Chapter VIII. Autarky and war

The fact that fascism aimed at war was known even before Mussolini came to power. Let us recall that the very emergence of fascism is associated with Italian imperialism during the First World War. Then the most aggressive Italian entrepreneurs dragged the country into the war hoping to earn extra money, and as a result, the Allies in the Entente left them in the fools. Naturally, this gave rise to a desire to revise the results of the First World War.

In 1922, on the eve of the "March on Rome", Mussolini announced that fascism would begin a grandiose period in the history of Italy. The leader of the fascists promised after the reconciliation of the classes:

to direct the Italians as a united force to world goals and to make our lake out of the Mediterranean Sea

After the establishment of the fascist dictatorship, nothing has changed in this regard:

Italy, poor in raw materials and capital, rich in human strength, needs organizational unity to withstand the struggle against hegemonic states. It finds in the fascist trade union discipline... the main basis for its expansion.

The idea of expansion stemmed from the very concept of corporatism. Class solidarity is the path of war:

The entire socialist concept is deeply erroneous, anti-historical and contradictory to reality precisely because it allows international solidarity. We turn over the elements of the problem: the struggle

of classes and international solidarity, we oppose the solidarity of classes in the international struggle.

The imperialist program of fascism was reduced to the transformation of Italy into a colonial empire that conquered the lands around the Adriatic and Mediterranean Sea, with the obligatory aim of capturing the most important sea straits.

To achieve this, it was necessary to discipline the country's economy and anger the Italian people to the rest of the world. Corporatism and the politics of autarchy dealt with the first one. Nationalist and militaristic propaganda of fascism – with the second.

As a separate point, we note that Mussolini tried to rely on religious propaganda as well. For these reasons, in 1929 the old conflict between the Italian state and the Vatican was resolved. Under the treaty concluded between Mussolini and Pope Pius XI in Rome, the Pope renounced claims to all his former non-religious possessions in Italy, including Rome itself. Mussolini, for his part, paid the Pope a concession in the amount of more than $ 1.5 billion in modern terms, introduced compulsory religious instruction in schools, legalized church marriage and granted a number of privileges to the Catholic clergy.

We recognized the Catholic Church as a predominant place in the religious life of the Italian people, which is completely natural for such a Catholic people as ours, and under the influence of such a regime as fascism.

Intensive preparations for the war began just against the backdrop of the global economic crisis, or rather closer to its end. The preparation for war and the associated compulsory organization in the corporation was explained by high social and national considerations, the interests of the nation, the uniqueness of the Italian people, the desire to revive the former greatness of the ancient Roman Empire and other corporate nonsense.

Fascist ideologues even managed to declare that Italy's confrontation with other countries is a kind of clash of highly moral corporatism and spiritless capitalism, and that the Italian nation must fight to spread corporate ideas and the corporate system throughout the world.

 

The people must realize that their social system is higher and fairer than the social system of other nations... and from this consciousness, and only from it, the idea is born among people... the desire to bring other nations our own achievements.

For fascism, efforts to establish the empire, i.e. to national expansion, is vitally needed entitle. The opposite, that is, “sitting at home,” is a sign of decline. The rising and reborn nations are imperialists. Dying nations abandon all the claims...

And then the Italo-Ethiopian war began. This war was not an ordinary colonial takeover. The campaign against Ethiopia was launched according to all fascist rules - without a declaration of war - and was similar to what would yet to be done by Nazis on the territory of the Soviet Union.

The Italian fascists unleashed brutal repression on the Ethiopian people. During the years of war and the colonial regime in Ethiopia, more than 484 thousand people were killed, died from hunger, disease, bombing. On top of that, 275,000 people were killed with gas.

Nevertheless, such a picture does not prevent some from saying that Italian fascism and Nazism are not the same thing. Well, of course, what is the murder of seven hundred thousand Africans?

The Italian-Ethiopian War is a war for the redivision of the world, started by fascism. The Italian East Africa created as a result of this campaign threatened the interests of Great Britain, its sea routes to Asia, especially to India.

Following the victory in Ethiopia, the Nazis sent their troops to Spain. About seventy thousand Italians took part in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the fascist General Franco.

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Some words about the policy of autarchy. Autarchy is a system of self-sufficient production. Foreign trade is minimized in favor of domestic production. That is to say, the policy of import substitution.

 

 

Formally, the policy of autarchy began as early as 1925 with the so-called "struggle for bread" campaign aimed at providing Italy with its own bread in case of war. It boiled down to providing all kinds of benefits and advantages to landowners and rural entrepreneurs, to raising the price of bread in order to make its production more profitable, to introducing protective customs duties in order to protect the domestic consumer from unpatriotic cheap products, and so on.

The economic sanctions of the League of Nations against Italy during its war with Ethiopia pushed the fascists on the path of autarchy. In the second half of the 1930s, they were after reducing Italy's dependence on the import of strategically important raw materials from abroad. It should be recalled that Italy is extremely poor in oil, coal, iron ore, non-ferrous and rare metals, and so on.

In practice, actions in the field of autarchy meant the restructuring of industry, the intensified development of national sources of raw materials, the introduction of substitutes, a change in import policy, an artificial reduction in the consumption of some products in favor of others, and the rest.

In the spring of 1937, Mussolini declared:

Corporations are mobilized to fight for autarchy, and the National Council of Corporations should be seen as the General Staff leading the fight.

To that end, Supreme Commission on Autarchy was created in the corporate system, whose decisions and recommendations were transmitted directly to the government. This commission includes representatives of the largest business groups. The Supreme Commission on Autarchy influenced the regulation of capital investments, was in charge of the distribution of imported raw materials and scarce electricity. To regulate capital expenditures, corporate bodies were given the unique power to authorize or prohibit the construction of new enterprises, as well as regulate investments in existing ones. The permits were issued in such a way as to direct capital flows to the Italian military-industrial complex.

To obtain permission to open a new enterprise, as well as to expand an existing one, a brief conclusion was required from the corporate inspectorate of the area, which usually did not conduct surveys and did not have a clear idea of the real economic situation. Then a technical opinion from Confindustria was required, based on the opinion of the interested entrepreneurial federations. The final decision was made at a meeting of the corresponding

corporation.

Therefore, it was not difficult for large monopoly groups, which actually dominated the entrepreneurial federations and were represented in various corporations, to pursue their line and ensure the protection of their interests.

... Obtaining permission to open new enterprises was for large companies a reliable guarantee or a precautionary measure against any possible competition. In other words, such a regulatory system enabled the largest politically influential and economically powerful business groups to use corporations to ensure that they could open the most suitable businesses. They did not intend to use their permits but requested them in order to prevent the growth of medium and small joint-stock companies.

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An important link connecting the state and business in a single policy of autarchy was the Institute of Industrial Reconstruction - IIR, which we have already spoken about.

In the summer of 1937, the law was passed according to which:

IIR is called upon to manage the state-owned share capital, as well as expand its financial participation in activities related to the country's defense, the policy of economic autarchy, the development of industrial and agricultural production in Italy and East Africa, and support, where necessary, private initiatives.

However, despite the fact that after the economic crisis, IIR became the owner of many controlling stakes, the management functions of enterprises were still in the hands of private owners:

The control exercised by the state through the IIR lost its social features and took on a private character. This control, in fact, turned just into the participation of representatives of the IIR in general meetings of shareholders, and these representatives behaved like passive owners of a controlling stake, who are limited to almost formal control and are often subordinate to the initiative of a more active and better prepared minority.

In other words, all participation of the state in the work of controlled enterprises was reduced to subsidies, the provision of government orders, a guarantee of profits and coverage of all risks. Nothing to say, for the oligarchs it was just great.

In addition to the above, the state began to actively squeeze foreign capital out of the economy, buying out its assets and transferring them to national companies. Imports were also forcibly reduced, but the losses from this were more than covered by an increase in government orders, mainly military ones. And guess who got all the most delicious government orders.

As a result, the results of the policy of autarchy were far from matching either the funds spent or the fascist propaganda. They turned out to be especially insufficient in the field of extraction of strategically important raw materials: iron, coal and oil. For example, with an annual demand for coal of 15 million tons, its production in Italy in 1939 was only 3 million. At the same time, iron ore was still sorely lacking. And, in fact, there were no oil fields belonged to Italy. Some achievements were in oil refining, but even then, only 60% of what was needed, the rest was imported.

On the other hand, the "struggle for autarchy" entailed the collapse and decline of individual industries and agriculture, and at the same time, the enrichment of entrepreneurs associated with the military-industrial complex. The oligarchs no longer just sang praises to Mussolini, but literally sucked up to him:

It is only with fascism and thanks to fascism that Italian industry owes its material and spiritual rebirth. The ideologies of chaos and enmity have been eradicated; the tasks of the employer and his responsibility to the state have been determined; a high level of cooperation between employer and workers has been achieved; industrialists, realizing their responsibilities, their task in the implementation of great plans, feel the help and support from the state intervention, and in this state corporate trade unions help as well. With the support of Duce, they were able, with peace of mind, with faith in a wonderful future, to overcome the great difficulties that they encountered on their way. But the more difficult the tasks were, the sweeter were the fruits of success.

Our passion is not only the result of twenty years of work, but also the result of our love for the Motherland and we do our best to make the industry prosper; our passion is burning trust and faith that unites us to realize our historic mission; our faith helps us to survive when everything is lost and it seems that the whole world has plunged into chaos and without Fascism our country would have fallen forever; Fascism turned our faith into absolute certainty.

Under the wise leadership of Mussolini, industry - if it is so permissible for us to say: the main constituent part of our Great Motherland and with a developed industry, Italy will achieve all the goals set and tomorrow it will be industry that will become an irreplaceable instrument of the strength and might of our Motherland!

The industrialists really had reasons to adore Mussolini for. With the help of a magic wand called “the need to strengthen national defense,” the working day at some enterprises reached 10 or even 12 hours per day. Entrepreneurs, especially those associated with the military-industrial complex, could always violate wage tariffs or force them to work seven days a week simply by saying that all this was for the good of the united Italian nation. Fascist officials could only shrug their shoulders, because any resistance to the interests of Italian business could be regarded as a threat to national security.

Ultimately, the actual implementation of the corporate system was very far from the demagogic tales of early fascism and even from the "equal cooperation of the productive forces" proclaimed by the Labor Charter. In 1939, there was no more talk of the great "revolutionary" and "social" functions of corporations:

The functions of corporations are to study various problems related to enhancing our economic resources and meeting food and industrial needs exclusively at the expense of national products, as well as in developing appropriate action plans.

After the war, one corporatist theorist made an even more outspoken statement:

It is quite obvious that the corporate economy existed only in the minds of some of us - theorists who tried, proceeding from more or less fantastic postulates, to found what was called the new order. In reality, there was only corporate policy and the changes concerned only legislative norms, for “homo corporatus” remained an ordinary “homo economicus” who, under the influence of the situation, only put on a black shirt and adopted other external attributes of fascism.

In other words, big business used the corporate system only to the extent that it was in accordance with its economic and social interests. The entrepreneurs who donned the black shirt weren't doing charity work, but simply taking care of their wallet. Just business.