In tracing the development of industrial associations in Italy from 1906 to 1934, this study challenges traditional interpretations of the rise of fascism. Unlike other studies which begin with the post-World War I crisis, Professor Adler examines the earlier relationship between industrialists and Italian liberalism, and then situates industrialists within the post-war crisis of liberalism and the transition to fascism. Industrialists are viewed as problematic but loyal members of the old liberal order who first were sceptical of fascism, and then, with the collapse of any liberal alternative, worked with other traditional elites to preserve elements of the liberal state within the emerging framework of the new fascist regime. Unlike strictly narrative accounts, Adler' study is theoretically informed by current interests in assessing interpretations of fascism, relating corporatism to crisis tendencies in liberalism, and applying hermeneutics to historical analysis.

In tracing the development of industrial associations in Italy from 1906 to 1934, this study challenges traditional interpretations of the rise of Fascism. Unlike other studies on industrialists and Fascism, which begin with the post-World War I crisis of liberalism, Professor Adler reconstitutes the prior relations between industrialists and Italian liberalism and then situates industrialists within the crisis and the subsequent transition to Fascism. Applying a hermeneutic approach to public and private texts produced by industrial associations, Adler uncovers the industrialists' self-constitution as a class, especially that subjective dimension of their development which accounts for collective consciousness, a sense of agency, and the will to act politically. Particular attention is paid to the ideological dimension of this development; the formative self-understandings, performative practices, and durable dispositions of this class; as well as their strategic, instrumental, and self-interested interventions in social and political life.