Mises Wire When people hear the word “fascism” they naturally think of its ugly racism and anti-Semitism as practiced by the totalitarian regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. But there was also an economic policy component of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and ‘30s as “corporatism,” that was an essential ingredient of economic totalitarianism

The Free World Flirts With Fascism Few Americans are aware of or can recall how so many Americans and Europeans viewed economic fascism as the wave of the future during the 1930s. The American Ambassador to Italy, Richard Washburn Child, was so impressed with “corporatism” that he wrote in the preface to Mussolini’s 1928 autobiography […]

Falling in love with fascist Italy. The Italian “Corporatist” System So-called “corporatism” as practiced by Mussolini and revered by so many intellectuals and policy makers had several key elements: The state comes before the individual. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines fascism as “a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above […]

Germany takes a fascist turn. German Economic Fascism Economic fascism in Germany followed a ‘virtually identical path. One of the intellectual fathers of German fascism was Paul Lensch, who declared in his book Three Years of World Revolution that “Socialism must present a conscious and determined opposition to individualism.” The philosophy of German fascism was […]

They sell it as progressivism to the left today, and sell it as protectionism to the right. Either way, it's the economic policy of Fascists. Conclusions Virtually all of the specific economic policies advocated by the Italian and German fascists of the 1930s have also been adopted in the United States in some form, and […]