Misconstruing Mussolini
<p>I&#8217;ve been reviewing the history of fascism recently, because the Republic of Iran has many structural features in common with fascism and I think the history of fascism in Europe holds lessons about its future.  And recently I ran across a quote beloved of American leftists in an email signature:</p>
<p>From Benito Mussolini: &#8220;Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.&#8221;</p>
<p>This quote is often misconstrued nowadays by leftists who view profit-making corporations under capitalism (especially multinational corporations) as instruments of the devil. They love the implied image of capitalist fat-cats and fascist dictators conspiring in gilded opulence.  Alas for them that this quote actually doesn&#8217;t imply anything like that; the terminological ground under it has shifted.</p>
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<p>The &#8220;corporatism&#8221; Mussolini to which was referring had, actually, nothing to do with corporations, joint-stock or otherwise (in the 1920s the word &#8220;corporation&#8221; did not yet have its modern sense, either in English or Italian).  His use of the word had to do with a feature of fascist theory forgotten by almost everybody but specialist historians.</p>
<p>In fascist theory, &#8220;corporations&#8221; were bodies like unions, craft guilds, professional societies, and grange associations. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism for discussion; see especially the section &#8220;Italian fascist corporativism&#8221;.</p>
<p>What Mussolini was actually enunciating was a sort of organic statism in which the state would bless or admit representatives of various &#8220;corporations&#8221; into its governing councils &#8212; and no, that didn&#8217;t mean Fiat or Beretta but (say) the Abruzzo Building Trades Association, or the Society of University Professors.  </p>
<p>While corporations-in-the-modern sense were not outright excluded from being legitimized &#8220;corporations&#8221; in the fascist sense, neither did they have any special status or power in the system.  Actually, it was rather the reverse&#8230;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s worth remembering that the founders of fascism were mainly Leninists like Mussolini with a sprinkling of anarcho-syndicalists (George Sorel being the best known of those).  Actual fascism retained the founders&#8217; doctrinal hostility to what modern leftists would call &#8220;corporate power&#8221;, never renouncing its state-socialist roots and being (in fact) hostile to <em>all</em> centers of power other than the state itself.</p>
<p>The modern idea that German and Italian fascism were conservative or pro-business ideologies is essentially a fantasy constructed by pro-Soviet propagandists during and after World War II.  In fact, classical fascism never wandered very far from its left-wing origins; corporatism can be seen as an elaboration of the theoretical role of worker&#8217;s soviets in Leninist theory.</p>
