This essentially political organization, constituted for the unification of the Italians and the solidarity development of their free activities, is completed with an equally unitary organization of an economic and social character which is synthesized, through a rapid process of formation, in the corporate system.
According to holidaysort.com, the Fascist revolution, in its task of integral national reform according to the needs created by time, immediately posed the problem of the new organization of the economy and, through the discipline of the distribution of wealth, the problem of the new organization of social relations.
The corporative system, which brings about the fascist revolution in progress in the economic and social aspect, goes towards the new time and marks an advanced stage in the world evolution of the national economy and society. Its ideal principles, its methods and its results have already become the subject of study and imitation in all civilized countries.
The cornerstones of the system that brings about a profound transformation of national society are known (corporation, XI, p. 459; corporatism, App.). They start from the collective representation of the interests of classes or groups – which had never had a legal discipline in Italy before the March on Rome – that is, from the trade union which, in the totalitarian regime of fascism, can only be one and obligatory. for each category. In two meetings, the Grand Council of Fascism lays the foundations for the new construction. On 23 January 1925 it poses the problem of the classification of the national economic forces, organized in the system of the state and of national relations, and on 6 October of the same year it traces the path of the new trade union and social legislation, thus preparing the law of 3 April 1926., and the Labor Charter of 21 April 1927, which governs collective labor relations (work: Right of Coalition, XX, p. 660; paper: The Labor Charter, IX, p. 206).
The new system overcomes democratic liberalism and socialism. In fact, it submits the interest of the individual or group to the nation and for it to the state: it does not cancel the idea of classes but tends to reconcile and stabilize them and provides, for this permanent conciliation, in opposition to the agnosticism of the liberal state, the continuous intervention and state control.
On this basis, the relations between capital and labor rapidly develop towards a system of social laws and conventions that lead Italy to complete internal unity and to the avant-garde of social progress. Italy is, for example, the first country to apply the 40-hour work week – a problem posed in the Geneva International Labor Office since autumn 1932 and never resolved – with an inter-union agreement of 11 October 1934, which becomes a permanent norm for industries with a collective agreement of 23 June 1935, perfected with the norm of the “fascist Saturday” (see App.), aimed at essentially educational and social purposes. However, the limitation of weekly working hours does not affect the budget of the working-class family. is created in fact,work: Labor legislation, XX, p. 665).
In 1936 it was already possible to draw up an assessment of the results achieved in the new Italian corporate activity. It appeared that no less than 150 had been the subjects dealt with in the first meetings of the corporations after a preparatory work carried out in the various trade union associations. Never since the formation of the United Kingdom of Italy had there been, with technical skills and overall views, such an integral examination of all the essential problems of the national economy, carried out with the collaboration of state bodies and all factors directly representative of the various economic activities. Without canceling individual initiatives, all economic activities were disciplined and framed, with unitary fronts and progressive regulatory plans.
With this organic unity of activities, achieved in the working solidarity of the classes, Italy was able to overcome the hard depressive moments of the world economy, created by the 1929 crisis that started in the United States. It was also able to successfully resist the economic siege imposed on it with the sanctions of the League of Nations in application of art. 16 of the Covenant, from the hostile policy of England, managed to combine fifty-two states, to stop the Italian enterprise in Ethiopia. And now it is organizing its economy towards an autarchic form that ensures it, with economic independence for war supplies and the basic needs of the nation, perfect political and military independence.
At the end of 1937 for all sectors of economic activity, plans and work goals were already drawn up for this purpose. New productions were started for the national manufacture of cellulose, necessary for paper and artificial textile fibers, liquid fuels, glass and ceramics, mining, steel and mechanical products, textiles, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and dyes (self-sufficiency, App.).
This rapid maturity of the corporations, which have become the driving force and regulator of the various economic sectors and true parliaments of the category of free examination with the direct and proportionate representation of all classes, in the meantime prepares the transformation of the legislative chamber. Since June 8, 1923, in a speech to the Senate, Mussolini had announced this revision: “Parliamentarism has been seriously injured, not to death, by two typical phenomena of our time: on the one hand trade unionism, on the other the journalism”. Trade unions and corporations bring to the government the knowledge of all the needs of the nation on the part of producers and consumers, and, besides the economic aspect, of all categories of citizens and interests, i.e. agriculture, industry, of trade, finance and intellectual life, while on the other hand they bring to the direct knowledge of the interested parties the directives of the state and the tasks it assigns in the service of the collective utility of the nation. Therefore, as a new stage in the political and corporative evolution of the fascist state, the ever more intimate juxtaposition between the legislative chambers and the assembly of corporations was evident.
