Successes and failures of Mussolini - Essay Example

Mussolini was among the leaders who laid the foundation for fascism in Italy. Fascism for these people included terms like nationalism, expansion, corporativism, anti-communism, social progress, propoganda, etc.. In the years that followed Mussolini tried to incorporate all these fascist ideolgoes into his policies and to a great extent was able to influence his people and gain the admiration of other political figures of that time. Some of the domestic policies he introduced from 1924-1939 were quite successful, the taming of the Pontine Marshes and the Lateran Treaty between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See being some of his successful achievements.

Some of his policies resulted in improvement of job opportunities, and public transport. He was also able to achieve economic success in Italy's colonies and commercial dependencies. The policies Mussolini introduced can be divided into economic policies, political policies and social policies. As mentioned earlier, some were successful and some were failures. A perusal of these policies will enable us to evaluate Mussolini's successes and failures as a leader of a single party state. The idea of a corporate state was first introduced by Mussolini. . Each syndicate came under the representatives of the Fascist party thereby ensuring that the state could intervene whenever the need arose.

According to Mussolini "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Mussolini (1932) on another occasion said "The Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual.

" The Battle for Grain was a campaign that encouraged workers to produce more grain to make Italy self- sufficient. The State took over direct control of many banks and heavy industry. In production the focus was mainly on military production. Although some of Mussolini's economic policies failed, not all of his economic policies were failures. His overall economic policy worked well for Italy and there was some economic growth in Italy despite the world wide depression. His regime was the most productive in Europe, in terms of raw materials, especially in pig iron.

The Battle for grain campaign resulted in a 50% increase in production between 1922 and 1930. However it also resulted in deficiency in the diet of the poor. Mussolini's political policies were all directed towards consolidating his power. Mussolini, being a a prime minister of a coalition government that had only35 fascists, could not exercise full control. So he kept all important posts like home affairs for himself. In his first speech, he asked for cooperation from members of parliament and