Corporativismo fascista e New Deal statunitense. Pianificare tra Stato e business

Abstract

In 1934, the American writer Roger Shaw stated that “the functioning of the NRA (National Recovery Administration) is clearly an American-style adaptation of the Italian corporate state”. Mussolini himself proudly recognised the mark of fascism in the New Deal overseas. The purpose of this paper, however, is not a historical-ideological comparison. Indeed, recent work has shown that rather than following fascism, the New Deal shows the entry of global tendencies into American politics and that the NRA’s precedent was the War Industries Board of 1917 rather than Alfredo Rocco and Carlo Costamagna’s Labour Charter. It is also now clear that fascist corporatism was one of those national experiments that enjoyed transnational and Atlantic appeal and circulation. Instead, the paper will focus on these main global tendencies, the emergence of plan thinking, and what we see as the red thread that holds together experiments in reforming and restructuring capitalism. Such experiments are varied and and not confined to the history of totalitarianism and the rise of authoritarian regimes. Therefore, the essay analyses how, with what weight and effects, plan thinking played a part in turning the fascist corporate state and the New Deal into alternatives to Soviet planning that threatened to be the only real alternative to capitalism.

Keywords

• State
• corporatism
• New Deal
• planning
• capitalism