Th is austere view of the social world is also refl ected in its liberal thought leaders’ support of the Italian Fascist regime. Indeed, as chapter 8 investigates, the international liberal establishment was convinced that Mussolini’s dictatorship was the only solution to force the austerity pill upon the “turbulent” Italian people. Fascist political methods to achieve economic success, however gruesome, could be largely tolerated thanks to their accompanying conviction that the economic and the political were two separate domains. Chapter 8 details how liberal technocrats played no minor role in consolidating Mussolini’s rule.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 656