Quoting Gaetano Salvemini’s Under the Axe of Fascism, pages 413–6:

Those who believe that Mussolini is leading Italy towards the left, cite the fact that the Fascist Corporative State has done away with the doctrine and practices of laissez-faire. The Fascist Corporative State not only cuts wages—although this fact is seldom mentioned—but it grants tariff protection to many industrial and agricultural products, gives subsidies to banks on the verge of failure and to industries about to collapse, obliges capitalistic concerns desirous of governmental aid to merge with other similar concerns, forbids the opening of new factories, etc.

Mussolini and his followers in Italy, as well as his admirers abroad, never touch upon economic topics without proclaiming that the policy of laissez‐faire is dead for ever. And, since the abolition of economic laissez‐faire has been associated in Italy with the abolition of personal rights, political liberties, and representative institutions, whoever rejects the doctrine and practices of laissez‐faire is termed a Fascist, and State intervention in economic the is called Fascism. Therefore, President Roosevelt becomes a disciple of Mussolini—though not so big as his master.¹

This is a gross misconception. […] Fascism is political dictatorship. Economic intervention is not Fascism.

The Colbertists and Mercantilists who opposed the Physiocrats in the eighteenth century, and the […] Socialists, Protectionists, and Nationalists who attacked laissez‐faire in the nineteenth century, would have been much surprised to learn that in the twentieth century a Mussolini would be born who would claim to have discovered, for the first time, a way of killing the doctrine of laissez‐faire.

As for the practice of laissez‐faire, no Government has ever confined itself to playing the policeman of private initiative, as the laissez‐faire school recommended. Free trade, which is the application of laissez‐faire to international commercial relations, was the exception and not the rule in the nineteenth century. The English Government, while it practised free trade in the nineteenth century, gave at the same time the earliest examples of social legislation; i.e. it intervened in economic life to protect the workers against the abuse of private initiative. During the World War the economic life of all countries was controlled by their Governments, although the “Homo corporativus” of the Fascist “thinkers” was as yet unborn.

Under the pre‐Fascist régime in Italy, the Government intervened so often in the economic life of the country that, when it rained, the people amused themselves by throwing the blame upon the “robber Government.” The Government built the railroads, not as revenue‐bearing investments, but as an instrument of political unification. Marsh reclamation at the expense of the Government was half a century old in Italy when Mussolini discovered it in 1928. Education in all its grades was either directly imparted or supervised by the Government. Italian tariff policy from 1878 onwards became ever more intensely protectionist. The shipping companies were always obtaining subsidies of all kinds from the Government for building, equipping, and sending out their vessels.

Interventions multiplied during the World War. They diminished during the period between the end of the war and 1926, i.e. during the last four years of the pre‐Fascist régime and the first four years of the Fascist régime. They began to multiply again during the provoked by the revaluation of the lira; and during the world depression have assumed proportions reminiscent of the State capitalism of the war years.

The policy of intervention in economic life is characteristic neither of free, nor of despotic, nor of oligarchical, nor of democratic Governments. All Governments in all periods have intervened, more or less thoroughly, in the economic life of their countries, if by no other fact than that they have built roads, imposed taxes, and issued currency. Whether capitalists or proletarians, men are not favourable in an absolute sense either to laissez‐faire or State intervention. They invoke such intervention when they expect to profit by it, and they repulse it when they foresee no advantage or fear a positive injury from its action.

Signor De Stefani has judiciously remarked that the price of goods is always and everywhere the result of two factors the private initiative of the producer and the environment which the politics of the Government have created for production. Private initiative always is planned after taking into account pre‐existing legislation. Private initiative independent of the Government does not exist. And if “corporative” initiative is that which is developed by adapting oneself to rules imposed by law, it is clear that all private initiatives are corporative,” and all States are “corporative” (Corriere della Sera, July 14th, 1935). From these affirmations the conclusion can be deduced that Mussolini could have saved himself the trouble of inventing the Corporative State.

The world nowadays teems with people who have fits of enthusiasm whenever they hear of State intervention, planned economy, five‐year plans, and the end of laissez‐faire. They do not care to ask who are the social groups in whose interests the State, i.e. bureaucracy and the Party in power, is to intervene and plan. It is for them a matter of indifference whether the laissez‐faire of big business is limited in order to protect the little fellow and the worker, or whether the laissez‐faire of the little fellow and the worker is sacrificed to the interests of big business. What matters is that private initiative should be shackled by someone and in some way. Yet the first question which should be asked when invoking the end of laissez‐faire is precisely this: in the interests of whom should such abolition take place?

\ (Emphasis added in all cases.)