The Measurement Unit of the Corporative System: the Economic and Professional Category in 1930s Italian Fascism*

This contribution proposes to investigate the emergence of an ill-defined concept such as the professional category as a cornerstone on which to build the nascent fascist social security system. By investigating how, in some political and trade union sectors of mature fascism, the professional category was considered the unit of measurement of the relationship between taxation and social security benefits, the aim is to shed light on the historical roots of the non-universalistic nature of the Italian welfare state. Firstly, I intend to focus on the argumentative device used by fascist trade unionists – such as, in particular, but not exclusively, the aforementioned Giuseppe Landi – to establish a link between trade unions and social security based on the unity of measurement of the category. This argument is set against the background of the internal tensions among competing forces within Fascism– namely trade unions, corporations and the party. Secondly, the argument is examined in its ideological aspects and set in the context of late Fascism and the imperial perspective of the “civilisation of labour”. In this perspective, the the little-known story of the bill on insurance reform of 1939 is presented, and linked to the Relazione della Commissione Generale del Bilancio (Report of general budget committee), where the nexus between trade unions and social security through the role of the category was interwoven with the entry into the war alongside the German ally. Thirdly, I intend to suggest how some aspects of the centrality of the category may have bypassed the break with 1945 and the consequent decision made by the constituent assembly and the political forces of reference to reject the corporative system as an expression of the anti-fascist structure of the new republican democracy: in other words, the corporative state was obliterated, but the professional category may have remained in some criteria for determining social security measures.