A proposito dell’intransigenza fascista: Farinacci e la plutocrazia bancaria

Farinacci was considered
In this paper we deal with Roberto Farinacci’s political activity. We enphasize on the relationship between Farinacci with Giacinto Motta, the patron of the Italian eletrical company Edison, which was close to the Credito Italiano Bank. Our aim is to show that this friendship caused the Farinacci’s attack towards Giuseppe Toeplitz, the chief manager of Banca Commerciale, the biggest bank in Italy at that time. Essentially there are two main issues characterizing their friendship: the former one is that Farinacci’s attack was justified by his fascistic intransigence that was against the biggest financial groups. Those groups were an oligarchy in the previous liberal government. This was very contradictory because Motta actually belonged to that oligarchy apparently damned by Farinacci. The second issue is not so straightfoward: it is related to the unfreezing of the biggest Italian banks, which was carried out strogly towards the Banca Commerciale while it was carried out softly toward the Credito Italiano. In this way Farinacci was considered by some fascists like the winner of the fight against the Banca Commerciale. Now it is crucial to stress two final remarks. The first one is that Farinacci is again close to Mussolini’s policy; in fact Toeplitz is attacked at the same time by Farinacci and by Mussolini, even if those common goals between the two of them will be totally common only after 1936. The second remark is in the twofold personality of Farinacci: he was very useful for Mussolini’s goals. In fact he was, at the same time, intransigent to Toeplitz and smart to keep on good relationships with the old liberal financial oligarchy whose Motta was one of the best representative.