ABSTRACT

Fascism took great pride in its economic and social policies, constantly contrasting its ‘successes’ in these fields with the ‘failures’ of the pre-Fascist, Liberal regime, and also with the economic failures of the ‘plutocratic democracies’, especially in the 1930s. Its greatest pride was reserved for the ‘corporate state’ which it proclaimed to be a unique and original Italian Fascist creation, the only effective and enduring solution to the problem of relations between capital and labour. Italian Fascism also saw itself as an innovatory and modernising force in the economic and social fields.