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The Organization of Political Ideology: Culture, State, and Theater in Fascist ItalyAuthor(s): Mabel BerezinReviewed work(s):Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 56, No. 5 (Oct., 1991), pp. 639-651Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2096085 .Accessed: 20/02/2012 18:37

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THE ORGANIZATION OF POLITICAL IDEOLOGY: CULTURE, STATE, AND THEATER IN FASCIST ITALY*

MABEL BEREZIN University of Pennsylvania

The Italian fascist regime claimed that the theater was an ideal cultural vehicle for diffusing fascist ideology. Yet, the regime did not radically alter the content offascist theater. Stan- dard accounts of the relationship between culture and the state that privilege the cultural product suggest that the Italian case was anomalous. Using archival materials, I lay out a conceptualframeworkfor discussing the interaction between states and cultural institutions and apply it to Italianfascist theatrical policyfrom 1922 to 1940. Thefascist regime pursued a policy of state paternalism towards the theater. The regime regulated producers of culture rather than cultural products and used organizational structures to legitimate a split between doing theater and writing theater -performance and text. The Italian case suggests that even a regime that claims to be totalitarian cannot create a national aesthetic. it also forces a re-examination of prior studies of states and cultural institutions.

M odern states frequently mobilize social and cultural institutions to disseminate ideo-

logical beliefs and to shape the public identities of their citizens. While expenditures for cultural institutions may be a small part of state budgets, cultural products diffuse more widely than benefits that accrue to individuals. They provide the state with a symbolic infrastructure. Early in the twentieth century, regimes as diverse as Stalinist Russia, New Deal America and fascist Italy en- listed national cultural institutions in the service of ideology.

Despite recent exceptions (Goldfarb 1989; Haraszti 1987; Hunt 1984; Mally 1990), the social science and historical literature lacks accounts of the process through which regimes use cultural institutions to diffuse political ideology.I Stud-

ies of Nazi art (Lane [1968] 1985), fascist cinema (Hay 1987), and totalitarian culture (Golom- stock 1990), no matter how rich in descriptive value, belie the complexity of the interaction between politics and ideology and suggest that regimes can mold cultural products in their ideological images.

Theater in fascist Italy is a useful venue for exploring the interaction between states and cultural institutions. When Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922, cinema was in its infancy and theater was the principal mass entertainment medium. Theorists and activists of varying political persuasions viewed the theater as an effective political tool (e.g., Goldman [1914] 1987; Rol- land 1918; Gramsci [1917] 1977). Mussolini iden- tified the theater as particularly useful in forging the bonds of the new fascist community. He argued that theater and "not the cinema," had the "greatest educational efficacy" and "should be aimed at the people ... [to] agitat[e] grand collective passions, [and] inspir[e] a sense of profound and living humanity" (Mussolini 1933, pp. 7-9).

If we employ standard research strategies that rely upon content analysis to survey the Italian theatrical landscape in the 1920s and 1930s, a puzzle emerges. Plays produced in Italy during the fascist period do not reflect a fascist culture or ideology (Berezin 1988). The identification of the theater as a means of political propaganda did not lead the regime to either radically alter existing censorship laws or to define the content of a fascist theater (Di Stefano 1964, p. 99). In- stead, the regime concentrated on building or-

* Address all correspondence to Mabel Berezin, Department of Sociology, 3718 Locust Walk, Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104-6299. A Krupp Foundation Fellowship of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University and a Uni- versity of Pennsylvania Faculty Research Grant supported this work. I express my appreciation of the following persons who commented on this article at various stages: Lucia Benequista, Ivar Berg, Fred Block, Steven Brint, Paul Di Maggio, Orlando Patter- son, Ted Perlmutter, Samuel Preston, Steven Rytina, and Theda Skocpol. In addition, the editor, copy editor, and four anonymous ASR reviewers greatly helped the revision process.

I In contrast, the numerous studies that focus on the relation between religious institutions and politics underscore the lacunae that exist with respect to cultural institutions (Zaret 1985; Laitin 1986).

American Sociological Review, 1991, Vol. 56 (October:639-651) 639

640 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

ganizations of culture producers. Explaining a "fascist" theater that was devoid of "fascist" content challenges the assumptions of previous scholarship and requires a new research strategy.

I argue that state decisions to use cultural institutions to disseminate ideology are policy decisions that are made within limiting political, professional, and cultural contexts. Too often when speaking of the fascist regime, social analysts take the regime's rhetoric at face value and as- sume that all cultural projects labelled fascist sprouted full blown from the mind of Mussolini. The regime could only make cultural policy based on the resources available to it. While ideology is important, regimes, even regimes that claim to create totalitarian states, are aggregates of political actors who confront an array of constraints and opportunities as they go about the "business" of remaking public cultures.2

The Italian case requires that I address two intertwined questions: (1) What actions might a state take to impose an ideology?; and (2) how do we explain the particular actions that the Ital- ian regime pursued regarding the ideological use of the Italian theater?

THE ITALIAN STAGE, 1922 TO 1940 Systematic data on Italian theater are sparse until 1934 when the Societa Italiana Autori ed Editori (Italian Society of Authors and Editors [SIAE]) began publishing a theater annual (Annuario del Teatro Italiano 1935-1940) that provided plot summaries and performance information for all new plays staged. By 1934, the fascist regime had been in power for 12 years so that fascist ideas would have become sufficiently diffused as to appear in the content of new plays. In the years between 1934 and 1940,354 new plays appeared on the Italian stage.3 According to my categori- zations, only 5 percent of these plays had "fascist" themes and 15 percent had ambiguous themes that could be political in intent. The ma-

jority (72 percent) were love stories and drawing-room farces.

Alessandro De Stefani was the most frequently staged playwright (20 plays in 6 theatrical sea- sons) during this period. In addition to the usual assortment of romances and comedies, De Stefa- ni wrote two "fascist" plays. Equatore (Equator) is a convenient example of a "fascist" play. Staged in July, 1934, a year before Italy invaded Ethio- pia, its African setting, colonial subject matter, and American villain gave it a fascist hue (Annu- ario l935,p.311).

Two Italian theater directors captured the fla- vor of Italian theater in the 1930s: "Between 1930 and 1943 the Italian stage was dominated.. by the dramas of adultery.... The characters were completely imaginary lawyers, doctors, engineers, who made their gestures in imaginary drawing rooms full of white telephones.... The Black Shirts were in the streets.... Italy spoke of conquering an empire and applauded actors who sprawled on divans" (Grassi and Strehler 1964, p.31). A reading of the two principal Italian theater magazines, Comedia and the regime-sponsored Scenario, for the years 1922 to 1940 confirms their assessment. Continuity with the past rather than rupture char- acterizes the Italian theater of the 1920s and 1930s. The Italian commercial theatrical repertory did not differ from that in other European countries or the United States during the 1930s.

Available evidence suggests that the regime did not use censorship as an instrument of repression although a playwright with a genuinely subversive script would probably not have submitted it to the censor. Leopoldo Zurlo became state theatrical censor in 1931 and held the position until 1941. In his memoirs, Zurlo (1952) describes himself as a nonfascist working within the government bureaucracy. Between 1931 and 1943, 17,330 plays appeared before the censor. Only 630 were rejected and 1,000 were sent back for revision (MCP 1943). These figures, which are frequently cited to suggest the leniency of the censorship process (Iaccio 1986, p. 577; Cannis- traro 1975, p. 113), must be placed in context. Fewer than 10 percent of these plays were actually staged.4 Some were older plays that had nev-

2For this analysis, I borrow Ann Swidler's (1986, p. 278) definition of ideology as "explicit, articulated, highly organized meaning systems (both political and religious)." I also use Poggi's (1978, pp. 1-15) for- mulation regarding states and the "business of rule."

I Data on theatrical performances place this figure in context. In 1938, the SIAE listed 35,580 performances in Italy (SIAE 1938, p. 60); in 1938, the An- nuario listed 48 new plays. Although it is impossible to tell which plays made up the performance data, other evidence suggests that theater producers drew from a familiar repertory.

'This figure, which is approximate, was obtained by dividing the average number of new plays staged per year (54) by the average number of plays submitted to the censor each year (626) (Annuario del Teat- ro Italiano 1935-1940, vols. 2-5; Bollettino di Segn- alazioni. ElencoDelle Opere TeatraliApprovate [Sig- nal Bulletin: List of Approved Theatrical Works] 1936-1940, vols. 1-5).

CULTURE, STATE, AND THEATER IN FASCIST ITALY 641

er been submitted to the censor (Ministero delta Cultura Populare [MCP] 1943). Furthermore, fascist statistics are notoriously inflated and there was only one censor - it is difficult to imagine Zurlo carefully reading and writing reports on over 1,000 plays per year. Typewritten reports for over 20,000 play scripts submitted to the censor during and after the fascist regime are on file at the Central State Archives in Rome. However, the Italian state has never catalogued this potentially valuable research collection and it is essen- tially unusable. I explored a random selection of boxes of scripts and found nothing to suggest that the 4 percent of plays rejected were rejected on fascist ideological grounds.

Fascist laws on censorship were amendments of previous laws (Cesari 1978; Iaccio 1986). In addition to the caveat that plays not ridicule state institutions, censorship supported the precepts of the Catholic Church and advocated a rigid code of behavior that focused on sexual morality (Zurlo 1952, pp. 24-34). The regime also opposed the staging of non-Italian plays. However, it was not until 1940 that the Director General of the theater developed nonbinding quotas for the num- bers of foreign plays, new works, and works by young authors that were to appear on the stage each year (De Pirro 1940, p. 4).

Substantively, censorship was a haphazard af- fair and the Italian theatrical repertory was eclec- tic. In 1936, the Theater Inspector's Office began to publish a theatrical calendar. The reporter who introduced the 1936-1937 theatrical season "thanked God" that the works were "all by Ital- ian authors" (Ministero per la Stampa e la Pro- paganda, Ispettorato del Teatro [MSP] 1936, p. 44). A censorship office that "thanks God" does not suggest that a coercive state apparatus was at its disposal. The 1937-1938 theatrical season began with Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in Rome; Giovachinno Forzano's historical drama of Italian unification Villafranca in Milan; Luigi Pirandello comedies in Turin and Venice; the eighteenth century playwright Carlo Goldo- ni's Il bugiardo (The Liar) in Genoa; and a com- edy by a contemporary Italian playwright in Na- ples (MSP 1937, p. 530). Foreign plays, includ- ing an adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, George Bernard Shaw's The Million- airess, and Ayn Rand's Woman on Trial were staged during this period.

The case of Luigi Pirandello suggests that ce- lebrity overcame ideology. Pirandello received funds from the regime for his theatrical projects throughout the 1920s (Alberti 1974, pp. 2-59). In

the early 1930s, he became alienated from the regime when it ignored his proposal for a state theater (D'Amico 1931, pp. 89). Annoyed by his rejection, Pirandello's last play, I Giganti delta Montagna (The Giants of the Mountain ) was a scathing critique of the deleterious effects of a higher power such as the fascist state on art. Al- though Pirandello wrote the play as an allegory, its message was clear and hardly flattering to the regime. Yet, it was posthumously staged in the Boboli Gardens in Florence in 1937.

STATES AS CULTURAL ACTORS Reacting to fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, American social scientists of the 1930s used content analysis to study the relations between cultural institutions and political ideology (McCor- mack 1982). These analyses conflated ideology and propaganda. Focusing on cultural products and audience responses, they assumed a direct connection between the content of state-inspired cultural products and subsequent political behavior (Schudson 1989, p. 158). In the 1970s, neo- Marxist structuralists argued that all cultural institutions were agents of capitalist state ideologies (Althusser 1971), while a more culturalist group revived Gramsci's concept of ideological hegemony (Williams 1977, pp. 108-14). Theo- retical chasms separate the early American students of propaganda and the neo-Marxists, but they share the assumption that cultural institutions are malleable in the service of ideology.

In contrast, recent work on political ideology emphasizes the fluidity of doctrine and the importance of institutional actors who organize ideological production and diffusion in response to changing political and social contexts. In his de- bate with Skocpol on the role of ideology in revolutions, Sewell (1985) argued that ideology is a form of social action and therefore is a transform- able part of the social order. To understand ideology, the analyst must pay careful attention to how ideologies change over time. Skocpol's (1985) reply distinguishes between "cultural idioms," i.e., the repertoire of ideas available at any given time, and ideology, the "self-conscious political argu- ments" that political actors fashion from these idioms (p. 91). Wuthnow (1989, p. 16) expands this position, and argues that ideologies are neither "reflections" nor "distortions" of social reality but acquire their political force by their ability to "articulate" or resonate with their environments.

Wedding this new conception of ideology to recent work in the sociology of culture permits


CULTURAL PRODUCTS State-

Controlled Autonomous

State Totalitarianism Paternalism

0

X

S E Cultural r. Protectionism Pluralism

Figure 1. Analytic Categories for Relations Between the State and Cultural Institutions

the development of an analytic perspective on states as cultural actors. Sociologists have argued that institutional and contextual analysis (see, Griswold 1987) is necessary to unravel the complex processes of cultural creation. Institu- tions organize cultural production. Markets, professional training, and aesthetic style limit the cultural producer's creative vision (Williams 1982; Becker 1982). In general, sociologists have not granted political variables a privileged position in their analyses.

States are neither exogenous variables, as the sociological literature on culture suggests, nor are they autonomous actors. States are organizations with the authority and power to control col- lectivities engaged in production. To understand how states might use their authority to remake cultural institutions, the organization of cultural producers (any "artist," broadly defined, such as a playwright) must be analytically separate from the cultural products themselves (any aesthetic object, such as a play). States may control cultural products by regulating the public circulation of cultural goods. Censorship is the principal method, but the state may also issue guidelines that define the content of cultural products. States have two options for controlling cultural producers. First, they may control organizations of cultural producers such as academies, training insti- tutes, professional bodies, or craft unions. Sec- ond, the state may subsidize particular culture producers through employment opportunities in state organizations, monetary patronage, or indirect subsidies, i.e., tax breaks.

The combination of actions a state might pur- sue suggests four categories of state intervention

in cultural production as pictured in Figure 1. State control of both cultural products and culture producers yields the classic form of totalitarianism. All cultural products directly represent the state and the state either represses or employs culture producers. The opposite catego- ry is pluralism, in which there is a free market for ideas and culture and many cultural producers and products compete.

A third set of actions that I characterize as cultural protectionism assumes a common national culture and a high degree of societal consensus. In this paradigm, cultural producers organize themselves according to whatever principles seem appropriate and the state controls cultural products if they violate either political norms or collectively-held social values.

Under state paternalism, the last set of possibilities, cultural products have a relative autonomy, but the state controls the organizations of culture producers. State paternalism absolves the state from direct involvement in the cultural product while giving it indirect control over its final shape. By controlling the organizations of culture producers, the state militates against artistic dissidence because it promotes self-censorship and encourages culture producers as corporate bodies to represent state ideology. If it weds organizational control to positive incentives, such as patronage and subsidies, the state can stimu- late cultural production by encouraging state organized artists to compete for state resources. This arrangement potentially leaves an opening for cultural innovation.

THE CONTEXT OF FASCIST REGIME THEATRICAL POLICY My proposed conceptual framework neither pre- scribes nor predicts policy. It provides analytic categories that foster systematic thinking about the apparently deviant Italian case and about relations between culture and the state generally. The actions of regimes occur in a context that provides both opportunities and constraints. Po- litical, professional, and cultural factors set the parameters for the fascist regime's actions towards the theater.

The Political Context The salient features of the Italian political context include (1) the clarity of the ideological message and (2) the organizational capacities of the state. Control of cultural products through either


censorship or the issuance of strict guidelines for what is produced is possible only if a regime has a clear sense of its ideological message. The fascist regime's ideological messages were contest- ed by two opposing groups - technocrats and "intransigents" - within the regime. The language of bureaucratic rationality competed with the language of romantic revolutionism (Lyttel- ton [1973] 1987, p. 152).

Corporativism was the ideological position that cut across the various factions within the regime. In 1927, the regime introduced Corporativism in a 30-point doctrine, the Carta delLavoro (Labor Charter) (Bottai and Turati 1929). Corporativ- ism, an amorphous ideology that could accommodate any content, emphasized the individual as part of a moral collectivity - the fascist state. It was the individual's duty to find his or her appropriate place within that collectivity. Work determined an individual's participation in public life. The Charter argued that all labor, includ- ing intellectual labor, was a "social duty" and that from the viewpoint of the nation production was "unitary" (Bottai and Turati 1929, p. 35).

Corporativism focused on social solidarity and public and private behavior. It did not specify behavior and could accommodate shifting, or even contradictory, concerns and positions of the regime.5 While the goals of corporativism were vague, it was quite specific as to the organizational forms within which action took place. Fas- cist unions (sindacati) and corporations, which were interlinked and hierarchical organizations that culminated in the fascist state, were the lo- cus of corporativist action. To work in an occu- pation, it was necessary to join a union and be on an approved list (Berezin 1990, pp. 154-56).

If internal state structures are undeveloped, a regime has space to create new structures. On the other hand, if state structures are already en- trenched, even totalitarian regimes, in the interest of efficiency, must work around those structures. The fascist regime inherited an Italian state with a large public administrative bureaucracy that constrained regime action. The Italian system of higher education produced a supply of baccalau- reates that far exceeded the Italian labor market's demands (Barbagli 1982). Italy's surplus of "unemployed intellectual laborers," greater than any other nation in Europe, provided a steady stream of applicants to posts in the public bureaucracy. Although the regime substantially revised the state

bureaucracy (Acquarone [1964] 1978), it did not reduce the number of posts in the bureaucracy. Between 1923 and 1943, the number of state jobs tripled (Barbagli 1982, pp. 200-201). Given the bureaucratic resources at its disposal and the social structure that supported those resources, it was more feasible for the regime to create organizations to administer theatrical production than to define the type of cultural products that would constitute a fascist theater.

The vague ideology constrained the regime's efforts to define cultural content in fascist terms and the existing bureaucratic structures of the Italian state facilitated, the regime's focus on the organizational aspects of cultural production. In addition, dissident artists could be removed from the official list by their corporative organization and be denied work. I have encountered no evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that this actually happened. Perhaps, corporations were effective vehicles of self-censorship.

The Professional Context Cultural producers with a strong professional organization might either resist or limit the extent of state involvement in cultural production. The Societa Italiana degli Autori (Italian Society of Authors [SIA]), founded in 1882 (SIAE 1971) was the principal professional organization in the theater. It provided "mutual aid" and guarded the copyrights of its members (SIA 1906, p. 5). Ital- ian playwrights who controlled the SIA used it to protect their financial and artistic domination of the Italian theater.

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, a combination of economic and aesthetic factors made the SIA vulnerable to state intervention. Italian playwrights were important, but they were not the only social actors in the Italian theater. Theatrical companies - small businesses headed by company heads (capocomici) - trav- elled from town to town staging plays. Italian company heads were aesthetic and financial entrepreneurs. These theatrical impressarios and their principal stars (mattatore) did not strictly follow scripts and therefore claimed exemptions from copyright fees. In the years immediately preceding World War I, the consolidation of Ital- ian theater ownership in the hands of a few firms, i trust, made theater rents exorbitant. The emergence of the cinema as a form of mass entertainment further threatened playwrights.

Theatrical performances were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Security and

I For a summary of the regime's various ideological doctrines, see Zunino (1985).


required state licenses. After every theatrical performance, the state collected a tax (diritto erari- ale) and agents of the SIA collected a percentage of the gross receipts for copyright. Collecting these fees was not easy because the company system encouraged tax evasion. In addition, theater owners sold blocks of seats permanently to private individuals claimed tax exemptions on the seats because they belonged to individuals and then re-sold the seats to the general public. In some instances, state agents simply pocketed the money.

The system of theatrical organization chal- lenged the financial authority of the state as well as the aesthetic and financial authority of the playwrights. Independently lacking the capacity to monitor the tax and copyright payments, the state and the SIA joined forces in 1921. The SIA's agents who collected the copyright fees would also collect the state taxes (Ministero delle Fi- nanze 1921). Playwrights welcomed state involvement in the SIA because they thought it would help them break the artistic and financial hold of the capocomicilmattatore and the theatrical trusts. Collecting the state tax made the SIA a state agency. Becoming a state agency in 1921, was inconsequential, but after the fascist take- over in 1922 the SIA's formal relationship to the state gave the regime a legitimate reason to become involved in the organization of the theater.

The Cultural Context Tradition and popular taste will daunt even the most dedicated and repressive regime. Propagan- da is useless if no one sees it. Cultural products must resonate sufficiently with past cultural experience to command an audience (Schudson 1989). Theater captured the Italian popular imag- ination. The memoirs of the son of an Italian dra- matist of the period noted that, among the petty bourgeois and working classes, "aspiration to the stage" was common and that every family had a member or friend who belonged to an amateur theater group; among the upper classes, "a box at the Theater Manzoni represented a status symbol like a box at La Scala" (Lopez 1983, p. 10). The smallest towns in Italy had theaters (SIAE 1938, p. 148-83).

Italian theater audiences were not accustomed to concentrating on theatrical texts and this indifference to text proved fairly resistant to cultural innovation as well as regime intervention. The mattatore's style of acting militated against aesthetic innovation as well as the playwright's eco-

nomic control (MacClintock 1920, pp. 181-200; D'Amico 1931, pp. 47-55). Eleanora Duse, the Italian actress and company head, expressed this position somewhat hyperbolically: "To save the theatre ... the actors and actresses must all die of the plague ... they make art impossible" (Mac Clintock 1920, p. 195). Mattatore respected neither theatrical texts nor professional discipline. The action of the plays revolved around the per- sonality of the star and his or her interpretation of a role (McLeod 1912). Since the mattatore were the focus of theatrical attention, it was not necessary that the supporting cast be professionally trained. In addition, supporting roles were predetermined and written into actors' contracts (Ri- spoli 1903, p. 89-95). The mattatore and the leg- islated system of formal roles constrained playwrights to write plays that included all the pre- scribed characters. Italians had a taste for the kind of theater the mattatore provided and they attended performances to witness the histrionics of particular stars.

THE FASCIST RE-ORGANIZATION OF THE ITALIAN THEATER Fascist theatrical legislation that aimed to control theatrical producers rather than theatrical products reveals a policy of state paternalism. Between 1922 and 1939, the regime passed 81 laws aimed at reorganizing the Italian theater (Camera dei Deputati 1929, 1935, 1936). Of these laws, 43 involved the creation of a state theater bureaucracy that restructured the environment of theatrical work and re-adjusted the system of state entertainment taxes and building regulations. Only five laws concerned censorship and two of these concerned the location of public performances.6

The regulatory legal structure that the regime erected around the theater permitted it to create a new theatrical organization, the Corporation of Spectacle (CS), to reform Italian copyright law and restructure the SIA. Organizational restruc- turing had three principal effects: (1) It changed the position of playwrights in the theater by re- structuring their professional organization; (2) it created new organizational positions and structures that distinguished between performance and text - doing theater and writing theater; and (3) it permitted the regime to link the language of art

6The remaining laws regulated theatrical projects and determined a system for awarding state subsidies to the theater (Berezin 1988).


to the language of labor and, ultimately, to fascist ideology.

The CS began meeting in 1930 and established an agenda around the reorganization of theatrical work (PCM 1930). By 1935, the regime decreed the CS as the central fascist theatrical organization.7 Theatrical workers, actors, orchestra players, singers, and dancers were members of the CS. Playwrights were not included in the CS, but their rivals for control of the theater were included - company heads, theater owners, and mov- ie producers. Entrepreneurs, bureaucrats and producers dominated the CS's advisory board (SIAE 193 Ic, pp. 1205-206). Only one playwright, Carlo Tamberlani, who was not particularly prolific or influential, represented the theater (SlAE 193 la).

THE NEW COPYRIGHT LAW AND THE REFORM OF THE SIA The playwright's corporativist organization was the Corporation of Professionals and Artists (CPA). Hierarchical distinctions were made across organizations, not within them, so that which occupational group a corporation represented was significant. Placing playwrights outside of the CS suggested that the regime did not con- sider text or ideas an important dimension of theater. While the regime gave playwrights only to- ken representation in the official theater corporation and consigned them to the CPA, it also com- pleted a series of reforms that eliminated their power in the SIA.

The 1926 revision of Italian copyright law that expanded the concept of what constituted a creative work was the vehicle for regime intervention in the SIA. The new law protected, "all works of the mind, scientific, literary, artistic and di- dactic, whatever their merit or purpose. . ."(La- das 1938, p. 1028). The expanded definition of a creative work required changes in the location, size, internal organization, and name of the SIA. First, the organization moved from Milan to Rome, suggesting that the regime intended to identify artistic creativity with the new fascist state. Second, the organization was expanded to accommodate the new areas that came under its jurisdiction. In 1927, editorial houses joined the SIA and it became the Italian Society of Authors and Editors (SIAE). In 1920, the SIA had 17

7 Beginning in 1925, the pretense of democratic government ended in Italy. Legislation bypassed the Italian Parliament - Mussolini and his Council of Ministers governed by decree.

employees and 600 agents; in 1928, the SIAE had 200 employees and 3500 agents (SPDCO 1928). Third, the fascist regime had a legitimate interest in monitoring the organization because the state entertainment tax now had a much broad- er financial base.

Italian playwrights supported the revision of the Italian copyright law because they thought that by upholding their right to payment the new law would be a symbolic assertion that they were the artistic center of the theater (Valerio 1926). But the law had the opposite effect because the playwrights were as marginalized on the directive boards of the new SIAE as they were on the board of the CS (SIAE 1931b, pp. 710-11). In 1932, a new statute designed at the regime's re- quest declared that membership in the SIAE was incompatible with employment in the SIAE. This meant that a playwright or other artist could not serve in an executive capacity within the organization (SIAE 1932, pp.44-59). Prior to the first interventions of the fascist regime, the SIA's Pres- ident and executive officers had been playwrights or other artists.

THE RHETORIC OF CREATIVITY AND PRODUCTIVITY: LINKING ART AND LABOR Order, discipline, and productivity, the key words of the reformed SIAE, coincided with an ideology of productivity that the regime was develop- ing around both art and labor. In 1933, Mussolini appointed Dino Alfieri, a career fascist, as Presi- dent of the SIAE with absolute authority (SIAE 1933, p. 1). Alfieri had a law degree, had been a member of the fascist party since 1919, was wounded in the war, and "actively supported fascism" (MCP n.d.). His interests were in organization, not art. He was "convinced that a better distribution of work, a major definition of respon- sibility, a more specific assignment of duties," a restoration of "hierarchical discipline," and "strict observance of office hours," would improve the overall efficiency and productivity of the Society (SPDCO 1933, p. 3).

Against this background, the new copyright law not only guaranteed the artist payment for his or her work - it gave an author the "moral right" to "claim the paternity of his work and to prevent alterations of it," and stated that these "moral rights" existed in "perpetuity" (Ladas 1938, p. 1052). The copyright revision established ideas as both private property and tangible com- modities and brought intellectual work into the


realm of production. This meant that the standard of productivity that was applied to other workers could also be applied to intellectuals, and that intellectuals, as other producers, had to be organized and incorporated legally into the fascist state. Before the revision of the copyright law, intellectual work belonged only to the realm of ideas. (See Di Giacomo 1932 and Coscera 1941.)

In 1933, the SIAE celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Alfieri and Mussolini gave speeches that articulated an ideology and policy towards the theater and the arts that dominated official discourse for the remainder of the regime. The arts required productive workers rather than eccen- tric geniuses - "works" rather than "master- pieces" (Alfieri 1933, p. 5). According to Alfieri, "theater, like the rest of art, is not only the fruit of sudden inspiration, but it is also the result of a method, of a discipline, of an experience" (Alfi- eri 1933, p. 5).

Art was a collective activity and not the labor of one individual, such as a playwright. The SIAE would support the social functions of art by pro- viding a proper working environment. The new copyright law, which ensured that the creative artist and his heirs reaped the benefits of his labor, would "increment ... national production" (Alfieri 1933, p. 5). For Alfieri (1933), "the peace- ful, voluntary, and zealous recognition of the economic duties of all towards the author" was the "index of a superior civilization, capable of in- tending and valuing the importance of spiritual life in the modem Nation" (p. 3).

Alfieri argued that the relationship between the man of "talent" and the state was "religious." Using the militaristic metaphors that characterized fascist rhetoric, he said that in the "battle of talent," the SIAE provided "logistic services." In addition to assuring that its 8,000 members received payment for their works, the SIAE would guarantee "tranquil labor and faith in the future for the artist" (Alfieri 1933, p.4). The recognition of the "paternal guardianship of the State" would obligate authors to "live in daily contact with the aspirations and the hopes, with the sor- rows and the joys of an entire people" (Alfieri 1933, p. 4).

Mussolini, echoing Alfieri, claimed that writers must be interpreters of their times - the Fas- cist Revolution. He argued that genius takes cen- turies to develop and the Italian people were in the "springtime" of their social and cultural development. The production of great literature would require "patience." However, he argued

that nothing would happen if writers did not at- tach themselves to the appropriate fascist syndi- cates. Mussolini closed by affirming fascism's particular brand of cultural freedom: "The State cannot create its own literature; but it can and ought to protect authors and, above all, to honor talent, to favor its affirmation" (Mussolini 1933, p. 8).

The regime's rhetoric wed aesthetic production to industrial production. Both forms of production found their focal point in the Italian fascist state and pointed to the central role of labor in fascist ideology. Productivity was the central fascist theme that emerged in the late 1920s and early 1930s (Maier [1970] 1987, pp. 22-70). Ita- ly's retarded industrial development and fascism's attempt to modernize quickly generated the em- phasis upon productivity (De Felice 1974, p. 50). The speeches at the SIAE's fiftieth anniversary celebration transferred the logic of productivity to the theater. The increase in creativity would spur competition to be produced or published and the arts would flourish. Within this context, the act of production took precedence over what was produced. The regime supported the production of words and the organizational or corporative structures within which those words were produced, at the expense of what the words actually said.

THE MEANING OF FASCIST THEATRICAL POLICY: ORGANIZATIONAL FORM AS IDEOLOGY The organizational form of the fascist theater, corporativism, carried its ideological message. The terms Corporativist or fascist theater conveyed fascist ideology because theater was organized according to fascist principles of social order and not because it produced plays about fascist vi- sions of the social order. Corporativist organiza-

I Beginning in 1927, Corporativism dominated official discourse. Journals and mass circulation news- papers focused on it and the regime always articulated public policy in Corporativist terms. The Fascist Ministry of Corporations and its numerous sub-corporations and confederations elevated the drawing of "Tables of Organization" to a high art. Yet, historical scholarship has never attributed any concrete results to Corporativism. In a polemic, Gaetano Salvemini (1936), the exiled antifascist, derided Corporativism as empty rhetoric and called the Corporations, "The Great Humbug." Recent attempts to measure the economic results of Corporativism corroborate this early assessment (Maier 1987, pp. 70-120).


tion assigned greater weight to doing theater than to writing plays. Performance dominated text. Actions encapsulated this symbolism. The regime broke the controlling power of the playwrights in their central professional organization, the SIA, and used the state bureaucracy to erect a counter- organization within the theater, the CS. By placing playwrights outside the CS, the regime eliminated playwrights from both aesthetic and financial control of the fascist theater. These actions suggested that the texts of theatrical works - the plays - were not part of theatricality. Given a Corporativist logic that would necessarily view theateras atotality, aCS thatexcludedplaywrights reinforced the idea that content was a secondary aspect of fascist theater and fascist ideology.

The regime's actions were not predetermined. Nor do they suggest a simple reflection model of political ideology and culture. The empirical evidence I have presented suggests a complex model of politics and culture. Context constrained and enhanced regime action and made particular policies more likely than others. The political process resembled a mediated conversation between aesthetic and political possibilities.

The theater as a cultural institution did not reflect fascist ideology because the regime could not directly control all aspects of the theater. The lack of respect for the text, exemplified by the mattatore, dominated the artistic traditions of the Italian theater and made control of the content of the cultural product difficult. In addition, there was a rigidity to public theatrical taste that Mus- solini himself acknowledged. The censor, Zurlo, described an incident in which he deleted "im- moral" material from a script and later found that Mussolini had restored the offensive scene because he found it amusing (Zurlo 1952, pp.100- 102). The indifference to content constrained certain types of regime action, such as censorship. However, there was a synergism between the indifference to content and Corporativist ideology that led to a focus on solidarity within organizational structures but had no specific goals ex- cept work and productivity.

The marriage of the constraining effect of the problem of text and the opportunity afforded by a vague ideology is not sufficient to explain the outcome of regime policy. Certain structural features of the Italian state and the organization of theatrical producers contributed to the regime's focus on theatrical producers rather than theatrical products. The presence of a large state bureaucracy and a large number of unemployed intellectuals who sought careers in the bureau-

cracy made a focus on the production side of theater attractive to the regime. Zurlo, the censor, and Alfieri, the head of SIAE, were career bureaucrats first and fascists second. A disorga- nized theater and weak professional organizations left theatrical producers vulnerable to regime control. The organizational disorder of the Italian theater made a space for the regime to enter, a pre-existing legal framework legitimated the regime's entrance and a ready army of state bureaucrats provided the resources to implement that involvement.

THEATER AND FASCISM IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Within the context of constraints and opportunities presented by the Italian theater and state, the fascist regime developed policies of state paternalism towards theatrical producers and permitted the cultural products (i.e., plays) relative freedom (autonomy). A comparative glance at other regimes and at other types of cultural institutions in fascist Italy reveals the complexity of the state/ ideology interaction.

Pluralism characterized literary production in fascist Italy. Literacy rates were low and the Ital- ian reading public was relatively restricted. Writ- ers belonged to corporations, but in practice the market governed literary output (Tannenbaum 1972, pp. 251-75; Turi 1990). Public arts such as theater and cinema that had the potential to reach a large and diverse audience and that required a more complicated artistic division of labor were more suited than literature to a system of state paternalism. A play that is not performed or a film that is not screened is merely text. By controlling the conditions of performance work, a regime can affect what types of theater or cinema reach an audience. Fascist film policy was "pro- tective and nurturing" and supportive of "innovation" (De Grazia 1989, p. 73). Italian cinema also lacked fascist content (see De Grazia 1989, p. 76; Hay 1987; Landy 1986) and fascist film censorship was as lax as theatrical censorship. Luchino Visconti's film, Ossessione (Obsession), a drama of fatal sexual attraction, adultery, and murder, was made with state financing (Forgacs 1990, pp. 91-93). Italian journalism was under nearly totalitarian control because the press could respond daily to changing and conflicting fascist ideas. The regime organized journalists, censored their writing, and issued specific guidelines as to what went into the press (Cannistraro 1975, pp. 419-24).


Proximity in time and space make Nazi Ger- many and Soviet Russia logical comparisons to fascist Italy. Both regimes appear to reflect standard conceptions of totalitarianism. Artists were accustomed to working for the state in Germany and Russia and the regimes took over existing organizations (Bracher [1969] 1970; Golomstock 1990). In addition, both the Nazis and Stalin readi- ly used repressive measures such as imprison- ment, banishment, and execution to stamp out cultural dissidence (Bracher 1970, pp. 247-59; Billington 1966, pp. 534-37). Given the evidence presented here, fascist Italy might have mobi- lized its formidable state apparatus against artists. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia differed from fascist Italy in that both had a clear ideological message that made it easier to determine who was deviant (Bracher 1970, p. 247). In Ger- many, painting was the ideal genre for convey- ing the ideology of racial purity (Mosse [1964] 1981). The Nazi regime supported artists who painted in a hyperrealistic style that depicted per- fect Aryan bodies at work and at play (Hinz [1974] 1979). Ideological clarity killed the vibrant Ger- man theatrical culture of the Weimar years because many of its practitioners were Jews, but it encouraged the German cinema, which produced frothy comedies that resembled the Italian comedies (Jelavich 1985; Laqueur [1974] 1980, p. 250).

In Bolshevik and Stalinist Russia, the ideology of proletarian dictatorship was central although it manifested itself in different ways. Post-revolutionary Russia debated the meaning of culture, and both the avant-garde and the explicitly political were permitted (Fitzpatrick 1970, p. 148; Kenez 1985, p. 208; Kleberg 1982; Mally 1990). Repression began in 1928 when Stalin took over the state and demanded that cultural producers become "engineers of the human soul" (Billing- ton 1966, p. 522). Distrustful of performance arts, Stalin decided at the 1934 Party Congress to focus attention on literature as a vehicle for propaganda and introduced the notion of Socialist Re- alism (Billington 1966, p. 535). Strict guidelines soon emerged for creating the "positive and neg- ative hero" (Hollander 1966).

Even in the relatively seamless world of repression in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, popular taste cracked the totalitarian mold. The Nazis defined jazz as black, Jewish, and decadent, yet they tolerated it because social elites liked it (Kater 1989). The Nazis ordered a new German architecture but used the "decadent" Bauhaus models that were available (Lane [1968] 1985, p. 215). Soviet Russia thought that cinema

was a particularly effective means of propaganda and invested large sums of money in it. Sergei Eisenstein's films, critically acclaimed as the hall- mark of Russian propagandist cinema, were not popular and the Russian public flocked to any American films that managed to get into the coun- try (Kenez 1985 p. 212, 198).

The United States during the same period ex- emplifies cultural protectionism. The American state organized neither cultural products nor cultural producers. Taste and market forces governed cultural production. The New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA) served as a state sponsored market correction mechanism (Dubin 1987). Congress censored the content of cultural products produced by the WPA (Dubin 1987, p. 161). In the late 1930s, the House Un-American Activities Committee closed the Federal Theater Project because it staged Communist plays (Mat- thews 1980, p. 198). Congress assumed a man- date to protect a vision of politics and culture that all citizens presumably shared.

CONCLUSION Research models that focus on the cultural product implicitly view state power as monolithic and suggest that the Italian case was anomalous. By borrowing a methodological orientation (Sewell 1985; Skocpol 1985; Wuthnow 1989) that exam- ines context and institutional action and by de- veloping a conceptual framework that analytically separates cultural products from cultural producers -plays from playwrights - I show that even a regime that claimed to be totalitarian could not completely redesign a cultural institution. Politi- cal process - the interaction between specific historical constraints and opportunities - super- ceded ideological imperatives in policy forma- tion.

A vague ideological message and a congealed cake of theatrical custom constrained what the fascist regime could and would do. On the other hand, structural weaknesses in the Italian theater and educational system, coupled with the bureaucratic strength of the fascist state, made a system of state paternalism the most likely outcome of theatrical policy.

State and culture are ongoing features of the political landscape, not dead European issues of the early twentieth century. Recent debates about the National Endowment for the Humanities in the United States suggest that it is time to develop new models of state and culture that take political process into account.


MABEL BEREZIN is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. A historical sociolo- gist who works principally in the area of politics and culture, she is preparing a book-length manuscript on public spectacle, political identity, and culture in Fascist Italy. In addition to articles on Italian fascism, she has written on contemporary mass media in comparative perspective. Her ongoing research interests include current European politics and the international resurgence of political extremism.

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Issue Table of ContentsAmerican Sociological Review, Vol. 56, No. 5 (Oct., 1991), pp. 567-698+I-XVIIIFront MatterDestiny and Drift: Subcultural Preferences, Status Attainments, and the Risks and Rewards of Youth [pp.567-582]Children's Work and Schooling in the Late Nineteenth-Century Family Economy [pp.583-596]Work Experience and Control Orientation in Adolescence [pp.597-611]Cognitive Attainment Among Firstborn Children of Adolescent Mothers [pp.612-624]Family of Origin and Cohort Differences in Verbal Ability [pp.625-638]The Organization of Political Ideology: Culture, State, and Theater in Fascist Italy [pp.639-651]The "Red Menace" and the Rise of Italian Fascism [pp.652-664]The Political Economy of Madness: The Expansion of the Asylum in Progressive America [pp.665-678]Capitalist Response to State Intervention: Theories of the State and Political Finance in the New Deal [pp.679-689]Comments and RepliesThe Variable Autonomy of the State: A Comment on "Steel and the State" [pp.690-693]Conflict and Historical Variation in Steel Capital-State Relations: The Emergence of State Structures and a More Prominent, Less Autonomous State [pp.693-698]

Back Matter [pp.I-XVIII]

lindsay fascism

Documents

cultural products

fascist ideology

national cultural institutions

italian fascist regime

theater performance

fascist italyauthors

ideal cultural vehicle

service of ideology