Abstract
Although very interesting, relations between the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Italian fascist government have never been studied in depth. The only work on this subject, providing us with an introduction, dates back nearly forty years.2 Italian researchers have not paid a great deal of attention to the ILO, considering it to be little more than an offshoot of the League of Nations: the few exceptions all steer clear of any discussion of the role played by fascist Italy and allude to it only in passing.3 In this chapter, I shall examine this issue, focusing mainly on the ten years from the March on Rome to the death of Albert Thomas (1922–1932): my chapter therefore stops well before the breakdown of diplomatic relations following Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. It is difficult to go beyond anything more than hypothesis because there is so little research on this subject; my view, nevertheless, is that relations between Geneva and Rome in the area of International Labour Organization issues are a very relevant way of shedding light on aspects of both the fascist regime and the ILO which have not been studied in any detail.
The world could benefit from a socialism,
even authoritarian, which is rational and methodical.
[Albert Thomas, 19321]
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R. Allio, L’Organizzazione Internazionale del Lavoro e il sindacalismo fascista [The International Labour Organization and Fascist Trade Unionism] (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1973)
F. De Felice, Sapere e politica. L’Organizzazione internazionale del lavoro tra le due guerre 1919–1939 [Knowledge and Politics. The International Labour Organization in the Interwar Period 1919–1939] (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1988); P. Dogliani, ‘Progetto per un’internazionale ‘aclassista’: i socialisti nell’Organizzazione internazionale del lavoro negli anni venti’ [‘The Project of a ‘Non-class’ International: the Socialists in the International Labour Organization during the 1920s’], Quaderni della Fondazione Feltrinelli (vol. 34, 1987);
C. Sorba, ‘Organisation Internationale du Travail e Bureau International du Travail’, Rivista di storia contemporanea (vol. 15, no. 2, 1986), pp. 275–312.
P.-Y. Saunier, ‘Borderline Work: ILO Explorations onto the Housing Scene until 1940’, in J. Van Daele et al. (eds), ILO Histories. Essays on the International Labour Organization and its Impact on the World during the Twentieth Century (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2010).
I. Tyrrell, ‘Reflections on the Transnational Turn in United States History: Theory and Practice’, Journal of Global History (vol. 4, no. 3, 2009), p. 458.
A. P. Cortell and J. W. Davis Jr, ‘How Do International Institutions Matter? The Domestic Impact of International Rules and Norms’, International Studies Quarterly (1996, Vol. 40, No. 4, December), pp. 451–478.
Involving a discussion of Robert Putnam’s argument, see H.-K. Kwon, ‘Associations, Civic Norms, and Democracy: Revisiting the Italian Case’, Theory and Society (vol. 33, no. 2, 2004), pp. 135–166;
D. Riley, ‘Civic Associations and Authoritarian Regimes in Interwar Europe: Italy and Spain in Comparative Perspective’, American Sociological Review (vol. 70, no. 2, 2005), pp. 288–310.
C. Howard-Ellis, The Origin, Structure & Working of the League of Nations (Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, 2003; original edition 1929), p. 226.
E. Vogel-Polsky, Du Tripartisme à l’Organisation Internationale du Travail (Brussels: Éditions de l’Institut de Sociologie de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1966), p. 190.
D. Guérin, Albert Thomas au Bit 1920–1932. De l’internationalisme à l’Europe (Geneva: Institut européen de l’Université de Genève, 1996), p. 38.
S. Trentin, Le Fascisme à Genève (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1932), pp. 248–249.
See G. Santomassimo, La terza via fascista. Il mito del corporativismo [‘The Fascist Third Way. The Myth of Corporatism’] (Rome: Carocci, 2006).
C. S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe. Stabilization in France, Germany and Italy in the Decade after World War I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975);
M. Salvati, ‘The Long History of Corporatism in Italy: A Question of Culture or Economics?’, Contemporary European History (vol. 15, no. 2, 2006), pp. 288–310.
B. Béguin, Le tripartisme dans l’Organisation International du Travail (New York-Geneva: Carnegie, 1959), pp. 8–10. The preparatory document paving the way for Part XIII of the Peace Treaty was presented by the British delegation:
E. J. Phelan, ‘British Preparations’, in J. T. Shotwell (ed.), The Origins of the International Labour Organization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934). On this subject, see also the article by Olga Hidalgo-Weber in the same volume.
G. De Michelis, La corporazione nel mondo [Corporatism in the World] (Milan: Bompiani, 1934) [translations: World Reorganisation on Corporative Lines (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1935); La corporation dans le monde (Paris: Denoël et Steele, 1935)]. Before its publication in Italian, the author asked Mussolini for permission to ask Arthur Henderson and Henry Bérenger to write the introductions to the
English and French versions respectively: Appunto per il Duce, 22 November 1933, in Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Rome), Segreteria particolare del Duce, Corrispondenza ordinaria, b. 1006, f. 509.061. On the international dissemination of the ‘managed geopolitical expansions’, see A. Bashford, ‘Nation, Empire, Globe: The Spaces of Population Debate in the Interwar Years’, Comparative Studies in Society and History (vol. 49, no. 1, 2007), pp. 170–201.
M. Tortora, Institution spécialisée et organisation mondiale: étude des relations de l’Oit avec la Sdn et l’Onu (Brussels: Bruylant, 1980), pp. 89–97. Alcock cites a letter from Butler to Thomas in late 1930, where he comes out in favour of ‘shifting our centre of gravity, so to speak, from the purely social to the economic sphere by devoting the whole of our attention to the effects on the workers of the World Depression’;
A. Alcock: History of the International Labour Organization (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 123.
E. Costa Bona, L’Italia e la Società delle Nazioni [Italy and the League of Nations] (Padua: Cedam, 2004), p. 31.
T. Landelius, Workers, Employers and Governments. A Corporative Study of Delegations and Groups at the International Labour Conference 1919–1964 (Stockholm: Norstedt & Söner, 1965), pp. 86–87.
For the ILC debates, in addition to official publications, see the memoires of the leader of the fascist union of industrial workers: T. Cianetti, Memorie dal carcere di Verona [Memories from Verona Prison], edited by R. De Felice (Milan: Rizzoli, 1983), pp. 225–228.
P.-A. Rosental, ‘Géopolitique et État-providence. Le BIT et la politique mondiale des migrations dans l’ entre-deux-guerres’, Annales HSS (vol. 61, no. 1, 2006), pp. 99–134.
The episode is mentioned in B. W. Schaper, Albert Thomas. Trente ans de réformisme social (Assen: Van Gorcum & Co., 1959), p. 287. A close comparison between the principles of the ILO and the assertions in the Italian Labour Charter (obviously in favour of the latter) can be found in
G. Bottai, ‘Introduzione’, in G. De Michelis (ed.), L’Italia nell’Organizzazione Internazionale del Lavoro della Società delle Nazioni [Italy in the International Labour Organization of the League of Nations] (Rome: Istituto Italiano di Diritto Internazionale in Roma, 1930), pp. xxv–lvii.
It should be borne in mind that fascist polycentrism was always controlled by Mussolini: see J.-Y. Dormagen, Logiques du fascisme. L’État totalitaire en Italie (Paris: Fayard, 2008).
A. Thomas, Le Second Empire (1852–1870), in J. Jaurès (ed.), Histoire socialiste (1789–1900), Vol. X (Paris: Jules Rouff et Cie, 1907); and the two chapters Napoleon and the Rise of Personal Government (1852–1859), and The Liberal Empire (1860–1870), in The Cambridge Modern History, Vol. XI (London Macmillan, 1909). As regards Thomas’s historical output, see A. Aglan, ‘Albert Thomas, historien du temps présent’, in A. Aglan, O. Feiertag and D. Kevonian (eds), Albert Thomas, société mondiale et internationalisme. Réseaux et institutions des années 1890 aux années 1930. Proceedings of the study days of 19 and 20 January 2007. Université Paris-I Panthé on-Sorbonne, in Cahiers d’IRICE (No. 2). Available at: http://irice.univ-paris1.fr/spip.php?rubrique68 [accessed 11 March 2009].
The letter which Thomas wrote to the socialist leader Filippo Turati, exiled en France, on 23 May 1928 is particularly touching: ‘When I went back to Paris the other day, before coming back here, Blum told me that you had refused to meet me. You know the respect and affection which I have always had for you. I have been greatly upset by your refusal. I did not think that you would treat me so unfairly. […] Not long ago I wrote the history of the Second Empire. Alongside vigorous protests and proscription, there was also the work accomplished by the Proudhonian workers of Paris, those who might be regarded as traitors and betrayers as I am today. Their work was useful too’ (AILO, CAT 1–28–2–5). See A. Schiavi, Esilio e morte di Filippo Turati 1926–1932 [Exile and Death of Filippo Turati 1926–1932] (Rome: Opere nuove, 1956).
M. Fine, ‘Albert Thomas: A Reformer’s Vision of Modernization, 1914–32’, Journal of Contemporary History (vol. 12, no. 3, 1977), p. 545.
On unionism and the fascist corporative framework, see also I. Stolzi, L’ordine corporativo: poteri organizzati e organizzazione del potere nella riflessione giuridica dell’Italia fascista [The corporative order: organized powers and the organization of power in the juridical thinking of Fascist Italy] (Milan: Giuffré, 2007);
A. Gagliardi, Il corporativismo fascista [Fascist corporatism] (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2010).
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Gallo, S. (2013). Dictatorship and International Organizations: The ILO as a ‘Test Ground’ for Fascism. In: Kott, S., Droux, J. (eds) Globalizing Social Rights. International Labour Organization (ILO) Century Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137291967_10
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