From: mars1933@hotmail.com   
      
   Mussolini was against Capitalism.   
      
   "He had a profound contempt for those whose overriding ambition was to   
   be rich. It was a mania, he thought, a kind of disease, and he   
   comforted himself with the reflection that the rich were rarely happy"   
   Here Hibbert (1962, p. 47) is describing a lifelong attitude of   
   Mussolini that continued right into his time as Italy's Prime Minister   
   - when he refused to take his official salary.   
      
   "There was much truth in the comment of a Rome newspaper that the new   
   fasci did not aim at the defense of the ruling class or the existing   
   State but wanted to lead the revolutionary forces into the Nationalist   
   camp so as to prevent a victory of Bolshevism.   
      
   even after coming to power, to take drives in the country with his   
   wife and stop at various   
   farmhouses on the way for a chat with the family there. He would enjoy   
   discussing the crops, the weather and all the usual rural topics and   
   obviously just liked the feeling of being one of the people. His claim   
   to represent the people was not just theory but heartfelt. And he   
   never gave up his "anti-bourgeois" rhetoric.   
      
    His policies were basically protectionist. He controlled the   
   exchange-rate of the Italian currency and promoted that old favorite   
   of the economically illiterate - autarky - meaning that he tried to   
   get Italy to become wholly self-sufficient rather than rely on foreign   
   trade. He wanted to protect Italian products from competing foreign   
   products.   
      
    By 1939 he had doubled Italy's grain production from its traditional   
   level, enabling Italy to cut wheat imports by 75% (Smith, 1967, p.   
   92).   
      
    He made Capri a bird sanctuary (Smith, 1967, p. 84) and in 1926 he   
   issued a decree reducing the size of newspapers to save wood pulp.   
   And, believe it or not, he even mandated gasohol - i.e. mixing   
   industrial alcohol with petroleum products to make fuel for cars   
   (Smith, 1967, p. 87). Mussolini also disliked the population drift   
   from rural areas   
   into the big cities and in 1930 passed a law to put a stop to it   
   unless official permission was granted   
      
    he advocated private enterprise within a strict set of State controls   
   designed, among other things, to prevent abuse of monopoly power   
   (Gregor, 1979, Ch. 5).   
      
   ...a big expansion of public works and a great improvement in social   
   insurance measures. He also set up the "Dopolavoro" (after work)   
   organization to give workers cheap recreations of various kinds (cf.   
   the Nazi Kraft durch Freude movement). His public health measures   
   (such as the attack on tuberculosis and the setting up of a huge   
   maternal and child welfare organization) were particularly notable for   
   their rationality and efficiency and, as such, were rewarded with   
   great success. For instance, the incidence of tuberculosis   
   dropped dramatically and infant mortality declined by more than 20%   
   (Gregor, p. 259).   
   "instituted a programme of public works hitherto unrivalled in modern   
   Europe. Bridges, canals and roads were built, hospitals and schools,   
   railway stations and orphanages, swamps were drained and land   
   reclaimed, forest were planted and universities were endowed."   
      
    In 1929 Mussolini and Pope Pius 12th signed the Lateran treaty -   
   which is still the legal basis for the existence of the Vatican State   
   to this day - and Pius in fact at one stage   
   called Mussolini "the man sent by Providence". The treaty recognized   
   Roman Catholicism as the Italian State religion as well as recognizing   
   the Vatican as a sovereign state. What Mussolini got in exchange was   
   acceptance by the church - something that was enormously important in   
   the Italy of that time.   
      
    the great hatred that existed in prewar Germany between the Nazis and   
   the "Reds". And the early Fascists battled the "Reds" too, of course.   
      
   The 1919 election manifesto, for instance, contained policies of   
   worker control of industry, confiscation of war profits, abolition of   
   the Stock exchange, land for the   
   peasants and abolition of the Monarchy and nobility. Further,   
   Mussolini never ceased to inveigh against "plutocrats".   
      
   He wanted a harmonious and united Italy for all Italians of all   
   classes and was sure that achieving just treatment for the workers   
   needed neither revolution nor any kind of   
   artificially enforced equality.   
      
   This made Italian Fascism a much more popular creed than Stalin's   
   Communism. This is perhaps most clearly seen by the always persuasive   
   "voting with your feet" criterion. Mussolini made no effort to prevent   
   Italians from emigrating and although some anti-Fascists did, net   
   emigration actually FELL under Mussolini. Compare this with Stalin and   
   the Berlin wall.   
      
   Mussolini gained power through political rather than revolutionary   
   means. His famous march on Rome was only superficially revolutionary.   
   The King of Italy and the army   
   approved of him because of his pragmatic policies so did not oppose   
   the march. So this collusion ensured that Mussolini's "revolution" was   
   essentially bloodless.   
      
    His considerable popularity for many years among a wide range of   
   Italians shows how effective his recipe for achieving that was.   
      
   In his "corporate state", Mussolini was the first to create ...a   
   system of capitalism under tight government control. And his corporate   
   state was one where the workers had (at least in theory) equal rights   
   with management.   
      
   REFERENCES Amis, M. (2002) Koba the Dread : laughter and the twenty   
   million.   
   N.Y.: Talk Miramax   
   Carsten, F.L. (1967) The rise of Fascism. London: Methuen.   
   Funk & Wagnall's New Encyclopedia (1983) Funk & Wagnall's   
   Galbraith, J.K. (1969) The affluent society. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton   
   Mifflin.   
   Gilmour, I.H.J.L. (1978) Inside right. London: Quartet.   
   Greene, N. (1968) Fascism: An anthology. N.Y.: Crowell.   
   Gregor, A.J. (1979) Italian Fascism and developmental dictatorship   
   Princeton, N.J.: Univ. Press.   
   Hagan, J. (1966) Modern History and its themes. Croydon, Victoria,   
   Australia: Longmans.   
   Hibbert, C. (1962) Benito Mussolini Geneva: Heron Books. Herzer, I.   
   (1989)   
   The Italian refuge: Rescue of Jews during the holocaust. Washington,   
   D.C.:   
   Catholic University of America Press   
   Horowitz, D. (1998) Up from multiculturalism. Heterodoxy, January.   
   See:   
   http://www.cspc.org/het/multicul.htm   
   Lenin, V.I. (1952) "Left-Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder. In:   
   Selected Works, Vol. II, Part 2. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing   
   House.   
   Martino, A. (1998) The modern mask of socialism. 15th John Bonython   
   lecture,   
   Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney. See   
   http://www.cis.org.au/Events/JBL/JBL98.htm   
   Muravchik, J. (2002) Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism   
   San   
   Francisco: Encounter Books.   
   Smith, D.M. (1967) The theory and practice of Fascism. In: Greene, N.   
   Fascism: An anthology N.Y.: Crowell.   
   Steinberg, J. (1990) All or nothing: The Axis and the holocaust   
   London:   
   Routledge.   
      
      
      
      
      
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