Abstract

"Corporative Aesthetics: Propaganda, State Control, and the Fascist Economic Project in Italy, 1922-1943"

Bianca Centrone, Princeton University (centrone@princeton.edu)

The Fascist State in Italy was founded in 1922 upon the promise of a new political economy. Corporatism foresaw overcoming the tensions that had been created by the traditional, liberal model of capitalism in a new cooperation of the economic categories as a triangulation of workers, employers and the State. De-facto, Corporatism was the violent response of a movement, then a polity, to the threat of socialism, Christian socialism and communism in a country that was torn apart by both the war, and by deep seated socio-economic strife. This paper studies the corporative economy as representation and propaganda. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Fascist regime was at the forefront of public cultural and educational experimentation for legitimation and control. Many are familiar with the magniloquent propaganda that supported Fascist agriculture, the wheat campaign and the colonial expedition. Institutions such as the Ministry of Popular Culture (MinCulPop) and the Biennale di Venezia disseminated the message of Corporatism domestically and abroad. The advocacy of workers’-employers’ collaboration in newspapers, news-reels and advertisement went hand in hand with the outlawing of trade unions - which were never replaced with alternative forms of workers’ representation. At exhibitions in Paris, Bruxelles, Budapest, Chicago, the regime promoted the model of Corporatism to gather diplomatic support and inflate its economic successes. This paper analyzes visual representations of Corporatism, to investigate prevalent academic claims that the Fascist economic discourse was an empty shell with no real commitment to socio-economic innovation. It looks beyond intellectual elites and institutions into the cultura popolare. Exploring the ways in which the regime communicated its project to the masses, it seeks new insights into how the Regime understood itself and its own economic ambitions.