Table Of ContentFascism și fascisme
Volum X, Nr. 3 (37), Serie nouă, iunie-august 2022
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Fascism și fascisme
Labor Politics and Syndicalism in Interwar Romania:
the Drives to the Right and to the Left
Victor RIZESCU
Abstract: The article surveys the ideological drives to the Right and to the Left
in the Romanian space, as they applied to the field of labor and social policies,
over the period stretching from the first local reactions taken to the corporatist
restructuring of syndical organization in fascist Italy up to the installation of
communism. The developments involved are placed against their early XXth
century historical background and the identity of the liberal approach to the
issues concerned, enjoying a dominant position over the years coming in the
aftermath of the First World War, is delineated in order to be invoked as a
reference against which the tenets of the rival perspectives are evaluated. The
full-blown fascist and communist relevant views are related to the other varieties
of right-wing and respectively left-wing demands. The issue of syndicalism is
taken as the central thread of the process of change under scrutiny, and the
shaping of the legislative and institutional devices meant to address the problem
of the representation of professional interests in an authoritarian guise is treated
as the cornerstone of the same process.
Keywords: labor, syndicalism, corporatism, fascism, communism.
From the first encounter with the the course of radicalization, by the
corporatist reordering of labor means of a proper delineation of the
politics exhibited by fascist Italy, in liberal centrist view, as applied to the
1926, to the installation of the com- same area of social life. It is only the
munist order in the field, in 1948, arrangements and practices arising
Romania was confronted with a wide from this view ‒ whose elaboration
range of models for the organization was inaugurated in the national space
of social policies and of their syn- before the First World War, in order
dical bases, themselves closely linked to acquire recognizable contours over
with larger ideological visions that the years coming in its aftermath ‒
pointed to the overall reorganizing of that can be taken as a yardstick for
the political format of the country assessing the character and me-
and to the reshaping of the under- asuring the scope of the drives
lying social-economic structure. One subsequently taken in the context
can only understand, however, the towards the opposite poles of the
interplay between right-wing and ideological spectrum and along the
left-wing designs of the sort, set on
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relevant layers of social evolution professional structures subject to
and state activities. tight state regulations ‒ and on the
other hand the socialist revolutionary
The liberal view of labor and calls looking at the syndical bodies as
the drive to the Right instruments of full emancipation,
enabling the working classes to move
The two main pillars of the beyond the limitations of the market
engagement with the area of labor economy2.
predicated on broad liberal principles It was the same clash between
were the conception of syndical resilient guild-based economic tradi-
freedom meant to allow the genuine tionalism and ascending socialist-
representation of the economic in- dominated syndicalism which consti-
terests of professional groups, while tuted the context for the emergence
preventing their politicization, and of the liberal perspective on the issue
respectively that of the state me- of labor in Romania, at the turn of the
diating intervention on a permanent XIXth to the XXth century.
basis in the sphere of the relations Pleadings in favor of the uses and
between employers and employees. legitimacy of professional asso-
These sets of demands had evolved ciationism3 went together at the time
in deep correlation over the previous with others rejecting the conception
stages of European and world of the night-watchman state and
history, in so far as the vindication of arguing the necessity of the open
the legitimate character of coalitions governmental involvement in eco-
among laborers of any category, nomic life4, in a milieu where the
intended to work for the betterment vision of revolutionary class struggle
of their economic condition, had to harnessing the syndicates to its
be advanced against the idea ambitious long-term political goals ‒
prevailing at the beginning of liberal consolidated at the moment 1905-
capitalism and according to which 1906 after a temporary eclipse ‒ was
any enterprise of the kind had to be taking roots alongside attempts at
opposed as disruptive of the market rejuvenating the traditional guilds in
non-interventionist wisdom1. More- the frame of modern laws of the
over, the philosophy of well-cali- professions and of social insurances
brated intervention taken against the providing for the half-mandatory
background of generalized syn- enlistment of the members of expan-
dicalism could only make its way ding occupational groups (adopted
through a struggle on two fronts, successively in 1902 and 1912).
fighting on the one hand the tradi- With the notion of state mediation
tionalist yearning for the reinstal- included in the constitution of 1923
lation of guild organization ‒ con- and the arrangements of syndical
sisting of the mandatory încorpora- freedom entrenched by the law of
tion of the labor force in corporatist professional syndicates introduced in
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1921 ‒ together with that of legal mind whose tenets were to be tested
persons adopted in 1924 ‒ , the libe- against the exigencies of practical
ral view of labor then emerged as the politics over the period 1938-1944.
dominant one against the challenges Although scoring significant and
of the Right and the Left, moreover much-advertised accomplishments up
acquiring foreign aid as a result of to 1932-1933 ‒ when the laws for the
the Romanian allegiance to the Inter- creation of the Chambers of Labor
national Labor Organization, in 1919, and for the unification of the systems
and being endowed with internal of social insurances across the coun-
institutional support by virtue of the try were successively adopted ‒ the
creation of a specialized govern- liberal approach to the problems of
mental agency devoted to the matters labor and syndicalism was to be
concerned, in the form of the placed on the defensive shortly after
Ministry of Labor and Social Care its outspoken self-celebrations.
inaugurated in 1920. The manifesta- The wide popularization in the
tions occasioned by the celebration of Romanian space of the modern cor-
this last body ten years afterwards, in poratist perspective articulated in
19305, have to be seen as the most Italy in 1926 and set on stronger
emphatic and penetrating assertions theoretical foundations with the 1927
of the same vision in the context. By Charter of Labor was accompanied
the time, its social impact had been by the steady conversion to this new
broadened on the basis of a series of discourse of large parts of specific
legal regulations, of which the most professional milieus ‒ mainly pertai-
significant were the law for the ning to the lower middle class social
regulation of labor conflicts preci- stratum and to the white-collar occu-
pitately adopted in 1920 ‒ at a pational segment ‒ , partly connected
moment marked by the escalation of with the welter of guild structures of
left-wing revolutionary activity ‒ and the 1902-1912 variety, themselves
the one for the administration of pronounced dead in 1921 but stub-
labor contracts, belatedly laid down bornly surviving after that moment,
in 1929. Split in 1921 with the primarily by virtue of the functions
separation from its body of the they continued to perform in the field
Komintern-controlled communist of social insurance up to 1933.
branch and further weakened with the Advocacies of the first kind were
outlawing of this last one in 1924, the thus put forward in the prominent
Left was not a major pressure upon right-wing periodicals Cuvântul ‒
the defenders of the mainstream in from 1926 and directed at the time by
the domain of social policies at the Titus Enacovici6 ‒ , Curentul ‒ from
beginning of the fourth XXth century 1928 and under the directorship of
decade. The exponents of the Right, Pamfil Șeicaru7 ‒ , Calendarul ‒ in
instead, had gained considerable 1932-1933, all throughout led by
strength, in possession of the cast of Nichifor Crainic8 ‒ and Lumea nouă
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‒ starting with April 1932 and specific right-wing ethnic exclu-
propagating the well-rounded corpo- sionary and authoritarian programs,
ratist doctrine of Mihail Manoilescu9. the promoters of the core doctrine
To the same extent, pleadings arising originally shaped around the con-
from the grass-roots movement of the cerns of labor and syndical activity
professions were vacillatingly advan- also established a dialogue, for that
ced in the pages of less prominent matter, with the exponents of ideas
journals like Glasul micii industrii ‒ regarding the moderate supplemen-
inaugurated in 192210 ‒ and Tribuna tation of the regular electoral patterns
muncii ‒ launched in 192611 ‒ , in leading to the structuring the legisla-
order to get better crystallized in tive assemblies and state structures
Gazeta meseriilor ‒ founded in through the mechanisms of nation-
192912 ‒ and to finally emerge full- wide and individualistically-based
blown in Drum nou ‒ over the years voting processes by the creation of
1930-1934, staying in strong inter- specific electoral channels meant to
course with Calendarul, treating allow the representation of segmental
Lumea nouă as a rival voice and interests circumscribed by criteria of
featuring the figure of its leader, the professional allegiance14. In
architect I. D. Enescu, as an ideo- Romania, the searches of the last type
logist able to contest to Manoilescu were focused on the provisions of the
the paternity of the corporatist 1923 constitution and of the 1926
doctrine in the Romanian tradition13. electoral law regarding the special
Social-economic demands cen- representation in the Senate of the
tered upon the design of the orga- universities and of the state-spon-
nization of labor on the basis of sored professional chambers (with
vertically-delineated guilds able to the Chambers of Commerce and
contain class strife, by opposition to Industry dating from the XIXth
the horizontally-branded syndicates ‒ century and those of Agriculture and
associated with socialist subversion Labor created ‒ and thus made avai-
and liberal obsolescence and per- lable for such responsibilities ‒ in
ceived to foster the conflicts between 1925, respectively, as said, in 1932).
groups in society ‒, were conjoined, Thus getting deeply intertwined
in the corporatist thinking of with the various compartments of the
Romania as elsewhere, with calls for political Right on the one side, while
the replacement of the inherently also interfering with the camp of
parasitic and corrupt party-based technocratic moderation on the other
parliamentarianism by a new kind of side, the corporatist right-wing
politics, resting on the parliamentary philosophy of labor was unavoidably
representation of the professional cast into a series of different embo-
bodies and conducive to the streng- diments. Adopted prematurely, uncri-
thening of national solidarity. While tically and inconsistently at an early
appropriating to various degrees stage by nationalist politicians of a
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traditionalist orientation like Nicolae principle of the freedom of asso-
Iorga15 and Simion Mehedinți16, it ciation. The constitution looked for-
was brought by Enescu and Crainic ward to the creation of a profession-
into the headquarters of National- based parliament, laying down the
Christian politics, without ever being demand for the organization of the
taken as a watchword by the hard- electoral body in three categories
liner leaders of this last ideological comprising, in turn, the represen-
group17. It also made inroads into tatives of “agriculture and manual
Alexandru Vaida-Voevod’s Romanian labor”, of “commerce and industry”
Front party18. The fascist Iron Guard and of “intellectual occupations”.
displayed a welter of different attitu- The subsequent law inaugurated the
des towards it, stretching from the creation of corporatist structures
wholesale and enthusiastic support of somewhat differently defined, for the
Mihail Polihroniade19 and the acade- time being addressing only the
mic account of Vasile Marin20 to the segments of the manual workers
occasional half-hearted approval of outside the sphere of agriculture, of
Ion Moța21 and Corneliu Zelea the craftsmen and petty industrialists
Codreanu22 and the quasi-rejection and of the professionals in the field
from the part of Traian Brăileanu and of commerce. Proclaiming that “no-
of other figures23. Its vocation of body can be obliged to be a member,
navigating the whole road of right- not to be a member or to cease being
wing radicalization up to a complete a member of a guild”, it also asserted
identification with revolutionary fas- that only one guild giving represen-
cism is nevertheless proven by tation to a professional group could
Manoilescu’s attempt to elaborate a function within each and every
platform for the fusion between his administrative unit of the country.
National-Corporatist League and Thus reminiscent of the legislative
Legionarism at the juncture of the regulations for professional asso-
1937 elections24, and again by his ciations of both the 1902-1912 and
strivings to get his doctrine ingra- the 1921-1924 instalments, it was
tiated with the officialdom of the nevertheless issued together with a
National-Legionary State, late in statement according to which “the
194025. old law of the syndicates exhibited
The two legal documents with the natural humanitarian hopes […]
corporatist provisions adopted by the of the prevailing optimism following
Carolist dictatorship were the the war”, that had to be abandoned in
February 1938 constitution and the line with the inescapable “collecti-
law for the organization of the guilds vization of life” and “the robust
introduced in October of the same assertion of the national principle”26.
year. Both of them were beware of a The efforts to make clearer the
radical break with the past, therefore implications of these basic impera-
continuing to pay lip-service to the tives would then focus upon a
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legislative project introduced in the precise juridical structure to the
parliament in July 1939 and never groups of individuals brought toge-
transformed into a law. ther by similar needs created in the
process of the social division of
Corporatist restructuring in labor”, thus pointing to it as “the
debate force which [...] would impart to
society a juridical structure more
Meant to broaden the provisions appropriate to its economic evo-
of the 1938 law by the means of lution”27.
extending the guild-type organization This only comes, however, at the
to the spheres of the business owners cost of clarifying that “in order to
and employers, of the big and small properly fulfil such a task, the
agriculturalists and of the whole syndical movement has to evolve
range of intellectual professionals, within the frame of liberty and must
the project of 1939 also comments in refrain from transforming the guilds
the preamble upon the 1921 law of and professional associations ‒ in
the syndicates, in order to acknow- line with a certain quite widespread
ledge to it the genuine intention of view of today ‒ from voluntary and
transforming the professional asso- free organizations into mandatory
ciation into something different from and official ones, subordinated to the
the (socialist-driven) “instrument of executive power”. It is further made
struggle between social classes, of clear that “a tendency of this kind
moral discord and of social-economic could only have the result of bringing
anarchy”. Showing that such an ex- us centuries backwards and of resur-
pectation could not be unfortunately recting the guilds and corporations of
fulfilled due to “the political biases other times”28. The Romanian
displayed by the great majority of corporatist structure in the course of
syndicates” under the pre-1938 being elaborated is here clearly
regime and saying ‒ by reference to demarcated by comparison with the
not only the mild corporatist theorists system of fascist corporatism pre-
E. Durkheim and L. Duguit, but also vailing at the time in Italy, which
to R. Waldeck-Rousseau, perhaps the stood as the most prominent refe-
most celebrated founder of liberal rence for the experiments of the kind
syndicalism ‒ that the principle of attempted throughout the world.
“liberty is not currently being applied The determination of the
any more to the isolated individual”, Romanian legislators under the
in so far as the spirit of the new times Carolist regime to conceive of the
has “entrusted the professional group corporatist bodies as mere institutions
with the mission of defending indi- of private law, by opposition to the
vidual freedoms”, the argumentation Italian doctrine and practice that was
then goes on to vindicate syndicalism shaping them as public institutions,
as “a movement tending to give a has repeatedly been underscored in
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Fascism și fascisme
the bibliography of the subject29. A nuity between the traditional guilds ‒
survey of the debates on the topic “born of the actual needs of social
taking place in the country over the and economic life” and “developed
period shows, nevertheless, a variety entirely on the basis of the sustained
of conceptions regarding the course efforts deployed by their members” ‒
that the reforms relying on the and the modern corporations of the
corporatist conception were bound or fascist variety ‒ “created by the state
advised to take in the future. One and kept under a close political
such category of relevant interven- control” ‒ , with the conclusion that
tions thus offered the Mussolinian “fascist professional associations
model for local imitation without cannot be described as either corpo-
demanding any significant adjust- rations or syndicates, but as mere
ments30, moreover pleading for a organs of state administration”35. The
wholesale adoption of the plain “tota- same author surveys then in 1939 the
litarian” vision, something that could law of the guilds adopted in the
imply, for example, the creation of “a previous year, in order to show how
totalitarian ministry, custodian of all this one envisions bodies “remi-
the interests of the nation, and not niscent of the 1921 syndicates”, by
only of some sections of it”31 and the same token “avoiding any
entrusted with the supervision of “the measures that could have transfor-
future Romanian corporatist order”32. med [them] into state institutions”,
This stance was also supported with the result being a mere “concentra-
the help of translations from Italian tion of the forces of labour, certainly
authors33. There were also works stronger than could have been ob-
striving to find a way out of the tained on the basis of the Chambers
design of the slavish imitation of of Labor alone”. Taking account of
foreign totalitarian fashions34. Some the declarations accompanying the
of them addressed in a consistent publication of the law and pointing to
manner the main issue at stake, the planned “integration” of the
namely that of deciding over the Romanian state into the purported
character of the corporations as drive to corporatist structures deve-
branches of the state or as private loping worldwide, he is keen to argue
associations. that such a thing “could only become
A case in point is that of Petre possible on the basis of renewed
Alexandrescu-Roman, a National efforts”, of “long years dedicated to
Liberal Party specialist in social the revision of social legislation” and
policies. Approaching the challenge of the “wholesale refashioning of the
of corporatism as part of an actual syndical system, together with
involvement with the prospects of the the elaboration of new professional
“petty Romanian bourgeoisie”, in a bodies and a sustained education of
conference delivered in February the masses”36. Finally, in a confe-
1937, he discloses the stark disconti- rence of November 1941 hosted by
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the General Union of Small arrangement in question “does not
Entrepreneurs, he covers the topic of prevent the creation of totalitarian
the “regime of the professions in corporatism, allowing full freedom to
Romania and abroad”, presenting in a the ordinary legislator” with respect
neutral fashion the totalitarian to any such possible developments.
evolutions underway in Germany and Rehearsing the fact that “one of the
Italy while depicting those of Vichy critiques most often adduced against
France as “set on a quasi-totalitarian the representation of professional
course”37, only in order to argue in interests is that within such a political
the end that “on all accounts, the system each and every citizen is
guild created upon the orders of the obliged to be a part of a professional
legislator fits very hard into the group”, Gruia argues that the
Romanian realities”, moreover ad- Romanian constitution in place
ding the general statement that “the “provides for the representation of
professional association can only be a the professionals, and not of the
very superficial entity when brought professions organized in corpora-
into being by virtue of public, instead tions”, thus “without ruling out the
of private initiatives” and mildly possibility of organized professional
praising the organization addressed groups, it neither makes it a neces-
for “having opposed” the design of sary development”42.
mandatory corporations of totali- The attitude of caution with
tarian inspiration38. regard to the degree and complexion
One can also find a readiness to of the authoritarianism expected to
admit eventual non-totalitarian get entrenched throughout the
outgrowths of the 1938 constitution Romanian social body by virtue of
in the statements given at the same the Carolist constitution was certainly
juncture by the law professor I. V. characteristic to prominent previous
Gruia, a veteran of the search for the defenders of social reforms with a
parliamentary representation of pro- liberal cast from the 1920’s and the
fessional interests from the 1920’s39, early 1930’s, now converted to the
later converted into a stern defender new wisdom apparently taking hold
of corporatism at the beginning of the of the entire world, like D. R.
next decade40. Defining the state Ioanițescu or Marco I. Barasch43. It
emerging from the constitutional might be argued, however, that the
document as “authoritarian, corpora- contributor to the debate which went
tive and national”41, he also clarifies farthest in denying any implications
that “the Romanian constitution does of a totalitarian corporatist nature to
not elaborate a totalitarian corporatist the Carolist constitution was the
state”, or “in other terms it does not young jurist Tudor Drăganu.
set forth to apply the corporatist Developing his reflections on the
conception in a totalitarian way”. To corporatist credentials of the regime
the same extent, as he argues, the in conjunction with a more general
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Fascism și fascisme
characterization of its foundational latter”. When taking in view that
document as inconsistently authori- “Italy has maintained the institution
tarian44, he claims that the same of universal suffrage, while our new
arrangement only created the precon- constitution has abolished it, repla-
ditions for the elaboration of “mo- cing it with professional suffrage”, it
derate professional representation”, can only be concluded that the
alongside the traditional parliamen- Romanian parliament “has a cha-
tary representation of the electorate. racter of professional representation
This comes from the fact that “there more clearly displayed than the
is no intention proven by the parliaments of the most corporatist of
constitution to give political suffrage all countries”, and accordingly the
to professional groups enjoying professions here “cannot be allowed
continuous existence, but only to to get organized freely”. On the con-
temporarily distribute the electors trary, it is said, “the only form that
between the three professional cate- our professional organizations can be
gories, for the time of the elec- allowed to take is that of organs with
tions”45, while also restating the prin- a public character, issuing from the
ciple of the freedom of association46. mandatory association of all the
The opposite attitude expressed in professionals”. It is to be decried that
the discussion is best represented by the 1939 legislative project “does not
a 1939 unsigned article in the journal take into account all these con-
Parlamentul românesc, itself dis- clusions which derive in a logical
playing a sustained concern for the manner from the letter and the spirit
matter47. An international survey of the constitution”48.
allows the author to state that “from It is this reading of the corporatist
the point of view of the juridical form constitution that was retained by I. D.
taken by the professional bodies, Enescu, the most laborious of the
there can be identified two systems”, people working throughout the years
namely “the one which imparts to of the right-wing dictatorships for
[them] the character of moral persons fulfilling the promises of 1938. In a
pertaining to the sphere of public project for the organization of the
law”, respectively the one which professions that he delivers shortly
“maintains these bodies as organs after the installation of the Carolist
with a particular character”. It is then regime, he treats “social activities” as
underscored that “according to our divided among three “categories of
constitution, […] the professions are functions”: those of “production”
given decisive attributions with (comprising the spheres of agricul-
respect to the election of the ture, industry and trades), respec-
deputies”, in so far as “their role is tively those of “repartition” (com-
not confined to the mere nomination merce, communication, exchange
of the candidates, being instead and circulation) and of “discipline”
extended to the actual election of the (intellectual activities and public
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