ABSTRACT
172One of the most interesting, original, complex and confusing interpretations of Fascism that made its appearance after World War II is identified with the general notion of “stages of economic growth” or “development.” Although there were clear intimations of this kind of analysis of Fascism during the interwar years, particularly in the work of men like Otto Bauer and Franz Borkenau, the conception of relating Fascism to a particular stage of economic, particularly industrial, growth matured only in the postwar period. That such an interpretation should have developed at this relatively late date is difficult to explain, particularly since Fascists consistently had identified the problem of modernization and industrialization as central to their social and political program. As early as 1919, Mussolini made the problem of production the sustaining “common interest which cancels and suppresses the class struggle.” 1 One month before the founding of the Fasci di Combattimento, Mussolini outlined the tentative program of his “productive socialism” and insisted the program was “calculated to insure the progressive development of the nation.” 2 In March 1919, at the founding meeting of the Fascist movement, he insisted that a revolutionary movement must bear in mind two irrepressible realities: “the reality of production and the reality of the nation.” 3 The productivist theme became a predictable constant in all subsequent Fascist apologetics. As early as 1924, Sergio Panunzio insisted that Fascism was a “means” to the enhancement of national production. In 1930 Aldo Bertele argued that Fascist organization and 173strategy were calculated to produce “more intensive productive levels” in Italy, in order to insure “national strength.” 4 In 1931 Nazareno Mezzetti asserted that “Italy’s most urgent problem is one of production, rather than distribution . ...” 5 Fascist insistence on the primacy of production was constant throughout the Fascist period. Fascists regularly characterized themselves as modernizers—as industrializes of a retarded economic system.
