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This paper is about the parallel stories of two political movements that for convenience I call ‘social liberalism’ and ‘left-wing corporatism’ in Italy in years (circa) from 1918 to 1942. Born from an attempt to harness the revolutionary energy of socialism and communism in the aftermath of WWI, the two movements shared common philosophical premises and anti-capitalist leanings in spite of their opposite political allegiances, respectively pro-liberal and anti-fascist, and pro-fascist and anti-liberal. The paper traces the evolution from similar initial concerns to divergent social and economic programs in the early 1940s, as evidenced by a comparison between the conference on economic planning held at the Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista in 1942-1943 and the “seven points” of the 1942 political program of the (at the time, clandestine) Partito d’Azione. The paper also highlights the role of the philosopher Giovanni Gentile as a sort of mastermind whose intellectual influence affected characters on both sides of the political divide; and discusses reasons for the relative aloofness of professional economists who, independently of their being against or in favour of fascism, preferred to avoid expressing themselves on theses that they perceived as belonging to political philosophy.

Corporatism, fascism, social liberalism, Giovanni Gentile