The Dream Machine

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the fascist sympathizers' accounts of the destruction of democracy and the creation of the corporate state in Italy. In the late 1920s, Herbert Schneider, Richard Washburn Child, Anne O'Hare McCormick, and Generoso Pope presented a three-part argument about democracy and political reform in Italy and the United States. First, they harked back to the time of a multiparty system in Italy to imply a cautionary tale for the United States. Even if American democracy had not sunk to the same nadir as Italian democracy, a lack of congressional expertise, the rise of special interest groups, and popular disillusionment meant that it was experiencing similar symptoms of decay, they suggested. Second, they insisted that, through the corporate state, the fascist government had adapted political institutions to contemporary exigencies, enabling expert and efficient management of economic problems, and advancing policies in the direction of the general good. Last, these observers argued that the United States, too, needed to look beyond its preexisting institutions of government to create a state that was adept at dealing with the problems of modernity. They used fascist Italy to transport Americans to a different place, where policies were better managed, and the government was more popular, than in the United States.