ABSTRACT
Mussolini’s economic and social policies, like his other poli-cies, were geared to political propaganda rather than to real achievement. This chapter will examine government monetary, industrial and agricultural policies, and discuss whether they had any effect upon reality; and will also look at some of the Fascists’ ‘social’ policies, e.g. urbanization, demography and education, in the same light. The general message will be that inasmuch as the Fascists had a long-term aim at all, it was to ‘mobilize’ resources for some great national purpose, usually war; but it did not work, or worked only very partially.
