Legacy of Mussolini?

[caesar novus]

I wonder if Italy's embrace of Mussolini 1922-43 has any reflection or continuity in either todays genteel touristic Italy or the Roman republic/empire. I was surprised to hear classical professors claim continuity in some cultural and physical ways, like how ancient Romans could act like today's supposed "mamma's boys" and how the gladius may favor a short aggressor against a taller victim. I guess Mussolini liked to think he was reviving Roman warrior heritage, but eventually decided the population had excessive elements of either Roman hedonism or Roman slaves.

 

I didn't really get answers after reading one biography that utterly ridiculed every aspect of his rule (I guess it was a counter shot to some favorable Italian biographies) and got stuck in another impenetrable bio that attempted a synthesis. Didn't he at least knock back the mafia, and trailblaze the same techniques used to supress it today? Some example questions follow, not needing specific answers but maybe some perspective:

 

Why did fascism start in Italy during the "good" times in Italy vs later in depression throes elsewhere? I can only guess fascism is based on the grievances of a demobilized army, and although Italy was on the winning side of WW1, it's soldiers had a mismanaged rough time of it. They had been exposed to brutality, discipline, and considered using this toolset to re-enter a civilian life that seemed unwelcoming, decadent and complacent.

 

Why were there so few serious assassination attempts against Mussolini's disruptive, dysfunctional, and somewhat violent rule? This aside from the chance the authorities later had to shoot him or give him to the Allies during his 1943 imprisonment. After being freed he was worse than just Hitlers puppet, but used his local knowledge to viciously target underground partisans. I guess Mussolini could seem charming in a rogue sort of way - certainly Hitler is quoted as being almost in love with him, even as he created war-losing problems.

 

How could the economy function with his contradictive meddling? I don't understand his "corporatism" and wonder if that is something like today's German model where unionists sit on the corporate board. Some say he just gave orders that nobody obeyed... that the theater of orders was enough and were rarely enforced. And it is weird how he kept switching between left and right ("third way"); he is famous for reactionary steps that really seem taken as opportunism vs an almost equal desire to mix in elements of extreme left.

 

Is such rule gone forever, like Frances Fukuyama said about once-widespread fascist parties? I can only guess it was feasible from a leap forward in propaganda technology relative to the people's means of detecting nonsense. Mussolini was once a rabble-rousing newspaper editor, and some say that all he ever aspired to was making provoking headlines rather than a real impact on reality. Hopefully today's still-fragmented Italian political scene is more solid than the ones that allowed sinister "rescues" by Mussolini or Octavian, but maybe today's North Korea is more truely fascist than marxist.

[guy]

I wonder if Italy's embrace of Mussolini 1922-43 has any reflection or continuity in either todays genteel touristic Italy or the Roman republic/empire.

 

Many of my relatives and their neighbors were anti-fascists, so my opinion of Mussolini is not impartial. Their region of Italy was one of the last to fall to his rule (Parma-Reggio Emilia).

 

He was an opportunist. I think this quote attributed to him is very telling:

 

"It is not impossible to govern Italians. It is merely useless."

 

Sadly, many of the statists and collectivists in this country were enamored of him:

 

"There seems to be no question that [Mussolini] is really interested in what we are doing and I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy. "

(Franklin D. Roosevelt to US Ambassador to Italy Breckinridge Long, Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. ''Three New Deals : Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939. Macmillan.)

 

Reagan, I think, got it right:

 

"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say "But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.'"

(Ronald Reagan. Time in 1976. Reagan adviser Jude Wanniski has indicated that, in 1933, New Dealers as well as much of the world admired Mussolini

Edited September 24, 2011 by guy

[caesar novus]

He should have kept his initial impression of Hitler:

Edited September 26, 2011 by caesar novus

[Viggen]

Apparently regional differences are still strong.

 

Living just a few miles from the Italian border, I am pretty much convinced that an inhabitant of northern Friuli has more in common with an austrian than with anything south of Venice... and than there is South Tyrol, well that was always german anyway (the richest province in Italy, anyone surprised?) Italy is the little version of the EU a powerful north that drags along the not so powerful south. ...

 

p.s. that movie sounds like fun...

[Ursus]

Italy is the little version of the EU a powerful north that drags along the not so powerful south. ...

 

Much the same in the US. Most of the poorest states are in the Old South.

 

But seriously,. when I read that the northern 3rd of Italy accounts for 55% of the Italian economy, I suddenly understand calls for federalism, or outright secession. Hail Padania!

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

That movie sounds awfullly like the French one called "Bienvenue chez les Cht'i" (where a postman from the south gets reallocated to the northern, economically devastated, culturally alien, region.) I presume we could do the same with wallonians and flemish over here (and probably did, with our surrealistic country's large movie making community)

[guy]

I presume we could do the same with wallonians and flemish over here (and probably did, with our surrealistic country's large movie making community)

 

Not meaning to get off topic, but what are the chances that Belgium will separate into two nations?

 

Most Italians have in common, at least, the mythology of Ancient Rome, a common Roman Catholic church, and a fabricated Italian language created in the mid-1800s. Belgium has none of these.

 

 

guy also known as gaius

[Kosmo]

Both Belgian communities are mostly catholic. I think the biggest hurdle for flemish secession is deciding the fate of Bruxelles, a french speaking city located in the dutch speaking region.

The legacy of Mussolini is the founding of fascism by mixing marxist populism and focus on the state with large scale corruption, nationalism and militarism in a toxic demagogic cocktail. While there are no more openly fascist states contemporary dictatorships like that of Mubarak in Egypt or the so-called communist rule in China look very much like fascism.

He also played a decisive role in breaking any effectiveness for the League of Nation and the multilateral treaties that kept the order established after WW1 and so he played a vital role in preparing and later in extending WW2.

Maybe without his intervention Spain would have become a communist pro-soviet state.

[Viggen]

Not meaning to get off topic, but what are the chances that Belgium will separate into two nations?

 

If it wasnt for Brussels they would have seperated long ago, Bryaxis can explain better he lives there, but when i first came to Belgium I thought the whole country is bilingual but its not its only Brussels and the rest is divided as strictly as two nations, they dont interact with each other, have their own TV shows, own nespapers, own education own culture, own everything...

 

..from a practical point of view it would make sense to make Brussels a "singapore type of city state" and let the french and dutch have their own country (or join other countries if they wish)

[Virgil61]

I wonder if Italy's embrace of Mussolini 1922-43 has any reflection or continuity in either todays genteel touristic Italy or the Roman republic/empire.

 

Many of my relatives and their neighbors were anti-fascists, so my opinion of Mussolini is not impartial. Their region of Italy was one of the last to fall to his rule (Parma-Reggio Emilia).

 

Mine fished and farmed in Abruzzo, I don't think they gave a damn one way or the other. Grandfather ended up in a POW camp in Scotland and wasn't released until 1947 or so. Apparently POWs weren't given the first priority in transport!

 

Sadly, many of the statists and collectivists in this country were enamored of him:

 

So were many anti-communists, Henry Ford, JP Morgan's partner Thomas Lament, Calvin Coolidge's old friend and avid supporter Frank Stearn, and on and on. Fortune magazine, owned by an anti-Roosevelt and ardent anti-communist life-long Henry Luce, devoted an issue to Mussolini.

 

The point is of course those were different times and many now put forth slanted versions of history to justify contemporary beliefs.

 

Reagan, I think, got it right:

"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say "But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.'"

(Ronald Reagan. Time in 1976. Reagan adviser Jude Wanniski has indicated that, in 1933, New Dealers as well as much of the world admired Mussolini

Edited September 28, 2011 by Virgil61

[caesar novus]

Sadly, many of the statists and collectivists in this country were enamored of him:

So were many anti-communists, Henry Ford, JP Morgan's partner Thomas Lament, Calvin Coolidge's old friend and avid supporter Frank Stearn, and on and on. Fortune magazine, owned by an anti-Roosevelt and ardent anti-communist life-long Henry Luce, devoted an issue to Mussolini.

There is a chicken and egg circularity at play. Mussolini started at extreme left, but had too strong competition with the bolsheviks. He had to change marketing tactics to appeal to the establishment right in order to find a support demographic desperate for a leader. The horrors of Russia meant some weren't picky even when Mussolini showed impulses of swinging back left or a tyranical third way. He found people were so reassured by lip service to their side that they would ignore his lip service to the other side. Hitler did his famous swing rightwards in order to gain military establishment support in his night of the long knives.

 

This cynical battle for demographics will be discussed by the authors of The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics in http://www.booktv.org/Program/12846/After+Words+Bruce+Bueno+de+Mesquita+Alastair+Smith+The+Dictators+Handbook+Why+Bad+Behavior+is+Almost+Always+Good+Politics+hosted+by+Anne+Gearan+Associated+Press+National+Security+Editor.aspx (weekend on cspan, then video should appear on this link). They appear to generalize from Caesar to Mussolini to the shakedown artist city manager of Bell, California in the dysfunctional principles that both dictators and elected officials are incentivized to follow. I guess they claim Julius was actually killed due to being public spirited instead of protecting the interests of powerful supporters, and so on in the Arab spring, etc.

 

The New Deal and what became known as the Keynesian approach deals with demand and money supply. Once the level of investment, production and unemployment reach a certain basement % the belief was/is the gov't steps in to 'prime the pump' by forcing demand into the system. Roughly akin to shocking someone's heart to start it again.

 

Pushing aggregate demand when an economy stubbornly won't respond with a typical economic free market cycle is what it is all about. The dam building, road construction, new administrations, regs and so on are to keep the cycle from bottoming out. One may not agree with that economic approach but it isn't Fascism.

Big subject, but I hardly think the new deal was all about pump priming. That didn't really take until WW2 anyway. Early pump priming effectiveness was offset by witch hunting punishment of business to sate populist yobs, smothering regulation, and bloat of the public sector. Although FDR was against public unions, he layed the groundwork for that being the logical conclusion for the developed world where (as in Greece) the public sector owns the citizens instead of vice versa.

[Virgil61]

 

 

The New Deal and what became known as the Keynesian approach deals with demand and money supply. Once the level of investment, production and unemployment reach a certain basement % the belief was/is the gov't steps in to 'prime the pump' by forcing demand into the system. Roughly akin to shocking someone's heart to start it again.

 

Pushing aggregate demand when an economy stubbornly won't respond with a typical economic free market cycle is what it is all about. The dam building, road construction, new administrations, regs and so on are to keep the cycle from bottoming out. One may not agree with that economic approach but it isn't Fascism.

Big subject, but I hardly think the new deal was all about pump priming. That didn't really take until WW2 anyway. Early pump priming effectiveness was offset by witch hunting punishment of business to sate populist yobs, smothering regulation, and bloat of the public sector. Although FDR was against public unions, he layed the groundwork for that being the logical conclusion for the developed world where (as in Greece) the public sector owns the citizens instead of vice versa.

 

I'll admit it's an oversimplification of course but pump-priming by the government certainly is a core element of the ND, Keynesian economics is nothing if not that. [EDIT: I'll add that priming the pump has been a description of the New Deal from high school through grad school. They don't do that anymore? ]

 

As many economists have stated the economy was on the mend until the opposition gained control of spending in Congress and tightened the fiscal noose around '37 causing things to get worse again. A solid majority of economic historians and economists (aggregated) don't believe the gov't made the Great Depression worse. LINK

 

That whole argument ('government made the depression worse') has been a recent phenomena that I think panders to groups eager for justifications against government interference in contemporary society.

 

There is speculation not evidence that regulation constricted growth circa the mid-30s or that scattered anti-business policies around some states significantly effected it either. The 'bloat' of the public sector; dams, roads and other construction was what was pushing demand, that was the point of it all. The post 1940 boom due to war production is Keynesian economics on steroids. The post-war economy was able to soak up production of those industries who could make the switch to civilian/consumer goods to answer the pent-up demand.

 

But whatever the merits of our arguments on the effectiveness of gov't involvement in the depression calling it akin or a fellow traveler to Fascism couldn't be more wrong IMHO.

Edited September 28, 2011 by Virgil61