‘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.’
The Fascist economies did not minimize, let alone dispose of, elementary features as wage labour, generalized commodity production, capital, private ownership over the means of production, and other phenomena that propertarians have no interest in abolishing. Even economies with freer markets still contributed to Fascism. Hence, the free market purists who content theirselves with the trivia that the Fascist states intervened in their economies, as usual only miss the point.
‘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.’
— Gaetano Salvemini, 1936
The Fascist economies did not minimize, let alone dispose of, elementary features as wage labour, generalized commodity production, capital, private ownership over the means of production, and other phenomena that propertarians have no interest in abolishing. Even economies with freer markets still contributed to Fascism. Hence, the free market purists who content theirselves with the trivia that the Fascist states intervened in their economies, as usual only miss the point.