“Breaking Down the Ivory Tower”: Economic Culture in the Italian Academies Under Fascism

This contribution aims to outline the role of economists in high cultural institutions who operated in autonomous spaces during the time that the dictatorship was working to construct the totalitarian state and its mechanisms of compliance. The objective is to understand whether, in the protective shadows of the academic ivory towers and in the closed world of exclusive intellectual forums, economists maintained an attitude of Nicodemite ambiguity, identifying issues of consensus and propaganda or whether, on the other hand, they were critical of the fascist regime, even if only implicitly. The role of economists in the high culture institutions of the fascist era has largely been overlooked by even the most assiduous historians, and this work will therefore help fill the lacuna. The analysis focuses mainly on the foremost economists, those who were members of the Academy of the Lincei, but also consider those with roles in local academies.