Fascist austerity dismantled welfare, cut taxes on capital, and banned unions

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

• SEED: A direct angle: austerity as class warfare — the specifics of who paid (workers taxed more, inheritance and super-profit taxes abolished) make a data-driven essay on austerity’s distributional logic.
• XREF: connects to: Austerity reduces taxes on capital while raising taxes on labor income — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 146; Fascist austerity dismantled postwar gains and re-separated economics from politics — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 193; Fascist austerity dismantled social reforms to rebuild capital accumulation. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1038 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Fascist austerity dismantled postwar gains and re-separated economics from politics #qualifies (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 193
• Fascist austerity dismantled social reforms to rebuild capital accumulation. #expands (0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1038
• Fascism abolished the Ministry of Labour and Social Insurance in 1923 #exemplifies (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1234
• Austerity structurally dismantled the workers’ movement and its economic alternatives #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 654
• Red Vienna built a popular welfare state that fascism destroyed #complicates (0.72) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 1110