Did M's economic policies improve ordinary people's lifestyles

Question 1

Mussolini’s aims

Successes

Answer 1

• Adapted policies that would secure his position.
• Late 1920s - more ambitious and attracted to the idea of an economic transformation of Italy (Corporate State).
• Mid-1930s - priorities changed - new economic transformation required for maintaining a modern war machine, therefore the drive for autarky was necessary.

Question 2

Mussolini’s aims

Weaknesses

Answer 2

Ignored the country’s ‘old problems’ of industrial underdevelopment, rural poverty, the north-south divide and illiteracy were largely ignored - unless they supported his aims.

Question 3

Impact of Fascist policies on Industry and Policies 1922-27

Successes

Answer 3

• Claimed the credit for increasing company profits and won industrialist support by appointing D’Stefani as Treasury MInister, adopting traditional economic policy and limiting govt spending - helped fight inflation.
• Reduced state intervention in the industry, while abandoned or reduced tax levied on industries that made profits from govt contracts in WWI.
• After 1925 - took less notice of business interest - shown by dismissing de Stefani and reevaluation of the Italian currency.

Question 4

Impact of Fascist policies on Industry and Policies 1922-27

Weaknesses

Answer 4

Socialist and Catholic Trade Unions were outlawed at the Vidoni Palace Pact 1925 - questions who will protect worker rights.

Question 5

Battle of the Lira

Strengths

Answer 5

• In 1927, restored the value of the lira from Oct 1922, setting the exchange rate set to 90 lira = increased Musso’s prestige with foreign bankers and the Italian public.
• Big businesses and heavy industry benefited for steel, armaments and shipbuilding - granted cheap, tariff-free raw materials = promoted these industries which made healthy profits from the protected domestic market but neglected export industries.

Question 6

Battle of the lira

Weaknesses

Answer 6

• Foreign buyers found Italian goods overvalued, deflation and hampered Italy’s export industries.
• Unemployment tripled in 1926-8 and experts feared it would be forced to introduce deflationary measures, price reductions and cuts to worker’s wages.
• Fascist protectionism of higher tariffs placed on foreign goods meant the prices for Italians rose.
• Shifted focus to economic policies representing Mussolini’s strength and less of the actual economic needs.

Question 7

Corporate State - the theory

Strengths

Answer 7

• Unemployment fell and de Stefani’s policy curbed inflation.
• Allows cooperation between employers and workers to maximise production for the nation, unlike Britain and France’s bitter industrial disputes that led to strikes and conflict, and instead it allowed businessmen to help industries prosper.

Question 8

Corporate State - the theory

Weaknesses

Answer 8

Open conflict between employers and workers did decline but only because free trade unions were banned and strikes were ruled illegal.

Question 9

Corporate State - the reality

Strengths

Answer 9

• 1927 = sided with Bottai and the Confindustria - former charged with writing a ‘Labour Charter’ which posed no threat to the employers and declared privitisation the most efficient method of running an economy.
• Reduced Rossoni’s radical influence in 1928 - split into six smaller confederations and removed his followers from their posts.
• After its creation in 1926, the Ministry of Corporations claimed success - ushering in a new economic era and removing all class conflict in the industry - by 1934, 22 corporations covered nearly every area of the economy and could influence the industry.
• However, Workers couldn’t choose their own representatives in the corporations - only negotiated sick pay and paid national holidays (1938). Inustrialists could keep their own non-Fascist employers’ organisations, and ignored the existence of these corporations.

Question 10

Corporate State - the reality

Weaknesses

Answer 10

• Fascist trade unions appeared to provide a real say for workers, but rivalries within the Fascist Party and Mussolini’s reluctance to alienate big business interests, soon destroyed such hopes.
• The Ministry of Corporations’ head Bottai distrusted Rossoni, saw little role for unions, and wanted corporations to be dominated by a partnership of employers and technical experts - hoped to maximise industrial production.
• The ‘Cooperative revolution’ never materialised. Conflict wasn’t solved, only suppressed - the Fascist appointed representatives sided with the employer over key issues like salaries and improved working conditions.
• Regulations issued by the corporations advisory which meant big businesses and the employers maintained their independence and influence.

Question 11

Depression

Strengths - emloyment

Answer 11

• Unemployment rose from 500k to 2m by 1933.
• Unlike democratic govts who disliked intervene bc of their LZ policy, Italy had no such worries.
• Introduced public work schemes, built motorways and hydroelectric power plants, which provided employment and increased money in circulation which stimulated demand and created more jobs.

Question 12

Depression

Strengths - banking crisis

Answer 12

• Depression 1929 = many companies collapsed and/or struggled to meet the repayments on their loans from banks, finding themselves w/o money to pay investors - bailed out by the govt.
• Created the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction in Jan 1933 = after bailing them out, IRI controlled their major shares and they became the major one - became the effective owner of top Italian companies. Provided loans for companies and promoted the latest managerial techniques with some success.

Question 13

Depression

Weaknesses

Answer 13

More long-term consequences - cost the taxpayer money, but they enabled Italy to weather the depression slightly better than its democratic neighbours (USA and Germany).

Question 14

The Battle for Births - aims

Answer 14

• Announced in May 1927 - aimed at encouraging Italians to increase their population, ideally to 60M by 1950s to compete with the populations of Germany and Russia, so military strength would be boosted.
• Economically = larger population would create more competition for employment and thus keeps wages and labour costs low and increases consumers.
• Help his aims of developing better relations with the Catholic Church - ideal of women focused on the family and raising children with Catholic values, holding the poorer southern areas, where trad values thrived, as the example to the rest of Italy.

Question 15

Battle for Births

Strengths - policies introduced

Answer 15

• Tax reductions, loans and prizes for large families.
• Bachalor’s tax ensured that single men took on more of a financial burden, compared to married men with families who were given better career opportunities.
• Banned contraception.
• Opposed women’s employment and service - not compatibile with maternal duties.
• MIXED effectiveness = failed to reach his 50M target and this restricted his economic growth.

Question 16

Preparing for war

Strengths

Answer 16

• Promoted autarky.
• Promoted the rearmament industry.
• League of Nation’s economic sanctions imposed after Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 proved his point to not relying on imports - encouraging heavy industries such as steel, chemicals and shipbuilding by placing large government contracts.
• Expanded state control to the point where 80% of shipbuilding and 50% of steel productions was directed by the government.
• Economies were looked for and the regime allowed major companies to merge into near-monopoly organisations. For example, Fiat controlled car manufacturing, Pierelli dominated rubber and Montecatini chemicals.

Question 17

Preparing for war

Weaknesses

Answer 17

• Not designed to increase the country’s wealth and ordinary Italian’s prosperity - apparent by the mid-1930s as living standards suffered - expensive oversea wars (Ethiopia and Spanish Civil War) and rearmament placed a financial burden on ordinary Italians whilst Mussolini drove for autarky-related contacts.
• Not self-sufficient upon joining WWII = key materials (oil to make steel) still had to be imported in large quantities.
• Unable to match its’ enemies’ levels of production - couldn’t even replace its losses in shipping and aircraft.
• Aware of the need to maintain popularity but didn’t wish to bring major tax increase. So, govt expenditure exceeded its income by the late 1930 - remedies were either cuts in military expenditure or significant reductions in living standards.
• Mussolini refused to recognise the seriousness of the economic situation and the problem remained unsolved when Italy entered WWII.

Question 18

Impact of industrial policy on living standards

Strengths

Answer 18

• Open conflict did decline, but only because free trade unions were banned and strikes ruled illegal.
• Middle classes suffered less unemployment - benefited with the no. of govt employees virtually doubled to 1M and these people weren’t made redundant during the depression.
• Employed in traditional jobs such as teaching, but the most explosive growth took place in the new Fascist organisations - principally the Ministry for Corporations, but also the Dopolavoro.
• Suffered less wage cuts than industrial workers.

Question 19

Impact of industrial policy on living standards

Weaknesses

Answer 19

• Industrial workers suffering a serious decline in living standards.
• As the economic revival petered out in the late 1920s, industry responded with wage cuts - offset by falling prices but they began to rise sharply because of the drive for autarky - pushing up the cost of imported goods.
• Estimated during 1925-38, real wages for workers fell by 10% and unemployment rose despite the public work programmes, and totalled 2M by 1933 - similar to Britain.
• Unconcerned that Fascism failed to produce real rises in living standards for ordinary workers = viewed economic hardship as a good thing, creating harder, tough society.

Question 20

Agriculture – Battle for Grain

Strengths

Answer 20

• Needed to import large quantities of grain for food - seen as a grave weakness, as during times of war supplies could be cut off and face starvation.
• Offered grants to enable farmers to buy fertilisers and machinery necessary for wheat production. Free advice given on the latest, efficient farming techniques and govt guaranteed high prices for their grain.

Impact:
- Average harvest rose from 5.5 million tonnes in early 1920s to over 7M 10yrs later and grain imports declined by 75% from 1925-1935.
- Resounding success that Mussolini claimed the credit, ensured that press photographers recorded him visiting farms as propaganda = deemed a true leader of his people but appearances were deceptive.

Question 21

Agriculture – Battle for Grain

Weaknesses

Answer 21

• Ordinary peasants’ living standards weren’t in the forefront of his mind - concerned with projects that elevated his popularity and Italian self-sufficiency.
• First, much of the land in the central and southern regions that had been turned over to wheat was unsuitable for such a crop - decline in growing traditional products (citrus fruits, wine or oil) and exports also declined.

Question 22

Agriculture – Land reclamation

Strengths

Answer 22

• Expanded the already existing schemes to provide money to drain or irrigate farmland - the Pontine marshes (only 50km from Rome and thus easily reached by foreign journalists) were the showpiece. Malarial swamps drained and set up a network of small farms by ex-servicemen.
• Improved public services, improving public health and creating thousands of jobs, during the depression - aimed to be carried out on 475 million hectares and provide land for carefully selected Italian peasant farmers.

Question 23

Agriculture – Land reclamation

Weaknesses

Answer 23

Amount of land reclaimed was limited.

Question 24

Impact of agricultural policy on living standards

Strengths

Answer 24

• Suffered even heavier wage cuts than industrial workers - in the 1930s.
• Prev, emmigration heled 200k Italians escape from poverty - mainly Southerners moving to the USA until it halted all further emigration in the 1920s.
• Up to half a million left land in the 1920s/30s, while between 1921-1941, Rome’s population doubled.
• Mussolini held a romantic vision of the countryside but his policies did not support this - didn’t create a vigorous class of prosperous peasants devoted to Fascist, instead it benefited large landowners.

Question 25

Impact of agricultural policy on living standards

Weaknesses

Answer 25

• A law to break up big estates and to distribute them to the peasants passed in 1922, but halted for fear of offending the great landowners, his political supporters.
• Cemented the industrial north and rural south gap by neglect - visited the poverty-stricken island, Sicily once after 1924, indicates a recognition of his failure.
• 18th in a table of European states regarding the daily calorie intake of its people = lowest in the south - providing proof of the regime’s failure to tackle rural poverty.

Question 26

Modernise and transform the Italian economy

Strengths

Answer 26

• Corporativism was the thinly disguised as worker exploitation - little evidence of the transformation of the Italian economy.
• Accident and sick pay for workers but their interests were largely ignored and their living standards fell.
• Improvements were made for propaganda purposes, not the welfare or living standards of ordinary italians; generally remained backwards compared to Britain, France and Germany.

Question 27

Modernise and transform the Italian economy

Weaknesses

Answer 27

Most historians do concede that some major industries such as vehicles and shipbuilding did expand and modernise, but point out that export industries and much of agriculture were neglected and stagnated.
Historian Bosworth - ‘so far as his economic policies were concerned, one Mussolini line (policy) looked modernising, the next next traditional.’