Site Meter

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Italian Lesson for an Anonymous TPM commenter

Someone (who did not sign his post) wrote "what Benito Mussolini called corporatism, a collusion between business interests and government at the highest levels. " The phrase following the comma incorrectly defines what Benito Mussolini called corporativismo. In Italian "corporazione" means guild. The Italian word for a corporation is a "società." Mussonilini proposed a state in which the people would be represented indirectly via "corporazione." Whatever these might be they certainly weren't corporations, firms, businesses or any such thing.

The innumerable references to the "corporate state" made by leftists in the late 60s and early 70s (and someone in 2008) were based on a gross mistranslation. It is similar to the mistranslation of "canali" that is "channels" as "canals" which is responsible for so much bad science and bad to excellent science fiction about the canals of Mars (if you don't think any of the science fiction was excellent you must not know who Leigh Bracket is)

No comments: