ABSTRACT
The corporatist state-building opened a new institutional channel for the participation in the political sphere of intellectuals from different political and cultural backgrounds. The aggression to Ethiopia entailed a massive re-orientation of Italian intellectuals towards the imperial experience, but it also led to a dramatic decrease in the sympathy gained by fascist corporatism among European intellectuals of the left. In the mid-thirties, corporatism still featured in the regime’s agenda as a main asset to support foreign cultural policy. Rosenstock-Franck’s work contributed to polarizing the attitude towards fascist corporatism, which in intellectual and political milieux debating planist projects and influenced by De Man was generally favourable. After all, that fascist intellectuals deserted the engagement in the corporatist project was a thesis advanced by fascists themselves. This chapter discusses the importance of the year 1935 as a turning point in the ‘consensus’ to fascist corporatism.
