Politics & Power Quote by Benito Mussolini

A dictator naming the monster, then trying to domesticate it with a bureaucratic label: that is the trick embedded in Mussolini's line. "Corporatism" sounds managerial, almost technocratic, like a policy framework you might argue over in a committee room. "Fascism" sounds like what it is: violence with a state seal. The intent is partly definitional control. If Mussolini can persuade listeners that fascism is merely a "merger" - a kind of rational coordination between capital and the state - he reframes coercion as efficiency and conflict as harmony.

The subtext is transactional. Under fascism, business doesn't disappear; it gets conscripted. Corporations keep their property and profits so long as they serve national objectives, accept labor discipline, and stop treating politics as negotiable. In exchange, the regime offers protection: crushing unions, fixing wages, directing contracts, and turning the state into an enforcement arm for "order". It's less "government versus markets" than a cartel enforced from above.

Context matters because Mussolini was selling an alternative to both liberal democracy and socialism in a Europe rattled by post-WWI instability, strikes, and elite panic. Corporatism was the branding for a third way that promised to end class conflict by abolishing real bargaining. The line also functions as propaganda with plausible deniability: he admits fusion while implying partnership, not domination. The irony is that this description is often redeployed today as a warning against regulatory capture. In Mussolini's mouth, it's not a critique; it's the pitch.