THE ECONOMICS OF FASCISM

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 70, 15 December 1933, Page 10

THE ECONOMICS OF FASCISM

Messages from Rome report the completion of a further stage in the development of the Fascist Corporate State. Corporations are now established to represent "every form of human activity in Italy ; when all are functioning, the Chamber of Deputies will quietly drop out of the picture as an estate of the Italian realm. . Hitherto there, have been only six of these "corporations, or trade guilds, each of which is divided into confederations of employers and employees. “The essence of the guild idea,” remarked The Times last month, "is that the interests of the employers .and employed are'not opposed, but common. All those engaged in production are encouraged to regard themselves as servants of the State, which is there to intervene only where private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or where the political interests of the State are involved.” In this, the economic aspect of Fascism, .there is much that, will repay study even by those peoples who recoil from the political changes that accompany it. It is impossible to deny the common sense of the proposition that employers and employees are partners in production. In Italy itself. that conception of industry is being successfully applied. The Times says. there can be little doubt that the mass of the working-class population, at first opposed to Fascism because the Socialists and Communists whom it attacked belonged predominantly to the working class, have accepted Signor Mussolini as their friend. This does not mean that the Duce has weakened in his condemnation of political Socialism or Communism :if anything he is more determined. It means that with his economic policy he has succeeded In uniting, as workers for Italy, both sides in the "class war” for which the more violent of the political Socialists continue to cry in non-Fascist countries. . In Italy the idea of the class war is dead.