref group=note>Casula's reply to Anchisi, arguing in favour of Sardinian as the only means through which the island’s cultural reawakening could be pursued, was never published in the newspaper ''L'Unione Sarda'', whose editorial staff properly censored it in accordance with the ruling class’s directives. The newspaper then justified itself in the following way, in a personal letter addressed to Casula on 12 September: ‘Your article could not be published because part of it clearly exalts the region too much. This is absolutely forbidden by the current provisions of the Head of Government’s press office, which specifically state: ‘In no way and for no reason does the region exist.’ We are very sorry. However, we would ask you to redo the article by simply talking about your poetry in dialect [''sic''] without touching on this dangerous subject!’ {{citation|title-url=https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/3400254.pdf|author=Francesco Casula|title=Sa chistione de sa limba in Montanaru e oe|page=66}}</ref> whose linguistic repertoire had to be introduced in school to regain a lost dignity.<ref>«Il diffondere l’uso della lingua sarda in tutte le scuole di ogni ordine e grado non è per gli educatori sardi soltanto una necessità psicologica alla quale nessuno può sottrarsi, ma è il solo modo di essere Sardi, di essere cioè quello che veramente siamo per conservare e difendere la personalità del nostro popolo. E se tutti fossimo in questa disposizione di idee e di propositi ci faremmo rispettare più di quanto non-ci rispettino.» {{citation|author=Antioco Casula|title=Poesie scelte|publisher=Edizioni 3T|place=Cagliari|year=1982|page=35}}</ref>
 
Another famed poet from Sardinia, Salvatore (''Bore'') Poddighe, fell into a severe depression and took his own life a few years after Cagliari’s police commissioner seized his masterwork (''Sa Mundana Cummedia''). When the bourgeois state officially prohibited the use of Sardinian in schools as part of its 1934  national educational plan against the alloglot ‘dialects’, the then Sardinian-speaking children were confronted with another means of communication that was supposed to be their own from then onwards too.<ref>Bolognesi, Roberto. ''The Phonology of Campidanian Sardinian: A Unitary Account of a Self-organizing Structure'', 1998, 6</ref> Overall, this period in Sardinian history was the most aggressive cultural assimilation effort by the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,<ref name="gruyter">De Gruyter Mouton, ed. by Lubello, Sergio (2016). ''Manuale di linguistica italiana'', Manuals of Romance Linguistics 13, Lingue di minoranza, comunità alloglotte (Paul Videsott), Le singole lingue di minoranza e comunità alloglotte, 3.11: Sardo</ref><ref name="Lubello">Lubello, Sergio (2016). ''Manuale Di Linguistica Italiana'', De Gruyter, Manuals of Romance linguistics, p. 499</ref> which led to an even further sociolinguistic degradation of Sardinian.<ref name="degruyter.com">{{citation|title=Manuale di linguistica sarda|year=2017|author=Eduardo Blasco Ferrer, Peter Koch, Daniela Marzo|publisher=De Gruyter Mouton|page=36}}</ref> A minor exception to the repression was the Sardinian Anthem of the once Piedmontese Kingdom: being a royal tradition granted it immunity to prohibition.
 
After Austro-Hungary’s dissolution in the late 1910s, the Kingdom of Italy also annexed Austrian Littoral and proceeded to shut down hundreds of Slavic organizations, including cultural, educational, sporting, youth, social, professional, literary, political, journalist, co-operative, and financial ones, and specifically so with the Law on Associations in 1925, the Law on Public Demonstrations in 1926, and the Law on Public Order in the same year.<ref name="Cresciani_ClashOfCivilisations">{{safesubst:citation|author=Gianfranco Cresciani|title=Clash of civilisations|title-url=|journal=Italian Historical Society Journal|year=2004|volume=12|number=2|page=4}}</ref> Since April 13, 1920, the Fascists instigated riots against Triestine Slovenes, said to be retaliations for the assault that a Croatian population perpetrated against Italian troops occupying its territory in Split. Fascists destroyed numerous Slovene-owned shops and other buildings, culminating in one particular arson, directed by Francesco Giunta, against the ''Narodni dom'' or community hall for Triestine Slovenes.<ref name="Primorski90let2010">{{citation|title=90 let od požiga Narodnega doma v Trstu: Požig Narodnega doma ali šentjernejska noč tržaških Slovencev in Slovanov |trans-title=90 Years From the Arson of the National Hall in Trieste: Arson of the National Hall or the St. Bartholomew's Night of the Triestine Slovenes and Slavs|title-url=http://www.primorski.eu/dossiers/dossier/10/31/130144|newspaper=Primorski dnevnik |trans-newspaper=The Littoral Daily |language=Slovenian|year=2010 |page=14–15|access-date=28 February 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181010095839/http://www.primorski.eu/dossiers/dossier/10/31/130144|archive-date=10 October 2018}}</ref> Benito Mussolini praised this action as a ‘masterpiece of the Triestine fascism’,<ref name="Sestani2012-02">{{citation |title-url=https://docs.google.com/open?id=1kDBSJkZ2klBX9k8mY80C9HZZ-kO5iydHY7_t9DiV5xdZWSNt_CPas-GkxGX8 |title=Gli esuli istriani, dalmati e fiumani a Lucca |language=Italian|trans-title=The Istrian, Dalmatian and Rijeka Refugees in Lucca |publisher=Instituto storico della Resistenca e dell'Età Contemporanea in Provincia di Lucca |chapter=Il confine orientale: una terra, molti esodi |trans-chapter=The Eastern Border: One Land, Multiple Exoduses |date=10 February 2012 |editor=Sestani, Armando |page=12–13}}</ref> and in September 1920 he said:
 
{{quote|When dealing with such a race as Slavic — inferior and barbaric — we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy. We should not be afraid of new victims. The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps. I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians.|Benito Mussolini|<ref>{{citation|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HyVMfMQoSCYC |title=Aut aut |year=2011 |isbn=9788865761069 |author=Marta Verginella |chapter=Antislavismo, razzismo di frontiera?|page=40–1|language=Italian}}</ref>}}
[[File:Fascist Italianization.jpg|right|thumb|A leaflet from the Fascist era prohibiting singing or speaking in the ‘Slavic language’ in the streets and public places of Dignano (now Vodnjan, Croatia). Signed by the ''[[Squadrismo|Squadristi]]'', and threatening the use of ‘persuasive methods’ in enforcement.]]
This reflected a common Fascist opinion against the Croatian and Slovene minorities in the Julian March.<ref name="Sestani2012-02"/> After March 1923, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie officially prohibited these languages in administration, and after October 1925 in law courts as well. In 1923, in the context of the school reform prepared by the anticommunist [[Giovanni Gentile]], teaching in languages other than Italian was disallowed, although the Istro-Rumanian language in Šušnjevica was a minor exception.<ref name="PUŞCARIU">PUŞCARIU, Sextil. Studii istroromâne. Vol. II, București: 1926</ref> Some five hundred Slovene teachers, nearly half of all the Slovene teachers in the Littoral region, were moved by the Fascists to the interior of Italy, while Italian teachers were sent to teach Slovene children Italian.<ref name=":0">{{citation|title-url=https://www.dlib.si/details/URN:NBN:SI:DOC-JQ6XF18D|title=dLib.si – Izseljevanje iz Primorske med obema vojnama|website=www.dlib.si|access-date=2020-04-08}}</ref>
 
===Demography===
Initially most Italian Fascists tolerated Jews, gladly allowing antisocialist ones in their ranks, and oversaw the growth of a Zionist variety of fascism called Revisionist Maximalism. Until 1936, most Fascists were committed to [[Zionism]] and inspired some influential Zionists such as Vladimir Jabotinsky.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|last1=Baroud|first1=Ramzy|last2=Rubeo|first2=Romana|title=The Mussolini-Jabotinsky Connection: The Hidden Roots of Israel Fascist Past|title-url=https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=382910|date=2020-01-27}}</ref> One of the quarrels that Mussolini initially had with the German Fascists was that they were too anti-Semitic. However, the overwhelming popularity and dominance of the German Reich in the late 1930s eventually compelled the Kingdom of Italy to officially adopt anti-Semitism in 1938.<ref name=Bauerkämper>{{safesubst:citation|author=Arnd Bauerkämper|title=Transnational Fascism: Cross-Border Relations between Regimes and Movements in Europe, 1922–1939*|journal=East Central Europe|volume=37|location=Leiden|publisher=Koninklijke Brill|year=2010|page=214–246|DOI=10.1163/187633010X534469}}</ref> Some otherwise staunch Fascists, such as Giorgio Perlasca,<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Frank Mazzaglia|title=Commentary: Giorgio Perlasca: 'A Truly Magnificent Impostor'|title-url=https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/20191217/commentary-giorgio-perlasca-a-truly-magnificent-impostor|date=2019-12-17}}</ref> subsequently renounced their loyalty to the Duce because of this.
 
===Cuisine===
With the encouragement of a radical art group called the Futurists, the Fascist state prohibited pasta under the official excuse that it made men ‘weak’,<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Kantha Shelke|title=Pasta and Noodles: A Global History|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G5qRDQAAQBAJ|location=London|publisher=Reaktion Books Ltd|year=2016|page=23|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=G5qRDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT23|ISBN=9781780236971}}</ref> but the unofficial explanation is that the state did it to reduce imports for purposes of [[autarky]]. The Po Valley was an abundant supply of rice — in fact, Europe's largest rice-producing region, and Mussolini sought to use this as a base for Italy's food self-sufficiency. He declared in 1927 for November 1 to be "national rice day".<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20160229020645/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3579746/A-plateful-of-revolution.html A plateful of revolution]</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200129144535/http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,731118,00.html Foreign News: National Rice Day]</ref>
 
==See also==
 
*[[German Reich (1933–1945)|German Reich (1933–945)]]
*[[Spanish State (1939–1975)]]
*[[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Empire of Japan (1931–1947)]]
 
==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}
 
==References==
[[Category:Fascist countries]]
[[Category:Fascist countries]]
[[Category:Imperialist countries]]
[[Category:Imperialist countries]]
<references />

Latest revision as of 17:16, 8 January 2024

Kingdom of Italy
Regno d'Italia
1861–1946
Flag of Kingdom of Italy
Flags of Italy and the National Fascist Party
Coat of arms of Kingdom of Italy
Coat of arms
Motto: Credere, obbedire, combattere
(Motto of the National Fascist Party)
Location of Kingdom of Italy
CapitalRome
Religion
Roman Catholicism
Dominant mode of productionCapitalism (decaying)
GovernmentUnitary parliamentary monarchy (1861–1922)
Unitary bourgeois democracy under fascist influence (1922–1925)
Unitary fascist state (1925–1943)
• Monarch
Victor Emmanuel III
• Duce
Benito Mussolini
LegislatureParliament
Area
• Total
3,798,000 km²
Population
• 1936 estimate
42,993,602
CurrencyItalian Lira


The Kingdom of Italy was a state in southern Europe. From the March on Rome in 1922 until 1943, it was under the rule of the first fascist state in history, in a historical period commonly known as Fascist Italy. While in the years from 1922–1925, the régime still maintained a liberal façade, after 1925, it soon fully formed into a militantly anti-communist dictatorship headed by Benito Mussolini.[1]

Under the reactionary and despotic government, socialist and communist organizations, trade unions, and other organs of the working class saw massive repression and deprivation, with the economy being organized in accordance to the betterment of the wealthy, at the large expense of the workers. The Fascist régime also implemented the first modern privatization programs, as well as the mass cutting of social programs, in history.[2] Fascist Italy occupied Ethiopia in addition to its earlier colonies of Somalia and Eritrea.[3]

Fascist Italy allied itself with another extreme right capitalist regime, the German Reich, and joined into the Second World War after Italian forces invaded the French Republic, during the final days of the main German invasion of that nation. From 1940 to mid-1943 Fascist Italy was the primary Axis power in both Africa and the Balkans.[4] While seeing some territorial gains in Southern Europe in the initial part of the war, Fascist Italy would eventually prove itself to be an inadequate military force, particularly in regards to the military events in Africa and Sicily.

By 1943, after the Allies had invaded mainland Italy, the long-time dictator, Benito Mussolini, was removed from power after a soft-coup. However, the Third Reich later returned him to power to lead a puppet state, known as the Italian Social Republic.

Fascism in Italy ended in 1945, after Mussolini was killed, and his puppet state fell. The Kingdom of Italy itself was replaced by the modern Republic of Italy after a referendum was held.[5]

History[edit | edit source]

Background[edit | edit source]

After 1821, the French bourgeoisie had a significant influence on the Italian peninsula, particularly through liberalism and nationalism. A national upsurge, headed by commercial enterprisers, bureaucrats, and privileged intellectuals, unified numerous states on the peninsula, and major European foreign offices facilitated this process. North Italy’s emerging business community would profit immensely from this upsurge. The lower classes, however, generally acted passively throughout this transformation even though they constituted three fourths of the population, but captains and orators were useful in manufacturing consent.[6]

Italy experienced an incomplete bourgeois revolution following the French Revolution. The French overthrew the old Italian monarchies and installed liberal republican governments, which came under the rule of the Bonaparte family after Napoleon's rise to power. Absolute monarchist rule returned in 1814 but could not restore feudalism. Italy remained divided and dominated by foreign powers despite attempted revolutions in 1820, 1831, and 1848. The aristocracy and Catholic Church largely excluded the bourgeoisie from power.[7]

Unification[edit | edit source]

The Kingdom of Piedmont under Victor Emanuel formed an alliance with France and defeated Austria in northern Italy in 1859. It quickly defeated the Austrian-backed monarchs of minor Italian states, and the new liberal governments of Lombardy, Parma, Modena, Emilia, Romagna, and Tuscany voted to unify with Piedmont. In May 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi landed in Sicily and overthrew the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, unifying it with the rest of Italy. Piedmont took control of Venice with Prussian support in 1866 after defeating Austria in the Austro-Prussian War. Italy annexed the Papal States in 1870 after Louis-Napoleon's defeat, which removed the Pope's main protector.

The Italian unification helped the country industrialize but did not improve life for the peasants. Garibaldi's troops killed rebellious peasants to gain support from southern landlords, who relied on mercenaries who would later become the mafia to prevent land redistribution.[7]

As small and large businesses suffered during the 1910s and early 1920s, many wealthy antisocialists supported the Fascists for their counterrevolutionary violence,[8] including the MI5, a British intelligence agency that wanted the Italians to stay in WWI.[9]

Fascism[edit | edit source]

In their bid for political power, the Fascists killed over 3,000 other Italians from 1919 to 1922.[10] After the March on Rome, the aristocracy appointed Mussolini as the head of state on October 28, 1922. Under the excuse of removing ‘government waste’, he removed the federal government from the Kingdom of Italy’s remote areas, thereby depriving peasants and other rural workers of protections from big business’s abuses.[11] The bourgeois state also passed a law on December 3, 1922, intended to reduce the size and function of the government, reform tax laws, and reduce spending. In January 1923, the bourgeois state eliminated rent-control laws under the excuse that they prevented landlords from building new housing; now landlords were allowed to increase their profit and holdings. After tenants protested this, the bourgeois state eliminated their unions, inflating Rome’s rent, and depriving many families of their homes, some of whom chose to live in caves as substitutes.[12]

In July 1933, the Kingdom of Italy signed the Four-Power Pact with France, the Third Reich, and the United Kingdom. It also agreed to a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union on September 2, 1933, but entered the Anti-Comintern Pact regardless on November 1937, and provided military assistance to Iberian anticommunists during the Spanish Civil War. In 1935, it reinvaded the Ethiopian Empire, disturbing other Western powers, and massacred dozens of thousands of Ethiopians,[13] 18,000–19,000 of whom were in Addis Ababa alone.[14] In total, the anticommunists probably massacred over 276,000 people in the Horn of Africa from 1924 to 1940, and 100,000 Libyans from 1923 to 1932.[13] The Kingdom of Italy signed the Pact of Steel with the Third Reich in May 1939, and invaded Albania during the same year, massacring 160 Albanians.[15] The Kingdom of Italy cofounded the Axis with the Third Reich in 1940, and in 1941 the non-aggression pact with the Soviets expired and it participated in Operation Barbarossa, massacring millions of Soviets.

Politics[edit | edit source]

With a few brief exceptions, the lower classes were passive in the Kingdom of Italy’s politics. Even after the electoral reform of 1882, most people were without franchise, and universal suffrage remained unavailable to men until 1912. The base of political power always rested with a minority of upper-class men, regardless of who exactly was heading the state.[16] The parliamentary system resisted even the most modest of reforms, and the political system left the lower classes and some privileged intellectuals dissatisfied.[17]

Economy[edit | edit source]

The lower classes lived meagerly at best and desperately poor at worst; an official enquiry indicated that their living conditions could hardly have been worse at any point during the previous two millennia. Many peasants owned no more than two tiny strips of land, if any, and had to get the rest of their income by working for the rural bourgeoisie. By the early 1910s, two-thirds of the farm land belonged to proprietors. The remaining farm land was divided in small-holdings among nearly five million peasants, and millions of other workers simply had no land at all. The bourgeoisie dominated the North’s fertile regions; most Italian land consisted of mountains, parched tablelands, swampy moors, and other areas unsuitable for agriculture. Consequently, the Kingdom of Italy had relatively little to offer in terms of natural resources.[18] Unclean shelter, excessive taxes, tariffs, poverty, and other detrimental phenomena dominated the lower classes, especially those in the rural regions, and the proprietors did nothing to ameliorate their situation.[16]

Fascism[edit | edit source]

One contributor to a Shinseikai publication put it bluntly, charging that, for all its nationalistic boasting, Italian Fascism had failed to come to terms with finance capitalism—indeed, Fascism was but the “naked figure of capitalism.”

— Reto Hofmann, [19]


Contrary to whatever the party programme suggested, the dictatorship of the Fascist bourgeoisie soon implemented history’s first modern privatization programme from 1922 to 1925. Phenomena such as tolled motorways, monopolies on match sales and life insurances, Italy’s telephone sector, and Italy’s largest machinery producer, were all transferred to the private sector.[20] It is true that after 1925 the bourgeois state committed more direct intervention in economic affairs, but it intended these regulations strictly for big business:

Beyond the frontiers there has been a misunderstanding of the meaning of one of Mussolini’s phrases to the effect that three-quarters of the Italian economic system, both industrial and agricultural, is under State supervision. Almost all the medium-sized and little firms and the great majority of slightly larger firms, with the exception of a few categories, are completely outside the sphere of the State’s healing activity.

— Signor Pirelli, [21]


The anticommunists did not institute regulations to protect the proletariat, nor to micromanage businesses, but simply to assist the pursuit of capital.[22] Powerful authorities looked upon the Corporations as useful auxiliaries to the going order:

[O]ne must first and foremost exclude the State or any public body such as a syndicate, or more important still a Corporation, from taking upon itself the management of businesses and thus eliminating private enterprise or placing it in a thoroughly subordinate position. This would be in contradiction to the Charter of Labor.

— Gino Arias, [23]


The anticommunists replaced the syndicates and unions with pseudodemocratic organizations that could neither support strikes, nor negotiate wages, nor negotiate working conditions, and normally sided in favor of the capitalists[24] (rendering them ‘unions’ in name only).[25] Consequently, real wages stagnated.[26]

Liberal Phase[edit | edit source]

In the liberal phase, the first privatizations were carried out, taxes were lowered, administrative reforms were carried out and the rent laws were changed considerably, which also abolished rent controls. In the beginning, the main aim was to please the wealthy classes. The finance minister was the liberal politician Alberto De Stefani, who lowered market regulations and privatized state corporations during this brief, economically liberal phase. During this period there has been significant economic growth and unemployment has been reduced by 77 percent.[27] It was not until the beginning of the Great Depression that the fascist regime abolished the laissez-faire regulations and sought the first initiatives for more self-sufficiency and protectionism. During the Great Depression, the fascist government followed a Keynesian fiscal policy.[28]

To-day we can affirm that the capitalistic method of production is out of date. So is the doctrine of laissez-faire, the theoretical basis of capitalism… To-day we are taking a new and decisive step in the path of revolution. A revolution, in order to be great, must be a social revolution.

— Benito Mussolini, [29]


Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter's prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes' excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (1926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud.

— Benito Mussolini, [30]


Corporatist Phase[edit | edit source]

The corporatist phase was mainly accompanied by labor reforms. The best-known example is the Carta del Lavoro (Labor Charter) which was introduced in 1927. The Charter hereby officially declares that it considers private initiatives to be economically effective, thereby preserving the right to private property..[31] Although the charter promises to only take state interventions "where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient", the state nevertheless began to play a more statist role economically from the Great Depression through the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI). The IRI was initially intended to rescue companies during the Depression, but the measures ensured that, for example, the Bank of Italy was transformed from a private to a public central bank through the banking law[32] and also in other economic areas the state became a shareholder of large companies. In this way, the IRI - and with it the Italian state - became the owner of around 20% of the national share capital and large entrepreneurs (e.g. with Italsider in the steel and shipbuilding sector, and with Alfa Romeo in the automotive sectors) in the Italian banking sector.[33] In this way the fascist state, willingly or not, became the owner of a large part of the economy. This phase was also characterized by Mussolini himself as state capitalism.

Three-fourths of the Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state. And if I dare to introduce to Italy state capitalism or state socialism, which is the reverse side of the medal, I will have the necessary subjective and objective conditions to do it.

— Benito Mussolini, [34]


The corporate phase represents less of a holistic economic order, but more of a regulation of the mode of production. With the syndical laws, the Italian state initially created 12 corporations, which in turn were divided into employer and employee unions. The aim was to create cooperation between the classes, whereby large companies have repeatedly hindered this cooperation between the classes, whereby only a few successes could be achieved with the corporate system (see also: social policy).

Socialization Laws[edit | edit source]

Shortly after his dismissal by the Fascist Grand Council, Mussolini was arrested and later freed by German troops. Later, parts of the Wehrmacht, SS and fascist militias (later called the Black Brigades) constructed the Italian Social Republic.[35] The social republic again represented a phase in which the original radicalism of fascism was reawakened. This was followed by the Verona Congress in Italy, in which, among other things, the socialization of the economy was established. The Socialization law[36] included the expropriation of large enterprises which employ equity of more than one million lire or over a hundred workers. All state-owned corporations were also included in the socialization process. The law also regulated the secret election of employee representatives, who were elected by the employees, manufacturers, technicians and administrative employees. Only employees who are over 25 years old and have been employed in the company for five years would have been eligible to vote. In the draft constitution for the Italian Social Republic[37], a parliament was also planned, the members of which would represent the respective syndicates (e.g. the syndicate of steel workers, craftsmen, artisans, farmers, etc.) and these syndicates would fill parliament instead of parties. Social groups such as mothers, veterans, the youth (through the youth organization of the fascist republican party) or people hindered by the war would have been allowed to vote for their respective representative groups in parliament. Mussolini hoped to regain the confidence of the working classes with these laws. The socialization laws were partially implemented. The actual expropriation also took place, e.g. B. the expropriation of FIAT.[38] However, due to the war, socialization in the Social Republic was not implemented too intensely and after the war the efforts to socialize the economy were no longer taken into account by the new Italian republic.

Social policies[edit | edit source]

During the Fascist era there were some curtailments of social laws, as well as the abolition of a luxury tax. Nevertheless, some social policy laws were able to prevail in Fascist Italy, such as the occupational health protection for women and children,[39] medical health insurance for people with low incomes,[40] the introduction of a public unemployment insurance,[41] the introduction of old-age and disability insurance,[42] compulsory employment insurance,[43] a compulsory tuberculosis insurance,[44] the reduction of working hours to 40 hours a week (but including Wage cuts),[45] as well as the introduction of credit unions, whose borrowing was intended for farmers and artisans.[46]

Consumerism[edit | edit source]

The Fascists understood the power of advertising and actually established laboratories in Milan and Turin to study the responses of people subjected to publicity images.[47] The Duce himself often assisted businesses by officially endorsing their products, though he preferred to portray himself as a producer rather than a consumer. At one point he exclaimed ‘I say, and I authorize you to repeat it: your chocolate is really exquisite!’ when visiting the Perugina chocolate plant in 1923, which lead capitalists to circulate his exclamation as an endorsement of a particular brand name, but eventually Fascist officers forced Perugina to withdraw the slogan; it was directly conflicting with the mechanisms of Fascism’s market-driven competition.[48]

The revaluation of the lira, the higher import taxes on raw materials like sugar, and other economic factors, strained the confectionery industry during the 1930s. To overcome this, Perugina-Buitoni launched a campaign to promote consumer interest in their chocolates: including cheap figurines based on the various characters from the Four Musketeers radio programme. The campaign proved massively successful, to the point where the chocolates themselves were only secondary for collectors, and generated what was effectively another stock market: people often traded the figurines through newspapers, counterfeited them, stole them, trafficked them, and held contests involving them. Eventually, the Ministry of Finance severely restricted these contests in 1938, officially with the justification that they harmed the contestants and detracted from the value of labor itself, but the actual motive may have been to concentrate Fascist capital into the bourgeois state rather than between consumers.[49]

Infrastructure[edit | edit source]

The railway system was in poor shape during World War I, but shortly after 1918 the proletariat steadily restored it in working order,[50] perhaps in part because nobody managed to successfully privatize the railsways.[20] Nonetheless, the much hyped adherence to timetables was probably quite average in reality.[50]

Healthcare[edit | edit source]

Illnesses such as malaria, tuberculosis, and pellagra were common among the lower classes.[16] Nonetheless, death and morbidity rates were on the decline, even after the triumph of Fascism.[51]

In March 1933, the Fascist authorities selected the town of Gruaro to experiment with a newly developed diphtheria vaccine,[52] and 253 children aged between thirteen months and eight years were recruited in this prophylactic operation despite the village doctor’s opposition. Immediately after the vaccine’s administration, however, the patients began to experience symptoms of varying severity; they were promptly admitted to the hospital of Portogruaro and the pediatric hospital run by Prof. Gino Frontali in Padua where, despite the implementation of emergency measures, twenty-eight of the children died. Later it was discovered that a container of serum, prepared in a laboratory of the National Serum Therapy Institute of Naples, had been improperly boiled, thus exposing the patients to the still active and unattenuated bacterium. The Fascists let the incident go unpublished and no judicial inquiry was opened into it.[53][54][55]

Education[edit | edit source]

Illiteracy was common among the lower classes, and shrunk at a slow rate.[16] Worker’s unions increased literacy,[56] which the anticommunists later appropriated. The Fascist bourgeoisie spent more money on urban schools, but literacy increased only steadily, and schooling in rural communities remained very inadequate.[51]

Culture[edit | edit source]

The Italian Fascists frequently referred to the Roman Empire as a source of inspiration, and sought to create a new sort of Roman Empire for the future. Nonetheless, they also referred to medieval elements as well. The National Fascist Party’s official anthem Giovinezza, for example, referred to Dante Alighieri’s ‘vision’, specifically his marking of Italian borders on the Quarnaro River, thus including the province of Istria, a territory given to the Kingdom of Italy after World War I. Entertainment also served an important rôle for Fascism: the Fascist state supported some free concerts, sporting events and public works projects (designed to evoke civic pride) to appease the masses.[57] It also promoted cinema, probably to compensate for the prevalence of illiteracy.[58] A particular medieval work that saw renewed interest, especially for the reinvasion of Ethiopia, was Petrarch’s Neo-Latin epic of the Second Punic War, Africa, which inspired the famous fascist film Scipione l’Africano.[59]

Language[edit | edit source]

With reunification in the 1860s the bourgeois state proceeded to standarize the Italian language and impose it where it had previously been rare. For example, the predominant languages in Aosta Valley had long been French and to a less extent Arpitan, but in the 1880s the state introduced Italian in tribunal and other official documents and Italian grew in further influence with the introduction of railways and industrialisation in general, slowly turning Italian into the common language among Aosta’s lower classes. However, the Fascist state of the 1920s began an aggressive campaign to eliminate all ‘foreign’ languages and dialects in national territory despite the objections of thousands. In 1923 the bourgeois state declared the suppression of certain schools and prohibited education of students in any language other than Italian. The state forcibly converted dozens of French toponyms into Italian ones.[60] Even languages closely related to Italian (often called ‘dialects’), such as Emilian, Friulan,[61] Ladin[62], Lombard, Ligurian, Neapolian[63] , Piedmontese, Romagnolo, Sardinian, Sicilian, Venetian[64] and elsewhat, were all suppressed. The one notable exception to this homogenization was the promotion of Latin, which witnessed a new age of poetry, literature, journalism, inscriptions, prose competitions, and vocabulary, frequently with Fascist themes, as a result both of state and extrastate actors.[65]

Sardinian culture had only continued to decline in the 1860s and later,[66] but the process of forced Italianization had only intensified during Fascism;[67] the bourgeois state repressed local cultural expressions, including Sardinian mask festivals[68] and improvised poetry competitions,[69][70][71][72][73][74] and a large number of Sardinian surnames were forcibly ‘Italianized’. After an argument between the Sardinian poet Antioco Casula and the fascist journalist Gino Anchisi, who claimed that ‘once the region is moribund or dead, so will the dialect [sic]’, the Fascists managed to prohibit Sardinian from the printing press as well.[75][76] Antioco Casula tied the significance of Sardinian to the practices of cultural resistance of an indigenous ethnic group,[77][note 1] whose linguistic repertoire had to be introduced in school to regain a lost dignity.[78]

Another famed poet from Sardinia, Salvatore (Bore) Poddighe, fell into a severe depression and took his own life a few years after Cagliari’s police commissioner seized his masterwork (Sa Mundana Cummedia). When the bourgeois state officially prohibited the use of Sardinian in schools as part of its 1934 national educational plan against the alloglot ‘dialects’, the then Sardinian-speaking children were confronted with another means of communication that was supposed to be their own from then onwards too.[79] Overall, this period in Sardinian history was the most aggressive cultural assimilation effort by the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,[80][81] which led to an even further sociolinguistic degradation of Sardinian.[82] A minor exception to the repression was the Sardinian Anthem of the once Piedmontese Kingdom: being a royal tradition granted it immunity to prohibition.

After Austro-Hungary’s dissolution in the late 1910s, the Kingdom of Italy also annexed Austrian Littoral and proceeded to shut down hundreds of Slavic organizations, including cultural, educational, sporting, youth, social, professional, literary, political, journalist, co-operative, and financial ones, and specifically so with the Law on Associations in 1925, the Law on Public Demonstrations in 1926, and the Law on Public Order in the same year.[83] Since April 13, 1920, the Fascists instigated riots against Triestine Slovenes, said to be retaliations for the assault that a Croatian population perpetrated against Italian troops occupying its territory in Split. Fascists destroyed numerous Slovene-owned shops and other buildings, culminating in one particular arson, directed by Francesco Giunta, against the Narodni dom or community hall for Triestine Slovenes.[84] Benito Mussolini praised this action as a ‘masterpiece of the Triestine fascism’,[85] and in September 1920 he said:

When dealing with such a race as Slavic — inferior and barbaric — we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy. We should not be afraid of new victims. The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps. I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians.

— Benito Mussolini, [86]

A leaflet from the Fascist era prohibiting singing or speaking in the ‘Slavic language’ in the streets and public places of Dignano (now Vodnjan, Croatia). Signed by the Squadristi, and threatening the use of ‘persuasive methods’ in enforcement.

This reflected a common Fascist opinion against the Croatian and Slovene minorities in the Julian March.[85] After March 1923, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie officially prohibited these languages in administration, and after October 1925 in law courts as well. In 1923, in the context of the school reform prepared by the anticommunist Giovanni Gentile, teaching in languages other than Italian was disallowed, although the Istro-Rumanian language in Šušnjevica was a minor exception.[87] Some five hundred Slovene teachers, nearly half of all the Slovene teachers in the Littoral region, were moved by the Fascists to the interior of Italy, while Italian teachers were sent to teach Slovene children Italian.[88]

Demography[edit | edit source]

Initially most Italian Fascists tolerated Jews, gladly allowing antisocialist ones in their ranks, and oversaw the growth of a Zionist variety of fascism called Revisionist Maximalism. Until 1936, most Fascists were committed to Zionism and inspired some influential Zionists such as Vladimir Jabotinsky.[89] One of the quarrels that Mussolini initially had with the German Fascists was that they were too anti-Semitic. However, the overwhelming popularity and dominance of the German Reich in the late 1930s eventually compelled the Kingdom of Italy to officially adopt anti-Semitism in 1938.[90] Some otherwise staunch Fascists, such as Giorgio Perlasca,[91] subsequently renounced their loyalty to the Duce because of this.

Cuisine[edit | edit source]

With the encouragement of a radical art group called the Futurists, the Fascist state prohibited pasta under the official excuse that it made men ‘weak’,[92] but the unofficial explanation is that the state did it to reduce imports for purposes of autarky. The Po Valley was an abundant supply of rice — in fact, Europe's largest rice-producing region, and Mussolini sought to use this as a base for Italy's food self-sufficiency. He declared in 1927 for November 1 to be "national rice day".[93][94]

See also[edit | edit source]

Notes[edit | edit source]

  1. Casula's reply to Anchisi, arguing in favour of Sardinian as the only means through which the island’s cultural reawakening could be pursued, was never published in the newspaper L'Unione Sarda, whose editorial staff properly censored it in accordance with the ruling class’s directives. The newspaper then justified itself in the following way, in a personal letter addressed to Casula on 12 September: ‘Your article could not be published because part of it clearly exalts the region too much. This is absolutely forbidden by the current provisions of the Head of Government’s press office, which specifically state: ‘In no way and for no reason does the region exist.’ We are very sorry. However, we would ask you to redo the article by simply talking about your poetry in dialect [sic] without touching on this dangerous subject!’ Francesco Casula. Sa chistione de sa limba in Montanaru e oe (p. 66).

References[edit | edit source]

  1. “Mussolini’s appointment as prime minister in October 1922 did not see the immediate institution of dictatorial rule. Characteristic of the means the Fascists had employed to come to power, Blackshirt squad violence helped to reduce the influence of parliamentary opposition without outlawing it altogether. From the start of 1925, a fascist parliamentary majority (elected in April 1924 partly thanks to fascist intimidation) was able to pass a series of laws which dismantled the institutions of liberal democracy. Denoting a decline in squad power, the regular police forces together with the OVRA secret police (created in 1927) were now entrusted with the task of rooting out political opposition and controlling the population, with the assistance of Fascist Party organizations (including the Militia).”

    "What was the impact of Fascist rule upon Italy from 1922 to 1945?". Swansea University. Retrieved 2022-7-19.
  2. “Italy's first Fascist government applied a large-scale privatisation policy between 1922 and 1925. The government privatised the State monopoly of match sale, eliminated the State monopoly on life insurances, sold most of the State-owned telephone networks and services to private firms, reprivatised the largest metal machinery producer, and awarded concessions to private firms to build and operate motorways. These interventions represent one of the earliest and most decisive privatisation episodes in the Western world. While ideological considerations may have had a certain influence, privatisation was used mainly as a political tool to build confidence among industrialists and to increase support for the government and the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Privatisation also contributed to balancing the budget, which was the core objective of Fascist economic policy in its first phase.”

    Germa Bel (2011). The first privatisation: selling SOEs and privatising public monopolies in Fascist Italy (1922–1925), vol. 35. Cambridge Journal of Economics. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/beq051 [HUB]
  3. Stephen Gowans (2018). Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom: 'Imperialism' (pp. 58–59). [PDF] Montreal: Baraka Books. ISBN 9781771861427 [LG]
  4. Simon Gonsalves (10-9-2017). The Italian Army in the Second World War: A Historiographical Analysis.
  5. “The final collapse of fascism, though set off when Mussolini’s frightened lieutenants threw him overboard, was brought about by allied military victories plus the open rebellion of the people. Among the latter the strikes of industrial workers in Nazi-controlled northern Italy led the way. Nothing of this sort happened in Germany.”

    "The Rise and Fall of Fascism". historians.org. Retrieved 2022-7-19.
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