Fascist austerity dismantled postwar gains and re-separated economics from politics

Evidence

Beginning in 1922, Mussolini’s fascist regime imposed austerity policies that enabled the restoration of old power relations. It implemented fiscal austerity by systematically dismantling the popular postwar gains, severely cutting welfare spending, and abolishing inheritance and super-profit taxes, while simultaneously increasing taxes on workers. Monetary and industrial austerity followed: the fascist government raised interest rates and banned unions and strikes, using legal force to suppress wages and consolidate control. To establish these policies, Il Duce astutely surrounded himself with economists who reestablished the barrier between the economic and the political that workers had dared to break. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 193

Categorization

• XREF: Core case one (Italy) for the reader’s reconstruction — the mechanism is explicit: austerity restores old power relations and re-erects the economics/politics barrier workers had breached. — connects to: Fascism conserves obsolete bourgeois forms stripped of their economic basis — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 30; Cross-party austerity orthodoxy enabled the Nazi electoral rise — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 556; Fascist austerity dismantled welfare, cut taxes on capital, and banned unions — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 193 (+22 more)