The interwar period was marked in Europe by the rediscovery of corporatism as a possible solution to the crucial problems of modern mass society. This was the result of general changes across industrialised countries in the relationship between the state and social groups. In Italy, it took on a uniquely authoritarian shape. Fascist regime became the cradle of a new model of corporatism, a “third way” alternative to both capitalism and communism, destined to influence both political, juridical, and economic debate and similar legislative experiments undertaken by other countries, be they democratic or authoritarian. The book offers an overview of corporatism in Fascist Italy. It examines not only the ideology but also the acts and real activities of corporative institutions (corporazioni). It dwells upon internal debates, the political and institutional importance acquired by corporative institutions in the Fascist regime, and the behaviour of entrepreneurial organizations and labour unions. At the same time, the book highlights the role of Italy in the transnational circulation of the corporative ideal by reconstructing both the considerable influence of Mussolini’s regime in a range of different political and geographical contexts and the way in which the authorities in Rome turned to coeval international experiences.

In tracing the development of industrial associations in Italy from 1906 to 1934, this study challenges traditional interpretations of the rise of fascism. Unlike other studies of industrialists and fascism that begin with the post-World War I crisis, Professor Adler reconstitutes the prior relations between industrialists and Italian liberalism, and then situates industrialists within the liberal crisis and the transition to fascism. Adler's study is theoretically informed by current interests in assessing interpretations of fascism, relating corporatism to crises in liberalism, and applying hermeneutics to historical analysis.

Presents Italian fascism as a political system characterized by three groups: first, a thorough legal embodiment of dictatorial control, the second, providing for state control of labor, and the third, a less defined control by bodies known as "corporations" which combine capital and labor.

This socio-political study traces the rise to power of a fascist dictatorship in Italy and its control of the state during World War II. It focuses specifically on the institutions of the fascist state, the suppression of anti-fascism, and the use of propaganda in maintaining the state.