1010 Ch. 25 • Economic Depression and Dictatorshiprestoring old values. But the idea of women serving the nation-state was
very new—for example, the attempt to create mass fascist organizations of
women ranging from after-work recreational clubs to female paramilitary
squads. The Duce disliked the fact that women had obtained the right to
vote in Great Britain, Germany, and several other countries, and that more
Italian women were going to work. In Italy’s fascist state—as in Hitler’s
Germany—the place of women was, in principle, in the home, obeying
their husbands and having babies.
Mussolini viewed corporatism (see Chapter 24) as a possible remedy to
the economic problems that beset Italy. The Duce created twenty-two corpo
rations, or assemblies, overseen, at least in theory, by a National Council of
Corporations. Each corporation was based on a council of employers and
employees. But Italian fascist corporatism had very little impact in Italy.
Its chief practical consequence, at least until the early 1930s, was to swell
the number of state bureaucrats hired to supervise creaky, inefficient, and
largely superfluous organizations.
The Duce wanted to make Italy economically independent. State agencies
invested in industries Mussolini considered crucial to the colonial and Eu
ropean wars he was planning. By 1935, no other European state, except
Stalin’s Soviet Union, controlled such a large portion of industry, with major
shares in industries like steelworks and shipbuilding. Hydroelectricity and
automobile manufacturing developed, but Italian industry still depended on
raw materials imported from abroad, including copper, rubber, and coal.
Mussolini dubbed his most ambitious agricultural program the “battle for
grain.” But wheat production was uneconomical in many regions; by con
verting from labor-intensive crops to wheat, the Duce’s pet program gener
ated unemployment and reduced pasture and fruit-growing lands and the
number of farm animals. High tariffs on grain imports raised food prices.
Land reclamation and irrigation projects also failed. While Mussolini’s
speeches celebrated “blood and soil” (a constant refrain on the fascist and
authoritarian right in inter-war Europe), the number of Italian peasant pro
prietors declined.
The failures of Mussolini’s economic policies were compounded by the
demands of military spending, which absorbed a full third of Italian income
by the mid-1930s. While the state spent heavily on planes and submarines,
Italy’s per capita income remained about that of Britain and the United
States in the early nineteenth century. Illiteracy remained high, particu
larly in the south. Under fascism, the gap between the more industrialized
north and the poor south continued to grow.
The paradox of Italian corporatism was revealed in Mussolini’s rhetoric
that there were no social classes in Italy, only Italians. The Duce cheerily
proclaimed the end of class struggle and bragged that he had done more for
workers than any other leader. But employers and workers were certainly
not on an equal footing. Their trade unions destroyed (replaced by fascist
trade unions), their conditions of life basically unimproved, and strikes now