Atlas / Comparisons / Italian Fascism vs Neoliberalism
Italian Fascism and Neoliberalism
Measured distance across six axes
Opposed programmes with little shared ground. No axis places them within three points of each other. They diverge by eight points or more on EC, AU, ID, CH.
Axis by axis
| Axis | PNF | Mont Pèlerin, Chicago | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | +01 | +09 | 8 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | +08 | +01 | 7 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| AU · Organisation of power | +09 | −02 | 11 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +09 | +02 | 7 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| ID · Rule of membership | +07 | −02 | 9 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CH · Method and tempo | +07 | −02 | 9 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
Each axis runs from −10 to +10; the distance is the straight-line separation across all six at once, out of a maximum of 49.0. How the scoring works →
The evidence behind the widest gaps
A distance figure is worth nothing unless the scores behind it can be checked. These are the artefacts supporting the axes that separate these two most.
PNF · EC +01
Near the centre: private ownership retained, unions abolished, and a very large state shareholding built during the depression.
- Documented act or statuteThe IRI, created in 1933, gave the state the largest industrial holding in Europe outside the Soviet Union while leaving firms nominally private.
- Programme textThe 1927 Labour Charter organised employers and workers into state syndicates and outlawed strikes.
Mont Pèlerin, Chicago · EC +09
Far market pole on doctrine, with the important caveat that most named exponents rejected pure laissez-faire.
- Programme textThe 1947 Mont Pèlerin statement of aims defends the market order and also the rule of law and a competitive framework.
PNF · AU +09
Parliament, opposition parties and the free press were removed by statute between 1925 and 1928.
- Documented act or statuteThe 1926 'very fascist laws' dissolved all other parties and created a political police and a special tribunal.
- Documented act or statuteThe 1928 electoral law replaced constituency choice with a single national list drawn up by the Fascist Grand Council.
Mont Pèlerin, Chicago · AU −02
Coded slightly negative: the doctrine constrains majorities through rules and independent bodies, which disperses rather than concentrates authority.
- ScholarshipCentral bank independence, fiscal rules and treaty commitments remove decisions from ordinary majority revision.
- ScholarshipThis is delegation, not concentration; the entry for technocratic centrism is coded positive on the same reasoning and separates the two.
What this comparison does not establish
Proximity means similarity of stated position. It carries no claim about competence, circumstance, scale of operation, or what either organisation actually did to the people under it. Two organisations can sit close together and produce entirely different histories, because those things are not on any axis and could not be.
Italian Fascism
1922–1943 · Italy
The nation as an organic whole realised in the state; violence as regenerative; liberalism and Marxism both to be destroyed.
Neoliberalism
1947– · International
Market competition as the organising principle of policy, insulated from democratic interference by rules and independent institutions.
Distance is not the whole answer. Two organisations can sit the same distance apart for entirely different reasons, and the reason is the content of any claim about them. Open the comparison in the atlas to weight the axes yourself.
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