Di fronte alla crisi

Abstract

The impact of the 1929 economic depression affected on the debate on corporatism at its peak, when the corporatist framework was still under construction and Giuseppe Bottai was Minister of the Corporations. By tracing the discussions stimulated by some key figures in the economic culture of the time – Gino Arias, Agostino Lanzillo, Francesco Vito – this contribution aims to to outline how the dispute about the new corporative economy might disclose some interesting features: namely, through the asserted primacy of ethics over liberal individualism, it would acknowledge the need for an active intervention of the State in the economic life, virtually capable of outliving the Fascist period.