The Years of the Great Depression, 1929–34

Abstract

It is tempting to say that Fascism did not evolve beyond the point in 1929 when the construction of a repressive dictatorship was largely completed, based on centralised and extended state power administered by the existing state apparatus. Certainly, one of its major rationales both as a middle-class mass movement and in power was the permanent destruction of working-class organisations and the post-war threat of a significant advance in the political and social position of workers. This was the lowest common denominator of the compromise or alliance of Fascism with the institutions and forces of the existing order. The advantages to that order of the Fascist state’s disciplining and control of labour were apparent in the way the government had handled the revaluation crisis. But the development of the Fascist regime during the period of the Depression indicated that Fascism was something more than a repressive conservative dictatorship.