The corporative project opened a new institutional channel for the participation in the political sphere of intellectuals from different political and cultural backgrounds. It attracted to its Fascist framework various representatives - such as syndicalists, reformist socialists, and catholics of different tendencies - put together by the common intent to transform the liberal order by enhancing the representation of interests and of the social bodies. I intend to examine this issue by firstly focusing on the third Congress of corporative studies in Rome (1935), a rather peculiar Italo-French conference which showcased the corporative topic’s potential in disseminating the Fascist self-representation across the international field, but also shed a light on the gap between the European scope of the corporatist debate, and its internal dynamics in the context of the Fascist state building. Indeed, the Italian-French discussion revealed a standstill in the Italian corporative drive, which in 1935 had long overtook its initial stages and was confronted with its actual functioning within the fascist regime. Subsequently, I intend to give consideration to the role of Giuseppe Bottai as politician-intellectual. He had been consistently advocating a “constitutional” conception of the corporative state as the fundamental ingredient for an integral reshaping of the relationship between state, society and economy, for a new and totalitarian overcoming of either the liberal individualism and the socialist collectivism. This “constitutional” conception fostered high expectations towards the establishment of the corporatist State in 1934, and thereafter caused a subsequent disillusion among the most committed of Bottai’s assistants, such as Luigi Fontanelli, Agostino Nasti, Giuseppe Del Giudice, Giuseppe Landi, Bruno Biagi, which will be examined in turn. Finally, I mean to point out the importance of the year 1935 as a turning point in the “consensus” to fascist corporatism. The aggression to Ethiopia entailed a massive re-orientation of Italian intellectuals towards the imperial experience, but on the other hand it triggered a steep decrease in the sympathy gained by fascist corporatism among European intellectuals of the left, (also of the Catholic left, which participated to the Italo-French conference). In this perspective, I assume that the “constitutional” value assigned to the corporatist topic by the most original fascists like Bottai and his assistants, was somehow inherited by the concept of labour, as a sort of metaphysic of the society and a prime source of legitimation for the State. As a conclusion, I mean to argue that the labour topic, although emerged in a distinctly Fascist context during the late 1930s, was not entirely connected with the fascist self-representation, and therefore was able get through the war, and to undergo the transition to republican democracy, by providing a terrain of convergence between the left and the democratic catholics.

Intellectuals in the Mirror of Fascist Corporatism at the Turning Point of the Mid-Thirties

CERASI, Laura
2019-01-01

Abstract

The corporative project opened a new institutional channel for the participation in the political sphere of intellectuals from different political and cultural backgrounds. It attracted to its Fascist framework various representatives - such as syndicalists, reformist socialists, and catholics of different tendencies - put together by the common intent to transform the liberal order by enhancing the representation of interests and of the social bodies. I intend to examine this issue by firstly focusing on the third Congress of corporative studies in Rome (1935), a rather peculiar Italo-French conference which showcased the corporative topic’s potential in disseminating the Fascist self-representation across the international field, but also shed a light on the gap between the European scope of the corporatist debate, and its internal dynamics in the context of the Fascist state building. Indeed, the Italian-French discussion revealed a standstill in the Italian corporative drive, which in 1935 had long overtook its initial stages and was confronted with its actual functioning within the fascist regime. Subsequently, I intend to give consideration to the role of Giuseppe Bottai as politician-intellectual. He had been consistently advocating a “constitutional” conception of the corporative state as the fundamental ingredient for an integral reshaping of the relationship between state, society and economy, for a new and totalitarian overcoming of either the liberal individualism and the socialist collectivism. This “constitutional” conception fostered high expectations towards the establishment of the corporatist State in 1934, and thereafter caused a subsequent disillusion among the most committed of Bottai’s assistants, such as Luigi Fontanelli, Agostino Nasti, Giuseppe Del Giudice, Giuseppe Landi, Bruno Biagi, which will be examined in turn. Finally, I mean to point out the importance of the year 1935 as a turning point in the “consensus” to fascist corporatism. The aggression to Ethiopia entailed a massive re-orientation of Italian intellectuals towards the imperial experience, but on the other hand it triggered a steep decrease in the sympathy gained by fascist corporatism among European intellectuals of the left, (also of the Catholic left, which participated to the Italo-French conference). In this perspective, I assume that the “constitutional” value assigned to the corporatist topic by the most original fascists like Bottai and his assistants, was somehow inherited by the concept of labour, as a sort of metaphysic of the society and a prime source of legitimation for the State. As a conclusion, I mean to argue that the labour topic, although emerged in a distinctly Fascist context during the late 1930s, was not entirely connected with the fascist self-representation, and therefore was able get through the war, and to undergo the transition to republican democracy, by providing a terrain of convergence between the left and the democratic catholics.
2019
Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Europe and Latin America. Crossing Borders
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10278/3691197
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