The Technocrats Had No Problem Seeing the Similarities between the National Recovery Administration (NRA) Codes and Fascist Corporatism

Roosevelt himself once spoke in the presence of journalists of Mussolini and Stalin as his “blood brothers.” And during the public unveiling of the National Industrial Recovery Act, when Roosevelt referred to the industrial associations that had been reconstituted by the codes as “modern guilds,” those fluent in the jargon may well have recognized the reference to the corporatist system associated with Fascism. . . .

Rexford Tugwell, the man who was known as the most left-wing member of Roosevelt’s brain trust and who was frank about his admiration for the Soviet planned economy, was also open in his respect for Mussolini’s economic policies, though he otherwise rejected Fascism on ideological grounds. . . .

The technocrats who worked below the level of political decision making had no problem seeing the similarities between the NRA codes and Fascist corporatism. As one put it: “The Fascist Principles are very similar to those which we have been evolving here in America and so are of particular interest at this time.”

—Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939 (New York: Picador Henry Holt and Company, 2007), Kobo e-book.