General Plan of the New Italian Economy
By Benito Mussolini
The new phase of Italian history will be controlled by this aim to achieve as soon as possible the greatest possible economic autonomy for the nation. No country in the world within its own territory can achieve a hundred percent, absolute, or ideal economic autonomy, and even if it could, such a situation might prove undesirable. But every country today is trying to free itself in large measure from foreign economic servitude. There is one field above all in which we must seek to achieve such autonomy—the field of national defense. Without autonomy there the very possibility of defense is endangered; all policies are at the mercy of foreign pressure even if this pressure is only economic. An economic war, the kind of invisible war declared by Geneva against Italy, might succeed in coercing the greatest of nations, even though it were composed entirely of heroes. The attempt made in these last months is a warning.
To determine to what extent Italy can realize economic autonomy in the field of national defense an inventory of our resources is necessary and, in addition, an estimate of what can be expected from science and modern technique. For this very purpose we have created and subsidized the National Research Council. Such an inventory should be read remembering that in time of war civilian consumption can be partly or wholly curtailed.
Let us begin our list on the negative end—with liquid fuels. Surveys for oil within our territory are under way but have yielded no appreciable results to date. To meet our needs for liquid fuels we are depending, especially in time of war, on liquefying lignites, on deriving alcohol from agricultural products, and on the extraction of oil from asphalt rocks. The Italian deposits of lignite are estimated at two hundred million tons. Turning to solid fuels we find that at the present stage of scientific development we must have certain high-grade kinds of coal for special purposes. For ordinary use however, the domestic kinds can be used—from Livorno, Sardinia, and Aosta. The Azienda Carboni Italiani has already made great progress; production is increasing and giving the consumer complete satisfaction. I estimate that with our resources, plus the electrification of railroads, plus the curtailing of consumption, we shall be able in time to find substitutes for from forty to fifty per cent of our present coal imports.
Let us now pass on to metals and other mineral products. We have sufficient iron for our needs in both peace and war. Old Elba seems to be inexhaustible. The Cogne deposit is estimated at dozens of millions of tons of ore, the purest in Europe with the exception of Sweden. The only drawback is the altitude of 2,800 metres at which it is found; I repeat, drawback—not barrier. There are other iron mines now being reopened in Murra and Valdaspra. If we include pyrites with our iron ore we can regard ourselves as supplied in this field. Other minerals that Italy possesses in great quantities are: bauxite and leucite for making aluminum, zinc, lead, mercury, sulphur, and manganese. Tin and nickel are found in Sardinia and Piedmont. We have no copper worth mentioning. Passing on to other raw materials, we have no supply of cellulose today, but will have soon. We have no rubber. In 1936 the cultivation of cotton is being resumed. We lack oil-bearing seeds. Until we produce synthetic wool on an industrial basis, we must admit that our output of natural wool is below our needs. The lack of many raw materials for the textile industry, however, is not a matter of serious concern. It is in this field that science, technology, and the ingenuity of Italians can develop and are already in operation. The broom plant, for example, which grows everywhere and is known to many Italians only because Leopardi sang of it in one of his most touching poems, yields today a textile fibre used on an industrial scale. The forty-four million Italians will always have the clothes they need to cover them. It matters little in these times of what the cloth is made.
The problem of raw materials must therefore be conceived no longer in terms such as the old-fashioned defeatist liberalism employed when it resigned itself to eternal Italian inferiority and summarized the problem in the hackneyed phrase, "Italy is poor in natural resources." We say instead, "Italy does not possess certain raw materials and that is the foundation of her colonial needs. Other raw materials Italy possesses in sufficient quantity. In still others she is rich." This is the actual state of affairs, and it explains our conviction that Italy can and must attain a maximum of economic autonomy for peace and above all for war.
The whole Italian economy must be directed toward this supreme necessity. On it depends the future of the Italian people.
I come now to a most important point in my speech, to what I shall call a plan for the regulation of Italian economy in the near future of Fascism. This plan is based on a premise: the inevitability of war and of our nation being drawn into it. When? How? No one can tell, but the wheel of destiny spins fast. If not, how could we explain the policy of colossal armaments inaugurated by all how could we explain the policy of colossal armaments inaugurated by all nations? It is this dramatic eventuality that must guide our action. In the present period of history the element of war, and with it the doctrine of Fascism, is a determining factor of the attitude the State must take towards the national economy. As I said in Milan, October 1934, the Fascist Regime does not intend to turn over the whole economy of the nation to the State, or worse still to a bureaucracy; Fascism is content to control this economy and regulate it through the Guilds, whose activities, under my close scrutiny, have already been very helpful and show hopeful signs of systematic development in the future. The Guilds are, to be sure, organs of the State, but not bureaucratic organs of the State.
I come now to an analysis of the situation. The basic realm of agriculture is not susceptible structurally to notable change. Hence there will be no serious innovations in the traditional methods of Italian agricultural economy. They answer their purpose fairly well, furnishing stable foods to the Italian people and certain raw materials to industry. Agricultural economy will remain on the basis of private ownership, regulated and assisted by the State, so that it may attain ever higher averages in its production, and co-ordinated with the rest of the national economy in the Guilds. The day laborer and seasonal worker remains a problem to be met along the lines already laid down by Fascism.
As to commercial enterprise, we must distinguish its two parts: foreign commerce, which has become directly or indirectly (and not merely temporarily, as some may believe) a function of the State; and domestic trade, which, when it has once attained corporative self-control, will not change radically. The sphere of commerce is entrusted to the initiative of individuals, groups, or co-operative societies.
As to the sphere of credit, which is to economics what the blood is to the body, recent decrees have brought it logically under the direct control of the State. This branch, for more reasons than one, belongs absolutely to the State.
Passing on to industrial and handicraft production, I emphasize assistance for the artisan. He can not be replaced, especially in Italy. We must support him not only in deference to his glorious past but for his present usefulness.
Small and medium-sized industries will remain in the sphere of individual responsibility and initiative, co-ordinated nationally and socially by their self-regulating Guilds. The heavy industries which work directly or indirectly for the defense and are financed by selling stock, and other industries, too, which have developed on a capitalistic or super-capitalistic basis, thus creating social and not merely economic problems, these will all be merged into large units corresponding to the so-called key industries, and will take on a special form within the sphere of the State. In Italy the realization of these changes will be aided by the fact that through the Istituto Ricostruzione Industrial the State already owns strong holdings in the chief industries related to national defense, amounting in some cases to a majority of the capital stock.
Is State intervention in these great industrial units to be direct or indirect? Is the State to operate them or merely control them? In some branches it may be a case of direct operation, in others of indirect operation, and in still others of merely effective control. It is even possible to imagine joint enterprises in which the State and private owners combine in procuring capital and in organizing the management. It is perfectly logical that in the Fascist State these industries should cease to have de jure the status of private enterprises which de facto they have lost completely since 1930-31. These industries, on account of their nature, the volume of their production, and their vital importance for war, transcend the bounds of private economy and enter into the sphere of the State or of quasi public business. Their products have but one purchaser—the State itself.
During the period we have entered these industries will have neither time nor opportunity to supply the private consumer. They will be obliged to work exclusively, or almost so, for the armed forces of the State. There is a strictly moral reason as well that leads us to these conclusions. The Fascist Regime does not allow individuals or companies to make profits out of circumstances that demand of the nation the heaviest sacrifices. The disgraceful spectacle of war-profiteering shall not be seen in Italy again.
Such a constitutional transformation of a large and important branch of our economy shall come about calmly, without haste but with Fascist determination. I have now traced the general outlines of the country's economic prospect for tomorrow.
As you can see, a corporative economy is many-sided but integrated. Fascism has never intended to reduce everything into the State as a common denominator, or in other words to transform the national economy into a State monopoly. The Guilds merely regulate it, and the State embraces only as much of it as belongs to defense, that is, to the security of the country. In this economy, which is like the economies of all highly developed nations, highly differentiated, labour becomes a partner in business enterprise, with equal rights and duties, together with those who contribute capital and those who are technical managers. In the Fascist Era the various phases of labour are the only rule for measuring the social and national utility of individuals and groups. An economy of the kind I have sketched for you in general outline must guarantee peace, happiness, moral and material prosperity to the masses who constitute the nation and who have demonstrated in these days their high degree of civic conscience and whole-hearted support of the Regime. In the Fascist system the barriers that separate the various occupational groups of producers must and shall be lowered. These groups will recognize no social order save that of stern duty and genuine responsibility.
In the Fascist economy we shall achieve that higher social justice to which in all ages the masses of men have aspired in their hard daily struggle for the elementary necessities of life.
This is the second time that the National Assembly of Guilds has convened on the Capitoline Hill. Many will rightly be curious to know what is going to become of this Assembly. What place will it take in the constitutional framework of the Italian State? I have already given an answer in my address of November 14, 1933, to which I refer you and in which I announced that the National Council of Guilds might very well replace the Chamber of Deputies entirely and would, in fact, do so. Today I repeat this plan for you. The Chamber of Deputies, which even in its present constitution includes members of this Assembly, will yield to the National Assembly of Guilds. This Assembly will be called the Chamber of Fasci and Corporations and will be composed at first of the twenty-two Corporations. How the new representative and legislative assembly will be formed, its by-laws, functions, powers, prerogatives and nature are problems of a theoretical character that will be examined by the highest body of the Regime, the Grand Council.
The new Assembly will be "political" in the strict sense of the word, for economic problems can be solved only on a political basis. On the other hand, all the forces that are somewhat inaccurately called non-economic will also be represented in the Assembly either through the Fascist Party or through other legally recognized associations.
You may now ask when this profound but already well-prepared constitutional transformation will take place. I can reply that the time is not far off though it is linked to the victorious outcome of the African war and to developments in European politics.
By this economic transformation of which I have spoken and the political innovations of a constitutional character to which I have referred, the Fascist Revolution will achieve completely its basic aims as they were voted by acclamation at the mass meeting in San Sepolcro Square seventeen years ago.
Comrades: Italy is secure within her boundaries, thanks to her armaments and her spirited fighters; she is equipped ahead of all other countries with political and social institutions increasingly adapted to her circumstances and to the evolution of modern times ; and she can see before her today an open road to greater power through Fascism.
The sacrifice made by the Italians in Africa is a great service rendered to civilization, to the peace of the world, and even to those old powers satiated with colonies that have committed the incredible historical blunder of blocking our path. Italy is conquering territories in Africa for the sake of freeing their varied populations which for thousands of years have been at the mercy of a few blood-thirsty and greedy chiefs.
The living surge of the Italian people has not been obstructed and never will be by the meshes of a treaty which brought to humanity not peace but only the prospect of vaster wars. Thirty centuries of history, of glorious history, added to the indomitable wills of successive generations and to the capacity for making the supreme sacrifice, the sacrifice of blood, the capacity thrice proved in the first part of this century, are sufficient to nourish our faith and to open for us the doors of the future.
