Alfredo Rocco

Alfredo Rocco (9 September 1875 – 28 August 1935) was an Italian politician and jurist.

Rocco was born in Naples.

He was Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Urbino (1899-1902) and in Macerata (1902-1905), then Professor of Civil Procedure in Parma, of Business Law in Padua, and later of Economic Legislation at "La Sapienza" University of Rome, of which he was rector from 1932 to 1935.

Rocco as an economist-minded politician developed the early concept of the economic and political theory of corporatism which, later adapted, would become part of the ideology of the National Fascist Party.

Rocco began his political career as a Marxist in the Radical Party but eventually turned to the "proletarian nationalism" of the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI), a political party that he had major influences on. Rocco was critical of Italy's weak material and economic power which he said was responsible for Italian dependence on the European "plutocracies" of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Rocco also denounced the European powers for imposing foreign culture on Italy and criticized the European powers for endorsing too much individualism. He later joined the National Fascist Party once they merged with the Italian Nationalist Association. In a 1925 speech Rocco interpreted the ideology of fascism as the means by which the individual is sacrificed for the good of society, declaring: "For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends."

Elected in 1921 at the Chamber of Deputies, of which he was President in 1924, from 1925 to 1932 he was Minister of Justice and promoted the criminal codification, by signing in 1930 the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure (with the help of Vincenzo Manzini), and reconciling Classical and Positivist school with the system of so-called "double track".