1 The Problem and the Labels
The purpose of this essay is to investigate the contribution of the textbooks of political economy and related disciplines used in Italian universities during the Ventennio to the project envisaged by fascist ideologues, Giuseppe Bottai and Giovanni Gentile, of creating the “new Italians” (cf. Barucci et al. 2015, 13). More specifically, we ask whether these textbooks really aimed at forging the homo corporativus in much the same way as the corresponding textbooks of the early decades of the Kingdom of Italy aimed at creating the classical homo oeconomicus, i.e., the “agent and facilitator of the self-government of society through economic mechanisms and economic motives” (Augello and Guidi 2012, 3). Our method will be to evaluate the content of the handbooks per se, in terms of what an average university student of political economy in the 1930s and early 1940s could draw from those pages, without inquiring into the specific political ideas of the author. This entails that, regardless of an author’s own commitment to fascism, what matters for our purposes is only the characterisation of individuals qua economic agents—and the related one of economics qua science—which his textbook proposed to readers. In short, the protagonists of our story are the textbooks, not the economists who wrote them.1
Building on the characterisation that one of us gave of the various approaches to the economic analysis of corporatism ,2 and in view of our goal in this essay, we will classify textbooks in four categories: supporters, experimenters, chameleons and neglecters. These labels deserve some explanation in order to properly frame them within the exceptional historical circumstances in which they are applied. Beginning in the early 1930s, the fascist government required, more or less formally, but always persuasively, that the adjective “corporative” be added to the name of the academic subject “Political Economy”.3 Accordingly, authors had also to modify their textbooks’ titles and, above all, content. No specific guidelines existed though as to what exactly the new subject of “Corporative Political Economy” should consist of. As our labels suggest, in some (indeed, many) cases the change was either purely superficial or entailed no real commitment to corporatist principles, let alone to the project of building the “new Italians”. That Italian economists could still enjoy such freedom should not sound surprising. The lack even among the highest political and intellectual ranks of the Regime of a clear and detailed characterisation of the corporatist project granted textbook writers substantial autonomy in filling with the most diverse contents what for the whole Ventennio remained the shapeless, and largely empty, vessel of corporatism .
We call “supporters” those textbooks that openly endorsed the “official version”—vague and informal as it might be—of corporatism and corporatist economics as radically different from, respectively, previous socio-economic orders and standard economic theory. Some common traits of those textbooks can be identified. First, the image of corporatism as a brand new economic order, not just a “third way” between socialism and laissez-faire. Students were taught that corporatism was something “beyond and above”, and, for this reason, irreducible in its essence to the principles underlying old socio-economic arrangements. Second, the idea that the individuals populating a corporatist economy are no standard economic agents, but, again, something truly different. The homo corporativus is modelled as a new kind of agent, whose aims are—or at least would programmatically become—identical to those of the State. Third, the notion of an “immanent” State, whose goals pervade the whole economy and prevail over—more exactly, coincide with, and so eventually replace—those of the individuals. Finally, the rejection of economics as a pure and separate science. In its stead, “supporting” textbooks offered a holistic approach to social sciences that mixed economics with politics, sociology and law. The eventual goal was to create new epistemological foundations for the social sciences and, through them, spread the new corporatist culture.4
The label “experimenters” is used in this essay for those textbooks that depicted corporatism as some form or another of a “third way”—both historically and analytically—between socialism and laissez-faire. Building on this premise, and on the related acknowledgement of the failure of the free market system to deliver maximum efficiency, the typical “experimenting” textbook presented readers with an (often innovative) analysis of how standard economic theory had to be modified to exploit the advantages of a corporatist order vis-à-vis capitalism’s and socialism’s drawbacks.5 “Overcome without reneging” was those textbooks’ catchword with respect to orthodox economics. By recognising the active role of the State in the price system—beginning with the most fundamental price of all, that of labour—as well as in the centralised management of the social conflict, those texts often undertook unexplored theoretical paths. Regardless of the author’s personal commitment to fascism, this elegant way out from the Regime’s diktat to change the teaching of economics had therefore a side benefit. It helped preserving the scientific reputation of Italian economists on themes, such as public intervention in the economy or imperfect competition, which occupied centerstage in 1930s economics debates worldwide. Textbooks in this group further vindicate the appeal one of us made long ago against adopting a dismissive attitude towards interwar Italian ...
