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The Class Without Consciousness: Fascism's ‘New’ Workers and the 1942 World's Fair of Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2020

Gregory D. Milano
Gregory D. Milano*
Affiliation:
Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies, Emerson College, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116–4624
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

In 1936 Mussolini's fascist regime embarked upon an ambitious plan to hold the 1942 World's Fair in a newly built city south of Rome. At the peak of construction in 1939–40 an army of 5,000 workers laboured to complete the city in ‘record time’. The labour utilised to build the new city became a critical public spectacle in the final years of fascist rule, highlighted in films, covered by the press and featured on the itineraries of Rome's most important visitors. This activity was guided not just by the construction of buildings but also the purported fabrication of a distinct Italian fascist worker subjectivity. With the aim of fashioning pliant workers lacking in proverbial ‘class consciousness’, fascist thinkers publicly exhibited Italian workers as fixed within a ‘natural’ hierarchy of ancient Roman origin. In these renderings of the ‘new’ worker, class antagonisms in the modern division of labour were replaced with illustrations of exemplary sacrifice to familial and interpersonal authority with the function of subsuming ‘class interests’ to both employers and the state. In spite of these narratives, fascist aims regularly encountered limits when confronted by real workers, as yielded by an examination of responses to the regime's mandates within the built environment. Although workers never fully embodied this new ‘interiority’, the regime was successful in grounding cultural norms in a constrained field of practice, generating a framework for the domination of labour.

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Contemporary European History , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 366 - 382
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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References

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8 See, for example, Paxton, Robert O., The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), 10–3 and 152Google Scholar; Abse, ‘Fascism and Working Class’, 393; Thompson, State Control, 13–7 and 63–76 and Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, 131. For more on laws of November 1926 banning ‘clandestine political organisations’, see Canali, Mauro, Le spie del regime (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004), 59Google Scholar.

9 Ibid. For more on the criminalisation of poverty and unemployment, see Ebner, Michael, Ordinary Violence in Mussolini's Italy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

10 In 1936 the LUCE was placed under the direction of MinCulPop, where Jacopo Comin was an official. Comin, a state propagandist and filmmaker, wrote the critically-acclaimed screenplay for Sotto la Croce del Sud (1938). In total Comin directed four films and wrote nine screenplays. See Ben-Ghiat, Ruth, Italian Fascism's Empire Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), 192–213Google Scholar.

11 Birth by Jacopo Comin, ACS, E42, 1143/11304.

12 Though scholars continue to debate the orientation of identities in ancient Rome, labour is invariably not considered a formative element of ‘Romanness’ (Romanitas). With a focus on the plurality of identities, studies have shown that language, ‘rhythmic rituals’, ‘fashion’, ancestral or legal status, as well as exhibited behaviour, served as expressions of ‘Romanness’ in antiquity. Just as economic categories, such as productivity or per capita gross domestic product, were not useful for explaining the source of wealth and political power in the ancient world, labour was not a basis for identification. See Dench, Emma, Empire and Political Cultures in the Roman World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 13–6, 155–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Claudia I. Arno, ‘How Romans Became “Roman”: Creating Identity in an Expanding World’, PhD Thesis, The University of Michigan, 2012, vii–73; Anderson, Perry, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London: NLB, 1974), 17–28, 59–61, 76, 80, 95Google Scholar; Postone, Moishe, Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Routledge, 1992), 13–38Google Scholar.

13 While some of the land destined for the World's Fair was barren, population statistics compiled by the Agency medical doctor show a different reality. Approximately 7,500 people resided in and around the EUR site in 1937. As the stable population dropped to 6,000 by 1938, the doctor's figures suggest that 1,500 people were removed through land expropriations or left of their own volition. See Ciccolini, ‘Assistenza sanitaria’, ACS, E42, 1144/11311. Further, the archive documents the expropriation of land from the area's original inhabitants, sometimes by force. See ACS, E42, 63, 107, 340 and 1166–8.

14 LUCE, How the E 42 Was Born, available at www.archivioluce.com/archivio/jsp/schede/videoPlayer.jsp?tipologia=&id=&physDoc=495&db=cinematograficoDOCUMENTARI (last visited Oct. 2017).

15 Cannistraro, Phillip V., ‘Mussolini's Cultural Revolution: Fascist or Nationalist?’, Journal of Contemporary History, 7, 3/4 (1972), 122CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cannistraro cites Roberto Forges Davanzati, who declared that fascism ‘seeks to infuse culture with the severe and profound spirit of discipline which is found in the barracks’.

16 LUCE, How the E 42 Was Born. Documents show that LUCE worked closely with the EUR Agency and private construction firms to handpick the most desirable workers for the film. See ‘Situazione riprese cinematografie’, ACS, E42, 1143/11304.

17 For comparative purposes see the 1939 Soviet film Tractor Drivers (Traktoristy) on the joyous lives of a corps of farm tractor drivers engaged in agrarian labour in Ukraine. As a mark of the general harmony and comradery of workers in the Soviet Union, gender relations are portrayed as far more equal in Tractor Drivers than in the Italian films under review.

18 Birth.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid. Comin provided plans for worldwide distribution of Birth.

21 Giulio Terzaghi, ‘Il Deutsches Museum di Monaco, Per un Museo Italiano del Lavoro’, ACS, E42, 1048/9970.

22 Comin's screenplay and exchanges with the EUR Agency are found in ACS, E42, 1143/11304.

23 Ibid. In fact, the archive shows that disputes over sheep herding, due to enclosure and the state's land use restrictions, were extremely common before, during and after the construction of the EUR. Police reports around this issue can be found in ACS, E42, 1167–8.

24 Comin, Birth.

25 Marx, Leo, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 3–33Google Scholar.

26 Birth.

27 Ibid. Luisa Passerini argues that ‘the worst working and living conditions’ under fascism ‘were suffered by the common laborers’, most notably single migrants. See Fascism in Popular Memory, 137.

28 Cohen, Jon and Federico, Giovanni, The Growth of the Italian Economy, 1820–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 ‘Assistenza agli operai sulla zona dell’ E 42’, 30 Jan. 1940, ACS, E42, 51/218. A 1939 report on the origins of workers staying in the Worker Village, where workers from outside of Rome generally stayed, shows that a minority were from Rome, with the majority originating from Italian provinces near and far. Roughly 14 per cent of the workers in the Village came from the province of Frosinone, 12.5 per cent came from the recently built town of Littoria in the Pontine Marshes, 10.5 per cent came from Rome itself. Additionally, 10.5 per cent were from Aquila, 7 to 9.5 per cent from Catanzaro, Padova, Benevento and Bologna, with 4 per cent from Reggio Calabria and 2.5 per cent from Rovigo. Given that roughly one-third of the total number of daily workers in the EUR stayed in the Village, it is likely that much of the workforce commuted from Rome and immediate environs.

30 Birth.

31 ‘Vaticano: Il card. Villeneuve ricevuto dal Papa – Tre cardinali visitano i lavori per l'Esposizione Universale’, Il Messaggero, 17 Aug. 1938, 2.

32 Ministero degli Affari Estri to Commissariato Generale della Esposizione Universale del 1942, ‘E.42 – Stampa straniera’, 10 Aug. 1939, ACS, E42, 92/448.

33 ACS, E42, 87/412, 92/448, and 1097/10707.

34 Ministero della Cultura Populare Ente Provinciale per il Turismo to Ente Autonomo Esposizione Universale di Roma, ‘Viaggio a Roma di grandi industriali inglesi’, 3 June 1938, ACS, E42, 92/448.

35 Soggiorno del Signor Grover Whalen a Roma, ACS, E42, 42/76 and 92/448. Whalen, president of the 1939 New York World's Fair, famously ordered police to use violence against tens of thousands of protestors during the Great Depression-era march on International Unemployment Day, 6 March 1930. ‘Grover A. Whalen Dies at 75; Made City's Welcome Famous: Career Took Whalen Into Contact with Notables’, New York Times, 21 Apr. 1962, 1.

36 Appunto al Commissariato Generale Gabinetto, 2 Apr. 1940. ACS, E42, 1097/10707.

37 Il Direttore dei servizi organizzazione mostre alla Segretaria Generale, 4 Jan. 1941, ACS, E42, 96/448.

38 Il capo ufficio alla Segretaria Generale EUR, Visita ai lavori dell'Esposizione dei dirigenti il consiglio della pubblicità tedesca (Werberat der Deutschen Wirtschaft), 5 June 1941, ACS, E42, 96/448.

39 Il capo ufficio alla Segretaria Generale EUR, Visita dell'ECC. Conti, Capo della Sanità del Reich, 13 Nov. 1941, ACS, E42, 96/448.

40 Ibid. Rapporto stampa dell’8 Settembre 1939, Riassunto n. 614, Un commento svizzero sul ritmo dei lavori, 9 Sept. 1939, ACS, E42, 1097/10707.

41 Il direttore dei servizi architettura alla Segretaria Generale EUR, 24 Jan. 1941, ACS, E42, 96/448.

42 Il capo ufficio alla Segretaria Generale EUR, Visita dell'ECC. Von Schirach, Capo della Gioventù Hitleriana e Luogotenente Generale del Fuhrer per la città di Vienna, 2 Feb. 1942, ACS, E42, 96/448. Alf Lüdtke discusses the tendency among particular Nazi leaders, including notably Director Robert Ley of the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront; DAF), to engage in ‘one-on-one’ conversations with unskilled labourers whom he sought to win over to the Nazi cause. Ley ‘claimed thereby to have renounced all hierarchical distance, even to have overcome it’. Lüdtke notes that this formed part of the ‘symbolic practice’ developed by the Nazi regime to make manual labour more honourable. Lüdtke, Alf, ‘The “Honor of Labor”: Industrial Workers and the Power of Symbols under National Socialism’, in Crew, David F., ed., Nazism and German Society, 1933–1945 (London: Routledge, 1994), 71Google Scholar.

43 ACS, E42, 43/105–43.

44 Impresa Costruzioni Walter Manfredi all'Ente Autonomo Esposizione Universale di Roma, 23 May 1939, ACS, E42, 60/321.

45 Arthurs, Excavating Modernity, 5.

46 Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, 91–2.

47 Bosworth, R.J.B., Italy and the Approach of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1983), 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Washington, Booker T., The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe (New York: Doubleday, Page, and Co., 1912), 144Google Scholar.

49 Dogliani, Patrizia, ‘Sport and Fascism’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 5, 3 (2001), 337CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Italian men often arrived from their impoverished villages for military duty malnourished and suffering from congenital diseases and other maladies.

50 Burgwyn, James H., The Legend of the Mutilated Victory: Italy, the Great War, and the Paris Peace Conference, 1915–1919 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

51 See footnote two above. See also Ufficio d'informazioni, pubblicita, e propaganda, Apr. 1937, ACS, E42, 56/269.

52 Terzaghi.

53 Birth.

54 Ibid.

55 ‘Il Duce Visita la zona dell'E42’, Il Messagero, 19 Apr. 1939, available in ACS, E42, 43/105.

56 Cipriano Efisio Oppo a Benito Mussolini, Appunto per la costruzione del primo Villaggio Operaio, 11 May 1939, ACS, E42, 1143/11304.

57 Direzione dei Servizi dell'Ospitalita, Ufficio Affari Generali, 31 Aug. 1940, 6, ACS, E42, 1143/11305. The Ente Italiano audizioni radiofoniche was fascist Italy's only official radio broadcaster.

58 For more on film, see the folder Proezioni cinematografiche, ACS, E42, 1143/11305. For more on lectures, see il segretario politico Idolo Paparelli alla segretaria generale dell'Esposizione Universale, Raduno di propaganda, 28 July 1940, ACS, E42, 1143/11305.

59 Ibid. See il segretario generale Dott. Carlo Pareschi al fascista Comm. Carlo Cattaneee, 7 Aug. 1939.

60 de Grazia, Culture of Consent, 16–8.

61 Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism, 124.

62 Cavazza, Stefano, ‘La folkloristica italiana e il fascismo: il Comitato Nazionale per le Arti Popolari’, La Ricerca Folklorica, 15 (1987), 112Google Scholar.

63 For more on the OND and ‘Taylorization of leisure’, see Thompson, State Control, 81. For more on Taylorism, see Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 124–7Google Scholar.

64 Il Villaggio Operaio: Concerti in zona, ACS, E42, 1143/11305. The Choir's polyphonic approach meant that it sanctioned individuality while allowing for individual contribution to a greater mechanism, thus making it a fitting analogy for the fascist labour technique. With polyphony's basis in Christianity and the community of believers, the religious relationship is transposed to fascism, made palpable in the form of musical performance.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 LUCE, Nel villaggio operaio dell'Esposizione Universale del ‘42, il Coro Polifonico dell'Urbe, fiorente istituzione dopolavoristica, ha svolto un concerto di canti regionali, available at www.archivioluce.com/archivio/jsp/schede/videoPlayer.jsp?tipologia=&id=&physDoc=18294&db=cinematograficoCINEGIORNALI (last visited Oct. 2017).

68 Abse, ‘Fascism and Working Class’, 393.

69 Law Number 563 was passed on 3 April 1926. See Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, 131.

70 See, for example, Appunto per il Duce: Deroghe alle leggi sulla tutela del lavoro, 3 Mar. 1938 and other documents in ACS, E42, 65/378.

71 Reports show a great range of crimes, from petty theft in the agency offices to workers caught stealing dynamite detonators in November 1939 (one accused worker said he found the detonators in the street). Those apprehended for more serious crimes were reported to the State Police, such as a worker caught stealing 17 KG of copper in October 1939. See Sezione vigilanza: N. 88 di prot., 25 Oct. 1939, ACS, E42, 56/269.

72 Organizzazione del servizio di guardiania, 13 Dec. 1939, ACS, E42, 72/412.

73 See multiple files in ACS, E42, 56/271.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid. As happened to workers from the Serafina Firm.

76 For more on guard Bernardino Poggiaroni, see various files under the subheading Inchiesta Vigneri in ACS, E42, 5, 72, and 1186.

77 Ricciardi allegedly said ‘Vaffanculo’. See Verbale di denuncia per oltraggio a carico di: Ricciardi Salvatore, 21 Aug. 1939, ACS, E42, 56/271.

78 Ibid. Further research is needed to discover Ricciardi's fate. For more on the widespread of use of denunciations, see Ebner, Ordinary Violence, 82–102.

79 Fratelli Sgaravatti Piante per il Signore Ufficio Parchi e Giardini E 42, 19 Oct. 1939, ACS, E42, 1143/11304.

80 Funzionamento Villaggio Operaio, 24 Oct. 1939, ACS, E42, 1143/11304.

81 ‘Labor Conditions in Fascist Italy’, U.S. Department of Labor Monthly Labor Review, 57, 5 (1943), 911Google Scholar. This policy was implemented even with Italy's already low wages, among Europe's lowest in years, and with cost of living up by nearly 20 per cent in the two years before the war.

82 Among the remaining guards, general morale appears to have been considerably low. Reports complain of guards abandoning their shifts early or not showing up for their shifts at all. For more on these reports, as well as memos by employees of diverse ranks (from managers to wage labourers) seeking dispensation from military service, see ACS, E42, 72 and 1171.

83 See files within ACS, E42, 56/269 as well as ACS, E42, 63 and 1167–71.

84 ACS, E42, 1167–71. Files on illicit shepherding are interspersed in police reports.

85 ACS, E42, 1170/11821.

86 See Abse, ‘Fascism and Working Class’, 393, 396. Food rationing began in May 1939 with limits on coffee in bars. Pasta rationing began in the autumn of 1940 with more restrictions put in place during 1941. The 200 grams per day restriction on bread created mass discontent, with the regime making a concession to raise bread quantities for certain workers to 500 grams per day. By January 1943 the food ration of wool workers amounted to under 1,000 calories per day according to Abse.

87 Alla segretaria generale, 28 July 1941, ACS, E42, 72/412. In the spring of 1942 there remained around 1,500 workers on site at the EUR. See ACS, E42, 300/4839. During the war, the regime endeavoured to increase output by implementing ever more militarised forms of labour discipline. It sought to expand the working week up to seventy-two hours all the while restricting the caloric intake of workers. Meanwhile, the state took greater effort to limit absenteeism by maintaining the workforce on site or as close to the point of production as possible. Bigazzi, Ducio, ‘Organizzazione del lavoro e razionalizzazione nella crisi del fascism 1942–43’, Studi Storici, 19, 2 (1978), 372Google Scholar.

88 ACS, E42, 1166/11775.

89 ACS, E42, 300/4839.

90 Il comandante la stazione Alfredo Chiti al Capo di gabinetto dell'Ente Autonomo ‘E.U.R.’, Relazione sull'umore degli operai della zona, 28 Sept. 1941, ACS, E42, 1166.

91 Il comandante la stazione Alfredo Chiti alla direzione generale dell'Ente Autonomo ‘E.U.R.’, Villaggio operaio dell'EUR – umore e stato d'animo degli operai, 9 Oct. 1941, ACS, E42, 56/269.

92 Corpo degli agenti di P.S. al Sig. Segretario Generale dell'Ente Autonomo ‘E.U.R.’, Servizio nella zona dell’ E.U.R., 25 May 1944, ACS, E42, 1168/11782.

93 Ferrara, Patrizia, ‘L'EUR: un ENTE Per L'E 42’, in Gregory, Tullio and Tartaro, Achille, eds., E 42: L'Esposizione Universale di Roma; Utopia e Scenario del Regime (Venezia: Cataloghi Marsilio, 1987), 73–83Google Scholar.

94 Dr F. Ramasso, Appunto per S.E. il Commisario, Servizio Ospitalità, 12 Nov. 1943, ACS, E42, 1168/11782.

95 Dr F. Ramasso, Appunto per l'Eccelenza il Presidente, Servizio Ospitalità, 23 Nov. 1943, ACS, E42, 1168/11782.

96 Appunto per l'Eccelenza il Presidente, Servizio nella zona dell'E.U.R., 6 June 1944, ACS, E42, 1168/11782.

97 Ibid.

98 Ibid. Stazione agenti P.S. al Sig. Segretario Generale dell'Ente Autonomo ‘E.U.R.’, Servizio nella zona dell’ E.U.R., 16 May 1944. Several other reports describe Allied soldiers looting supplies from the E 42 worksite. Though it is presumed that the materials were used to construct defensive installations, the reports do not document how the articles were employed.

99 For more on such ‘ambiguous’ forms of non-compliance with fascist rule, see Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory, 68–126.