Far from a conscription of riches, De Stefani had actually managed to constrict wages. Moreover, to further (and silently) extract resources from the poorer members of society, the Fascist government steadily increased consumption taxes throughout the decade. Th e ratio between direct and indirect tax revenue dropped from 0.94 in 1922 to 0.72 in 1925, and to 0.61 by 1929— an even more pronounced trend than in the British case. More specifi cally, duties on basic commodities grew between 1922 and 1925 by approximately 5 percent per year in real terms (Toniolo 1980, 48). Meanwhile the government managed to abolish “vexatious taxation on luxury goods” (Einaudi 1927, 490).

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 1226