I've heard Mussolini's state described as "organic". What does that mean?
Organic State
Benjamin Moore
John Russell
His ideal state was based around a bodied politic, similar to corporatism.
He believed that once various industries organized in a particular way, the natural end would be a fascist state where labor unions wouldn't need to exist.
I always found it interesting. Check out "The Doctorine of Fascism." It's a good read.
Cameron Gutierrez
No pesticides or artificial fertilizers
Anthony Lewis
Would they be organized into entities like guilds?
Gavin Watson
Kek
He advocated for class cooperation rather than class warfare, such a system is usually called an organic state, first described by Maurras synthesizing syndicalist and royalist doctrines in the late 2890's.
Brody Cox
>2890s
Otherwise correct. Mussolini's fascism rejected both liberal individualism and the Marxist concept of class conflict, and combined right-wing nationalism with left-wing syndicalism. Rather than a nation of individuals or a nation divided between a working and owning class, fascists saw the nation as an "organic" body that could work towards common goals. We know how this panned out.
However, the corporatist model isn't unique to fascism; the Swedish social democratic movement is based on a version of it (the folkhemmet, or the nation as a large family), as was postwar Japan (both have started to drift in the direction of neoliberalism).
Josiah Bailey
Something like that.
Usually there would be an entity that represented a particular industry. For this example well use steel.
The steel industry would be organized bottom up, and would be represented at each level of government by a head. A representative would be in each city and province for represetation. At the national level there would be a representative that would speak for the entire nations steel interests.
Representatives from different industries would meet regularly, as well as with government officials, to address problems and come up with meaningful solutions. This cooperation would eliminate the need for class warfare and labor unions by giving the industry as a whole the ability to work out any grievances they had before problems got too big.
Ryder Thompson
>We know how this panned out.
Democrats teamed up against fascists and bombed them back into the stone age because their rival system worked too well in comparison to capitalism?
Aaron Hernandez
Historically illiterate but would italy have even gone to war if not for germany? Italy's system seemed pretty alright.
Samuel Davis
>saw the nation as an "organic" body
good post but you didn't explain why fascists called the nation "organic". from my readings i get the impression that this mean that the nation was conceived of as an "organism." By this logic the organism that was the nation needed to be brought to homeostasis, or harmony, and this meant eliminating, as you mention, chaotic forces from society such as class conflict, squabbling politicians, the petty interests of different groups in society and the dichotomy between state and its citizens. In the ideal fascist nation, then, the petty egotistical (economic, social, political) interests would be subordinated to the greater needs of the nation, and this would best be achieved through the synthesis of the population and the state till the two were indistinguishable. In other words, a corporatist state would institutionalize social groups and get them to balance their needs with those of the nation. A new set of rituals and propaganda would forge the people into new fascist citizens who would think in terms of the nation and enthusiastically follow state initiatives and even enforce them. And it meant that all diseased (as I call it) elements would be rooted out of the population through repression and reeducation so as to eliminate or prevent degeneracy or decay or the national organism. To put it another way, the state intervened in every element of citizens lives to ensure their obedience and loyalty to the nation, and the hope was that the citizens themselves would come to embrace this and understand that every element of their lives was monitored and dedicated to the nation.
Julian Wilson
>because their rival system worked too well in comparison to capitalism?
Or, you know, maybe you shouldn't ally yourself with Germany.
Thomas Phillips
>neoliberalism
Why would you use this bullshit term? Just like the neoconservative -term, it's nothing but a pejoravite non-term from the US East coast.
Ryan Russell
What stops single firms from dominating their industries? Of course, without holding back competition.
Noah Nelson
How modernist was Italian fascism? This organic state idea seems pretty utopian, as does their mass sports program. I thought the whole idea was that they were more traditional than the futurist Nazis.
Lincoln Harris
Because he most likely doesn't know what it means and got it confused with "modern liberalism".
Grayson Garcia
>futurist Nazis.
you got it totally mixed around lmao. Futurism was an Italian movement and the propaganda of Mussolini had no qualms borrowing eclectically from futurism and a bunch of other modern art movements. Nazis prized art showcasing ""traditional"" german values and families and was more akin to socialist realism (I think some even call nazi art racial realism). it was pretty shit desu and was less ebullient than italian art under mussolini. nazi architecture was all about gigantism, which isn't bad in itself, but i think italians also did that better. the question though of the relationship of modernism and fascism is an issue which historians have debated over the years, so you're correct to point out the dissonance between certain parts of the fascist or nazi program. I don't think im qualified to explain the relationship but i can point you to some works that discuss it if you're so interested.
Christopher Stewart
that was the problem. in mussolini's italy corporatism was nominally enacted but in truth was still-born as the new corporate bodies became a mouthpiece for the major business and industrial firms in italy.
John Diaz
Fascism, at the end of the day, is about opportunism and gaining any semblance of power. WWII was going to be a war that Mussolini would drag Italy into no matter which side he chose. He chose Hitler obviously due to his initial successes and paid the price.
Nothing, and it happened regularly and usually with armed support. A good example is the Southern wheat industry in the Basilicata region where the wheat board would buy wheat from clueless peasants (cafone) at drastically low prices and then sell the wheat after they artificially inflated the price. Corporations were also known to divert rivers for their own interests, completely killing off towns.
Didn't like it? Send in the troops.
Noah Gutierrez
Please point me to those works. I want to learn more about Mussolini's Italy. What worked well, what didn't work, eat cetera.
Jeremiah Barnes
well, in these bibliographies you'll find lots on italian fascism. ctrl f italy or italian and you'll see
pastebin.com
pastebin.com
but to help you out, i'll pick the ones on the question of modernism as well as intros and other works.
on corporatist ideas:
Roberts, David D. The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979.
>Traces the step-by-step evolution of a number of socialist intellectuals and labor organizers from the heterodox Marxist left to fascism, showing how their diagnoses and prescriptions gradually came to elude their Marxist framework, turning into what became fascism. Shows that the current was not quickly marginalized, as had long been assumed, but played a significant role in giving Italian Fascism an abiding radical thrust and, more particularly, a corporativist direction.
Sarti, Roland. Fascism and the Industrial Leadership in Italy, 1919–1940: A Study in the Expansion of Private Power under Fascism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.
>Remains fundamental on the complex relationship between big business and the Fascist regime. Shows that business leaders were concerned primarily to retain their independence, but that business pressures thus restricted the development of corporativism during the 1930s. Accents pragmatism as opposed to ideology in the regime’s economic innovations of the 1930s in response to the Great Depression.
Dominic James
On Modernity:
Lazzaro, Claudia, and Roger J. Crum, eds. Donatello among the Blackshirts: History and Modernity in the Visual Culture of Fascist Italy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.
>An illuminating, well-illustrated collection of essays on the regime’s uses of the Italian past to promote a specifically fascist visual culture. Includes articles by, among others, Emily Braun, Claudio Fogu, Diane Ghirardo, D. Medina Lasansky, and Jeffrey Schnapp, each of whom has also done other major work on the topic.
Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
>Offers a useful way of understanding the apparent Italian Fascist ambivalence about modernity and modernization. Goes on to focus especially on the fissurings, tensions, frustrations, and sporadic efforts at renewal of the regime’s later years. Especially helpful on how to locate the ongoing radical effort within the wider dynamic.
bookzz.org
Griffin, Roger. Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
>Relates the fascist regimes to wider currents of cultural response to the seeming inadequacies of the modern world. Although initially suggests that modern culture was genuinely open and subject to contest, ends up implying that those fastening upon the myth of palingenetic national regeneration were those most subject to anomie and the need for rootedness: those least able to adjust to modernity.
bookzz.org
Aaron Diaz
Intros to Italian Fascism (i've read these both, p good)
Lyttelton, Adrian, ed. Liberal and Fascist Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
>A superior collection of essays, some treating the liberal period, but most dealing with fascism or the relationship between the liberal and the fascist periods. In addition to the essay by Emilio Gentile, which offers a convenient introduction to his position, the essays by Marcello De Cecco on the economy, Bruno P. F. Wanrooij on society, and Emily Braun on modernism in the arts are especially helpful.
bookzz.org
Morgan, Philip. Italian Fascism, 1915–1945. 2d ed. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
>Fully updated edition of a work first published in 1995, provides a good overview of Fascism in Italy. This edition includes a historiographical introduction especially critical of the work of Renzo De Felice (De Felice 1990–1997, cited under Individual Figures).
libgen.io
Evan Russell
You are a great man, user.
Michael Thompson
Americans don't even know what liberal means
Carson Russell
It means they didn't use pesticides or antibiotics