An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II: The Economics Profession and Fascist Institutions [1st ed.] 9783030383305, 9783030383312

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT

An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II The Economics Profession and Fascist Institutions Edited by Massimo M. Augello Marco E. L. Guidi · Fabrizio Bientinesi

Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought

Series Editors Avi J. Cohen Department of Economics York University & University of Toronto Toronto, ON, Canada G. C. Harcourt School of Economics University of New South Wales Sydney, NSW, Australia Peter Kriesler School of Economics University of New South Wales Sydney, NSW, Australia Jan Toporowski Economics Department School of Oriental & African Studies University of London London, UK

Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought publishes contributions by leading scholars, illuminating key events, theories and individuals that have had a lasting impact on the development of modern-day economics. The topics covered include the development of economies, institutions and theories.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14585

Massimo M. Augello · Marco E. L. Guidi · Fabrizio Bientinesi Editors

An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II The Economics Profession and Fascist Institutions

Editors Massimo M. Augello University of Pisa Pisa, Italy

Marco E. L. Guidi University of Pisa Pisa, Italy

Fabrizio Bientinesi University of Pisa Pisa, Italy

ISSN 2662-6578 ISSN 2662-6586 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought ISBN 978-3-030-38330-5 ISBN 978-3-030-38331-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38331-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Photo 12/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

Economic Expertise and Political Militancy Under Fascism: An Introduction Massimo M. Augello, Marco E. L. Guidi and Fabrizio Bientinesi From Nationalism to Fascism: Protagonists and Journals Luca Michelini

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Planning and Discussing Corporatism and the “New International Order” Fabrizio Bientinesi and Marco Cini

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“Breaking Down the Ivory Tower”: Economic Culture in the Italian Academies Under Fascism Rosario Patalano and Marco E. L. Guidi

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The Italian Economists as Legislators and Policymakers During the Fascist Regime Giovanni Pavanelli and Giulia Bianchi

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Banks, Firms and Economic Culture: Economists and Research Centres in Interwar Italy Pier Francesco Asso, Fabio Lavista and Sebastiano Nerozzi

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The Diaspora of Italian Economists: Intellectual Migration Between Politics and Racial Laws Daniela Giaconi

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The Purging of Fascist Economists in Post-war Italy Daniela Giaconi

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Italian Economists of the Interwar Period: Academic, Political and Professional Biographies Massimo M. Augello

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Name Index

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Subject Index

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Notes on Contributors

Pier Francesco Asso is Full Professor of History of Economic Thought at the University of Palermo. He acted as co-editor of History of Economic Thought and Policy and as chief director of the RES (Istituto di Ricerca Economia e Società in Sicilia) Research Institute. Massimo M. Augello is Full Professor of History of Economic Thought at the University of Pisa. He is founder and co-director of Il Pensiero economico italiano and chair of CIPEI (Centro interuniversitario di documentazione sul pensiero economico italiano). He is a member of the editorial board of History of Economic Thought and Policy and of the executive committee of AISPE (Associazione Italiana per la Storia del pensiero economico). Giulia Bianchi is Associate Professor of History of Economic Thought at the University of Genoa. She is a member of the editorial committee of History of Economic Ideas.

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Fabrizio Bientinesi is Full Professor of History of Economic Thought at the University of Pisa. He is chief editor of Il Pensiero economico italiano and a member of the executive committee of AISPE (Associazione Italiana per la Storia del pensiero economico). Marco Cini is Assistant Professor of Economic History at the University of Pisa. He is a member of the editorial committee of Il Pensiero economico italiano. Daniela Giaconi is Research Fellow in History of Economic Thought at the University of Pisa and teaches Economic History at the University of Macerata. She is a member of the editorial committee of Il Pensiero economico italiano. Marco E. L. Guidi is Full professor of History of Economic Thought at the University of Pisa. He is managing co-editor of Il Pensiero economico italiano. He is a member of the editorial board of The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Œconomia and The Iberian Journal of the History of Economic Thought, and of the executive committee of CIPEI (Centro interuniversitario di documentazione sul pensiero economico italiano). Fabio Lavista is Research Fellow at the University of Pisa. Luca Michelini is Full Professor of History of Economic Thought at the University of Pisa. He is managing co-editor of Il Pensiero economico italiano. Sebastiano Nerozzi is Associate Professor of History of Economic Thought and Business History at the Catholic University of Milan. He is a member of the editorial board of History of Economic Thought and Policy. He is the current secretary of AISPE (Associazione Italiana per la Storia del pensiero economico). Rosario Patalano is Full Professor of History of Economic Thought at the University of Naples “Federico II”. He is a member of the editorial board of Il Pensiero economic italiano.

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Giovanni Pavanelli is Full Professor of History of Economic Thought at the University of Turin. He is a member of the editorial board of Il Pensiero economico italiano.

List of Tables

Planning and Discussing Corporatism and the “New International Order” Table 1 Table 2 Table 3

Conferences on corporatism and planning The various “economic areas” hypothesised under Italian control The various “economic areas” hypothesised under German control

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“Breaking Down the Ivory Tower”: Economic Culture in the Italian Academies Under Fascism Table 1

Economists members of Italian academies during the fascist regime (1922–1943)

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The Purging of Fascist Economists in Post-war Italy Table 1 Table 2 Table 3

Breakdown by university and discipline Charges Sentences

255 256 259

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List of Tables

Italian Economists of the Interwar Period: Academic, Political and Professional Biographies Table 1

Italian academic economists of the interwar period

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Economic Expertise and Political Militancy Under Fascism: An Introduction Massimo M. Augello, Marco E. L. Guidi and Fabrizio Bientinesi

Volume II of the Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period completes the fresco outlined in the first volume on the condition of economic science and its protagonists, the economists, under the fascist dictatorship, in the twenty years running from the 1922 March on Rome—after which Benito Mussolini became head of the Italian government and started a process that in a short time led to an authoritarian and totalitarian regime—to the liberation between 1943 and 1945 by the Allied army and the partisan war. Since the reader who is particularly interested in the subjects dealt with in this volume may decide to start from it, it seems correct to make two M. M. Augello (B) · M. E. L. Guidi · F. Bientinesi University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] M. E. L. Guidi e-mail: [email protected] F. Bientinesi e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Augello et al. (eds.), An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II, Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38331-2_1

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important points: to explain the general design of our work, the method followed and the main interpretative theses we have tested (Sect. 2); and to illustrate how this Volume II relates to Volume I and in what aspects it differs from it (Sect. 3).

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Italian Economics and Fascism: An Institutional Approach

A point we would like to stress is that the two volumes that compose this book must be considered a single work. They represent the main result of a research project on Italian economics during fascism: an institutional profile, which has involved a large part of the community of Italian historians of economics over the past two years.1 The main aim of this research has been to study the relationships between the economics profession and fascism through a systematic analysis of all the institutional loci that governed the production, reproduction and circulation of the economic science. The book has been designed in order to cover the main fields of activity of the economics community in the interwar period, and all chapters have been originally committed to specialists in the field with a view to obtaining this result. As we wrote in the introductory chapter of Volume I, this book represents an attempt to apply to the period between the two World Wars, an approach that we gradually elaborated and refined in our former research projects on the history of Italian economic thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This approach is now known as “institutional history of economics”, a complex toolbox of epistemological, sociological and linguistic notions which places at the centre of research the institutional framework, both material and immaterial, within which economics has developed both as scientific and professional knowledge and as a patrimony of notions and languages that have circulated outside the economics profession, permeating public opinion, becoming the object of dissemination and education, as well as providing the political class with guidelines for government (Augello et al. 2019a).

1The project has been generously funded by the University of Pisa in the framework of the action “Progetti di ricerca di Ateneo (PRA), 2017–2019”.

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Taking inspirations from Michel Foucault, we have defined the institutional history of economics as a history of the order of the economic discourse, which aims to understand how the latter is socially constituted, how its rules and “rites” (Foucault 1971, 41) of qualification and access have been defined, the distinctions between scientific practice and common opinion, the ways of transforming science into a discipline and possibly a doctrine (Foucault 1971, 31–35) and its dissemination through education and popularisation. It is a study of the institutional devices that have been selected over time to delimit and regiment the discourse on economics and make it a powerful tool for intervention in the public sphere and in the social construction of reality. The painstaking study of the institutional setting within which economics has evolved—educational institutions, public chairs, textbooks, associations, academies and other cultural organisations, journals, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, book series and finally political and administrative institutions—which took most of our energies in the research projects we promoted in the last thirty years,2 was only the necessary premise to the study of the conditions of possibility of the economic discourse, and of the ways in which it was constituted as a formal system of knowledge and social practice of communication. The aim of institutional history, therefore, is not to understand what economics is about (history of economic analysis), nor its models and practices of scientificity (history of science), nor even how it interprets and represents the problems of contemporary individuals and society and its interactions with other spheres of thought (intellectual history), but, after all, what economics is as a formal knowledge typical of modernity, how it has been organised and articulated, and what are its intellectual and practical ends.3

2 See,

among other works, Augello et al. (1988), Bianchini (1996), Augello and Guidi (2001, 2005), Augello and Guidi (2012), Carpi and Guidi (2014), Augello et al. (2016). For more references see Augello et al. (2019b). 3The introduction to Volume I provides more details on this definition, as well as a brief summary of the sources of inspiration of the institutional approach to the history of economics. A more descriptive discussion of these sources can be found in ch. 1.1. of Augello and Guidi (2019, 3–19). An English translation of this chapter is available online at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333671196_THE_INSTITUTIONAL_ HISTORY_OF_ECONOMICS.

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Applying this methodology to the study of Italian economics in the period between the two wars implied a series of interrogations, which were exactly the research questions that inspired our collective work: in which ways can the institutional approach contribute to clarify the attitude of Italian economists towards fascism? How did a generation of academic and professional economists that had been educated between the closing of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century react to the fascist dictatorship? Did they resist the attempts of the regime to transform them into the spokesmen and propagators of the fascist political ideology and of the official corporatist economic doctrine? Did they try to adapt to the illiberal context, searching a more or less honourable compromise, and which strategies did they adopt to this end? What was the intellectual, scientific and political profile of those who adhered to the National Fascist Party and collaborated with the regime in implementing its economic, social, cultural and educational policies? Who were those who sincerely believed in the corporatist alternative, in many cases lending their professional skills to the construction of the, indeed very blurred, theoretical framework that sustained it? Was there room for the exercise of technical expertise independent of political commitment? And on the theoretical side, does institutional analysis as above described help to understand the relationship between the basic marginalist (sometimes eclectic) culture of the Italian economists, the official corporatist doctrine and the economists’ active contribution, if any, to fascist legislation and policy? Piero Barucci’s chapter in Volume I offers a general interpretation of the overall process of institutional change that involved the economists and endeavoured to make their work functional to the goals of the fascist regime. The authoritarian control imposed by Mussolini on the economics profession put an end to the traditional “circuit” between economic policy and economic theory, in which the economists had played the role of expert commentators and advisors, if not direct protagonists, of the choices of the government. Between 1925 (when the body of measures known as the leggi fascistissime [very fascist laws] was introduced) and 1943, when the fascist regime was removed at least in the part of Italy liberated by the Allies, “this circuit was broken, or

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rather it became mutilated, functioning only in the downward phase, or more precisely in the direction that went from Mussolini’s decisions to the economists. The latter, having to explain and comment on them, were faced with the unpleasant alternative of either approving them or facing some kind of limit on their personal freedom. The majority chose, opportunistically, some cautious form of assent” (Barucci 2019, 37). The most important point was not that professional economists were obliged to write eulogies of corporatism or to contribute to the construction of a solid corporatist theory. After all, there is an almost universal consensus among historians that Mussolini very soon understood that the corporative organisation of the economy—in which the coordination of economic decisions and policy goals was to be entrusted to sectoral organisms jointly managed by capitalists and workers under the vigilant eye and direction of the totalitarian state—was either utopian or politically dangerous (Castronovo 1995, 300–301). The Great Depression of 1929 represented a serious challenge for the stability of the fascist regime, and it required a quick and effective policy of stabilisation, which was eventually obtained by rescuing from bankruptcy, with public money, the main Italian banks and strategic companies, which were “too big to fail”. This ended up in the creation of an original system of “mixed economy” in which private companies, protected by anti-competitive regulations, lived side by side with stateowned companies, a system that survived to fascism and was dismantled only by the wave of privatisation and deregulation of the 1980s and 1990s. It was exactly this kind of policy choices that the economists were not free to comment with technical arguments and warnings. Only eulogistic overtones were allowed and the ordinary narrative was that actual fascist economic policies were the real fulfilment of an economy regulated by a corporative system. The same had happened some years earlier, in 1926, when Mussolini decided to peg the Italian lira to the pound sterling (the so-called Quota 90 , because the aim was an exchange rate of 90 liras to the pound), and happened again in 1935 with the application of an autarkic policy as a response to the sanctions imposed by the League of Nations to Italy for the invasion of Ethiopia.

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On the academic side, as Barucci (2019, 40–43) demonstrates, the attempts of the fascist regime to interfere with the mechanisms of recruitment of professors, to promote a more loyal generation of lecturers and researchers directly coming from political activity, was only partially successful and limited to the new specialised courses that were introduced in this period, such as those on the economics of cooperative firms, transport, labour, tourism, etc. On the whole, academic economists strove to impose scientific originality and proficiency as the only valid criteria for the selection of new recruits. The influence of the older generation of academics successfully “permeated the new generation of economists, urging them to defend the analytical level of the discipline” (ibid., 42). Another aspect that a study focused on institutions and the economic profession has highlighted is that the defence of a high and rigorous scientific level of economic studies and the effort to keep them out of the direct interference of politics did not in any way cost Italian economists isolation from the international economic debate. A historiography more internal to the analytical developments of economics has seen, for example, in the scarce circulation of Keynes’s writings a sign of isolation from the “high theory” that was triumphant on the international scene in those same years (Università degli studi Firenze, Facoltà di economia e commercio 1984; Faucci 1990; Zagari 1990, 462–464). However, as Barucci (2019, 51–53) pointed out, personalities such as Luigi Einaudi acted as intermediaries between the community of Italian economists and important international foundations, while—besides the bestknown cases of Piero Sraffa, Costantino Bresciani Turroni and Antonio De Viti de Marco—many others were the economists who published in qualified foreign journals and with prestigious international publishers. Many were the translations into Italian of books on economics and also the Nuova collana di economisti stranieri e italiani (New Series of Foreign and Italian Economists, Utet, 1932–1936), in twelve volumes, entrusted to the editorship of two economists fully integrated in the fascist economic ideology, Giuseppe Bottai and Celestino Arena, was in fact scientifically guided by a leading economist such as Gustavo Del Vecchio and opened up to the new international currents of economic thought, apparently without any ideological preclusion. The series soon became,

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as Barucci (2019, 52) points out, “an up-to-date (and unbiased) resource for those who wished to dedicate themselves to the study of economics”.

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The General Design of Our Work and the Present Volume

In accordance with the concept of our work, Volume I is devoted to the choices made by Italian economists to adapt to the new political and cultural climate determined by the fascist dictatorship. The economists were compelled to respond to the normative changes and political decisions that the fascist regime had adopted to bend to its objectives the educational and cultural institutions inherited from previous decades, especially those in which, since the liberal age, room for economics had been created. In the faculties of law, for example, where the teaching of economics had a long-standing tradition,4 it was the academic professionalisation of economics, with its internal logic, that guaranteed a certain independence to this discipline. Their content and methods did not change substantially, despite the imposition, as of 1932, of the name “corporative political economy” to replace the traditional term “political economy”. Even textbooks, which often mirrored the composition of courses, did not change their approach, apart from the addition of a few pages that bluntly explained the principles of corporatism.5 Even more accurate interpretations of corporatism that were sometimes introduced in the textbooks were conducted from the orthodox point of view of the neoclassical theory of economic equilibrium. Volume I then takes into consideration another important institutional coordinate of the economics profession: publications of both a scientific and popular nature. The chapters dedicated to these themes have also shown the existence of a similar cliché: the main specialised journals of economics—Giornale degli Economisti, Annali di economia, Riforma 4 See

the chapter by Manuela Mosca and Simone Misiani, “The Persistence of Tradition: The Economists in the Law Faculties and in the Higher Institutes of Business Studies”, in Augello et al. (2019a, 65–87). 5 See Riccardo Faucci and Nicola Giocoli, “Textbooks of Economics During the Ventennio: Forging the Homo corporativus?” (ibid., 65–87).

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sociale, Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali and Rivista Italiana di Statistica Economia e Finanza—thanks to their decade-long tradition of scientific periodicals, succeeded for a long time, at the price perhaps of some silence on burning issues, to maintain an orthodox approach, close to Hayek and Röpke’s theories, both when dealing with the national and international economic situation and the regime’s policy choices, and when analysing aspects of the corporative economy.6 The “generalist” and multidisciplinary journals also followed a similar path, at least to a certain extent.7 They had hosted since the nineteenth century contributions by economists interested in disseminating their ideas outside the circle of specialists, with the main aim of influencing the educated middle classes and public opinion. The “institutional stickiness”, as we have defined it, deriving from their consolidated tradition, allowed these journals to continue for some time, at least until the mid-1930s, to maintain a prudent independence, while only with the Ethiopian War and the approach of the Second World War were they transformed by the fascist regime into rhetoric and empty propaganda organs, particularly on the economic choices of the government. A similar fate had initiatives taken by the fascist regime with the explicit goals of both creating a political and administrative staff convinced of the superiority of fascist institutions and policies, and of forcing scholars and intellectuals to promote the totalitarian ideology of fascism. Examples of this are the newly created faculties of political sciences, one of which, that of Perugia, was called the “Fascist Faculty of Political Sciences”. Numerous economic teachings found a place in them, but the project to give them a precise ideological identity and a coherent cultural mission failed substantially and, with the limits indicated above, they were far from becoming a doorway for a new generation of enthusiasts of the corporative economy. Not even élite institutions such as the Higher Schools of Corporative Studies were substantially successful.8 6 See

Antonio Magliulo and Gianfranco Tusset, “The Economic Culture of Academic Journals During Fascism” (ibid., 119–142). 7 See Francesca Dal Degan and Fabrizio Simon, “‘Generalist’ Journals Between Dissemination of Economics and Regime Propaganda” (ibid., 143–169). 8 See Fabrizio Bientinesi and Marco Cini, “The Faculties of Political Sciences and Schools for Advanced Corporative Studies” (ibid., 89–118).

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Finally, the Enciclopedia italiana, an official initiative entrusted to Giovanni Gentile and Giovanni Treccani (35 volumes plus one of the indexes published between 1929 and 1937), which was to represent the monument of fascist culture, also promoted the latter only to a limited extent.9 On the whole, the community of scholars tackled the various entries with methodological rigour and critical acrimony, and even in the choice of entries, apologetic intentions did not prevail. Thus in the field of economics, on the one hand some leading economists initially involved, such as Luigi Einaudi and Costantino Bresciani Turroni, very soon left the editorial board, and the most important entry, “Political economy”, was entrusted to a philosopher like Ugo Spirito, a fervent believer in the most radical version of the corporatist doctrine. However, on the other hand, the entries dedicated to corporatism were scarce and only appeared in the first appendix volume. In a nutshell, Volume I aimed to analyse the creeping resistance, the defence of academic prerogatives, the strategies of adaptation, the compromises that the community of economists adopted in response to the totalitarian strategies of the fascist regime. The present volume adopts a different and in some ways opposite perspective, putting under the lens those institutions within which, in different ways and for different reasons, economists—or rather, groups of economists with well-defined characteristics—collaborated with the policies and institutions promoted and hegemonised by Mussolini’s government: the economic periodicals organic to fascism, to which the different souls of the economic science more linked to the regime contributed; the congresses that sanctioned the official doctrine of fascism on the corporative organisation of society, and subsequently those on autarky and the “new international order”; the story of the fascistisation of the most prestigious Italian academy, the Accademia dei Lincei, and the creation of the Accademia d’Italia in 1929; the presence of economists in the political institutions of the regime and in the economic research centres linked to the banking sector and the large publicly owned corporations, protagonists of the mixed economy. In the last part of the volume, the relationship of economists with the 9 See Carlo Cristiano and Massimo Di Matteo, “Series of Economics and Encyclopaedias: Traditional Economic Theory and New Paths” (ibid., 201–227).

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fascist government is analysed from two opposing and mutually revealing perspectives. On the one hand, the focus is the fate of those who, by political beliefs, refused to collaborate with the regime and paid the consequences harshly, and those who, instead, fascists or anti-fascists, were persecuted as Jews after the introduction of the racial laws in 1938. On the other hand, the volume explores the question of the economists who, for collaborating with fascism, were brought to justice after the fall of the regime and threatened with expulsion from teaching and other public offices. The volume ends with a chapter that offers a synoptic table containing detailed information on the main economists mentioned in this opus. The table is first and foremost intended as an auxilium lectoris, a reference tool especially addressed to the reader of our volumes who is not familiar with the history of Italian economics, as well as to all those who are interested in either looking for quick information or making comparisons between biographies and profiles. Moving to a more detailed overview of the contents of Volume II, the book opens with a study by Luca Michelini10 on the periodicals organically linked to fascism—such as Gerarchia, Lo Stato and Dottrina Fascista—starting from a personal and original interpretation of the two economic currents of thought most closely linked to fascism, both heirs to the Italian nationalist movement of the first two decades of the twentieth century. The first current directly descended from the great native marginalist tradition, which developed around the figures of Maffeo Pantaleoni, Vilfredo Pareto and Enrico Barone, who maintained important ties with nationalism, first, and with the fascism of the origins, later. The second current, led by Filippo Carli, Corrado Gini and Gino Arias, proposed instead the overcoming of the individualistic and “utilitarian” principles of pure economics in the direction of homo corporativus. The analysis of journals organically promoted by fascism shows the points of contact and contrast between the two souls of fascist economic culture: the “fascist right”, on the one hand, and the so-called fascism of the left, on the other, favourable to a more radical transformation of the economy and society around the corporative system. 10 L.

Michelini, chapter “From Nationalism to Fascism: Protagonists and Journals”, infra.

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This same opposition can be found in the analysis of the institutional and cultural parable of corporatism, which Fabrizio Bientinesi and Marco Cini11 approach through the study of the conferences officially promoted by the fascist regime and its organisms to involve Italian intellectuals, and in particular economists, jurists and social scientists, in the elaboration of an economic model conceived as a “third way” between the laissez-faire of Western societies and the communist systems. The main institutional events in this sense were represented by the National Conferences of Corporatist Studies. The first of them was held in 1930, but, with the notable exception of Celestino Arena, no one among the most reputed academic economists took part in it (Zagari 1982, 41). More important was the second conference—indeed a dramatic confrontation between the “Right” and the “Left” wing of the corporatist movement, from which the latter was forever defeated—organised in Ferrara in 1932. The chapter focuses then on the final stage of the public discussion that took place by will and under the watchful eye of the fascist government: the conferences organised between 1941 and 1942, when the regime was urgently compelled to address the issue of the “new international order” that would emerge after the end of the war and the expected triumph of the powers of the Axis over their “plutocratic” enemies. At this stage corporatism was either openly rejected or used as a sort of nominalistic label to define a planned, authoritarian, imperial and mixed economy, inserted in an international order in which weaker countries were reduced to ancillary, non-competing economies serving the interests of the two hegemonic powers, Germany and Italy. Although the discussion was limited to those who supported fascism, in these conferences lively internal contrasts emerged between those who saw corporatism and the “new order” as a utopian ethical and political regeneration of modern society and those who saw them as disguised communism and feared that Italy might in turn become part—and subordinate part— of the German sphere of influence. In the end it was the regime that imposed silence on the most extremists, emptying corporatism and programming of their most destabilising contents, only to succumb shortly 11 Fabrizio Bientinesi and Marco Cini, chapter “Planning and Discussing Corporatism and the ‘New International Order’”, infra.

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afterwards, relegating—fortunately for Italy and Europe—the discussion on the new international order into the limbo of unfulfilled projects. In some ways, the subsequent chapter, composed by Rosario Patalano and Marco E. L. Guidi,12 could have been equally placed in the first volume, since the participation of the economists in the academies of science, literature and the arts established in early modern times in the main Italian cities was a fact at least since the nineteenth century. Intended as high cultural institutions, the academies had created at that time an élite within the élite of scholars and, in the case of Italy, they had represented a powerful instrument for the professionalisation of economics. In the early stage of fascism, this long-standing tradition contributed to preserving a relative and tacitly tolerated independence of these institutions, provided that they avoided interfering with fascist politics. However, in this field, Mussolini’s totalitarian regime and its cultural leaders, in primis Giovanni Gentile, at least succeeded not only in “fascistisising” the most prestigious Italian academy, that of Lincei in Rome, but also in a two-sided cultural operation consisting, on the one hand, in overcoming the localism that was typical of Italian culture, by creating in 1929 a national cultural institute, the Reale Accademia d’Italia, and, on the other hand, in mobilising through this institution the most eminent pro-fascist intellectuals in support of the new regime by somehow prising them from their relatively sheltered sanctums—“ivory towers” detached from the construction of a new national culture. Giovanni Pavanelli and Giulia Bianchi13 contributed the volume with a study on the participation of economists in parliament and government. It should be noted that during fascism the role of Parliament and of government changed substantially. On the one hand, the fascist regime acted to shift the balance of power from the legislative to the executive, led by a charismatic duce. On the other hand, the legislative elections were reduced to a farce in which it was in fact possible to vote for a single party, the PNF, until, in 1939, the lower chamber itself was transformed into a “corporative chamber”, while the Senate, traditionally 12 Rosario Patalano and Marco E. L. Guidi, chapter “‘Breaking Down the Ivory Tower’: Economic Culture in the Italian Academies Under Fascism”, infra. 13 Giovanni Pavanelli and Giulia Bianchi, chapter “The Italian Economists as Legislators and Policymakers During the Fascist Regime”, infra.

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composed by members appointed by the government, was populated with members coming from “fascistised” cultural institutions. In this framework, a limited group of Italian economists played a significant and, until recently, largely neglected role as builders of the “new” fascist state but also, in a few cases, as bearers of more dialectical views, to the extent that these could be expressed. Anti-fascist MP economists (Antonio Graziadei; Arturo Labriola; Angelo Mauri) were stripped of office already in 1926, while Agostino Lanzillo, Gaetano Zingali, Gino Arias, Luigi Lojacono, Vincenzo Ricchioni, Attilio da Empoli and Zeno Vignati were to various degrees supporters of the regime. Lanzillo and Arias took an active part in the process of institutionalisation of the corporative economy, even if the former was soon marginalised, because he was an advocate of the leftist version of corporatism, seen as a system aimed at realising the self-government of the productive categories, while the latter—even though he had been more prudent and moderate in his economic and political views—was removed from Parliament following the racial laws of 1938. Some undoubtedly fascist economists became members of the cabinet during the Ventennio, among whom Alberto De’ Stefani, Giacomo Acerbo, Arrigo Serpieri and Giuseppe Tassinari are the leading figures. The majority of parliamentarians and policymakers selected by the regime were applied economists and acted primarily as field experts, contributing to the building of the fascist state. Conversely, the presence of ideologists and/or theorists of corporatism is also significant but, nevertheless, circumscribed and, for the reasons already stated, of less practical impact. This does not mean that all of them limited themselves to giving a technical contribution, because—often with absolute conviction—they never failed to make explicit their trust in fascism and their adherence to fascist ideology, albeit with different nuances. Subsequently, Pier Francesco Asso, Fabio Lavista and Sebastiano Nerozzi14 analyse the role played by various economists in the Research Centres of Banks and Corporations. The Italian experience in this field must be placed in a much wider international trend that emerged during the Great War. Though initially confined within the banking sector, 14 Pier

Francesco Asso, Fabio Lavista and Sebastiano Nerozzi, chapter “Banks, Firms and Economic Culture: Economists and Research Centres in Interwar Italy”, infra.

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research departments gradually spread out to the major industrial corporations, especially those included in the new public conglomerates. The chapter provides a first mapping of the many research departments which blossomed in Italy since the early 1920s. The case studies examined more in depth—four selected within the banking sector (Banca Commerciale Italiana, Banca d’Italia, Associazione Bancaria Italiana and Banco di Sicilia), and six within the industrial sector (IRI, Finsider, Ansaldo, Edison, Montecatini and Fiat)—reveal that this was an area in which technical expertise was allowed to flourish independently of propaganda and promotion of the economic goals of the fascist regime. The main rationale that led banks and firms to engage in research activities was to produce applied knowledge and enhance their capacity to cope with the instability in prices and aggregate demand that had become a rule after the end of First World War. The result of this activity was a network of institutions, economists and statisticians that cooperated (and, sometimes, also competed) in order to enhance the level of economic research, provide a firmer foundation of economic analysis upon statistical and business data and help policy decision-making and business strategy. In this network, a pivotal role was played by the statistician Giorgio Mortara. Research departments also involved anti-fascist economists and various victims of the racial laws. After the Second World War and the end of fascism, those who survived transferred the results of their activities to the economic policies and institutions of the new democratic regime. As mentioned above, the volume ends with two essays dealing with the relationship between the economists and fascist politics from a hitherto little explored point of view, that of purges: fascist purges against opponents and against professors of the Jewish ethnicity and, specularly, democratic purges against collaborators of the fascist regime, after the end of Second World War. Both these contributions are the result of careful archival work thanks to which Daniela Giaconi brought to light completely new materials and knitted them together offering an original narration of the events.

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The expulsion of anti-fascist economists from universities and other public offices15 took place in different ways: Attilio Cabiati, Francesco Saverio Nitti (who had been prime minister before the advent of fascism), Antonio Graziadei (who had participated in the founding of the Communist Party in 1921) and Umberto Ricci were expelled from teaching because they advocated political ideas incompatible with the regime. Antonio De Viti de Marco resigned and retired to private life so as not to have to take the required oath of loyalty to fascism. Piero Sraffa, who had fallen into disgrace for having published some criticism of the government, obtained, with the help of John Maynard Keynes, to remain in Cambridge, where he was able to devote himself with tranquillity to his studies. In other cases the regime hindered the recruitment of young promises such as Dino Jarach and Franco Modigliani. The forced choice, for all of them, as for Luigi Einaudi and others, was exile. More unfortunate were those who were imprisoned (Arturo Labriola and Antonio Pesenti, but keep in mind the famous case of Antonio Gramsci) or forced into confinement (Ernesto Rossi, who on the Tyrrhenian island of Ventotene, together with Altiero Spinelli and Eugenio Colorni, wrote the Manifesto that foreshadowed a federalist Europe freed from Nazi-Fascism) (Rossi and Spinelli 1979 [1944]). Even more dramatic in terms of size and consequences was the expulsion from university teaching following the racial laws of 1938, which involved ten eminent economists (Riccardo Bachi, his son Roberto Bachi, Giorgio Mortara, Marco Fanno, Gino Luzzatto, Angelo Segré, Renzo Fubini, Gustavo Del Vecchio, Gino Arias, Bruno Foà), plus three retired economists (Riccardo Dalla Volta, Augusto Graziani and Achille Loria). Giaconi documents the incredulity with which some of them in particular, who had been active promoters of fascism and fascist corporatism, initially welcomed the news of their purge. Again, a hasty escape from Italy was the choice that allowed the majority of them to survive. For two of them (Dalla Volta and Fubini), however, the tragic epilogue was immediate death on arrival at the Auschwiz-Birkenau concentration camp.

15 See Daniela Giaconi, chapter “The Diaspora of Italian Economists: Intellectual Migration Between Politics and Racial Laws”, infra.

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Since the years of the Anglo-American provisional government that accompanied the liberation of Italy from fascism and the German occupation from 1943 to 1945, a National Committee for the Purge of the University Staff was set up to investigate crimes committed in relation to fascist militancy.16 Numerous economists were investigated and tried, even though the initial desire to purify the public administration and the university from fascist personnel was diluted after a few years and the general result was absolution or amnesty, followed by reintegration into the ranks of academic staff. Giaconi—through a careful study of defences—aims to explain how even economists who had been protagonists of fascist politics could eventually be acquitted. The defence strategies adopted by economists do not differ from those of scholars in other disciplines: they tend to emphasise how a democratic state can condemn acts of violence and discrimination, but not ideas professed with coherence and intellectual conviction. If acts of injustice were not committed, if indeed the accused helped or protected persecuted students and colleagues, membership of the National Fascist Party or the oath of allegiance could not in itself be taken as reasons to condemn an academic. Finally, the table that concludes this volume—resulting from an original research made by Massimo Augello and the documentalists of Cipei (the Inter-University Centre of Documentation on Italian Economic Thought at the University Pisa) on primary sources such as the yearbooks of the Ministry of Education and on the yearbooks of Italian universities, as well as on various biographical repertoires—synthesises the essential information contained in the book concerning the profiles of the protagonists of our narration: the economists. It provides data about personal identity, fields of study, academic affiliation and teaching periods, main affiliations to academies and scientific associations, and political and public offices, both at national and international levels. An interesting feature of the table consists of an attempt to classify the relationships between the economists and the fascist regime, whether they implied some type of official collaboration or on the contrary political opposition, which systematically led to expulsion from academia and to exile. It also records the cases of those who were marginalised after 1938 16 See

Daniela Giaconi, chapter “The Purging of Fascist Economists in Post-war Italy”, infra.

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as a consequence of the racial laws. Finally, for each economist it provides essential references for further inquiry.

3

Conclusions

As we observed in the introduction to Volume I, the joint results of the studies collected in this book go largely beyond the internal debate of the historiography on Italian fascism, and even beyond the simple study of how the Italian economists reacted to the specific characteristics of the fascist dictatorship. The analyses proposed by all contributors to these two volumes assume the more general value of a case study concerning the relationship between the economics profession and authoritarian regimes and tell a story that repeated itself almost unchanged in different contexts and at different times. Since economics has to do with the organisation of the market and society, the analysis of facts and policies that economists produce contains critiques and suggestions that governments can either like or dislike. But when governments are authoritarian and totalitarian and leave no room for open discussion, it is hard to profess the economic science without reticence and intellectual compromise. On the other hand, debates, especially in the twentieth century, typically focused on the pros and cons of alternative economic systems: not only laissez-faire vs interventionism but also capitalism vs socialism, communism and various “third ways” including fascist corporatism. This second type of discussion, and the radical political and ideological confrontations that characterised politics in this century, coupled with dramatic events like two world wars and a great crisis, may explain why within the economic profession a group of enthusiast believers in the fascist and corporative regeneration of society could emerge from below, and then be protected by the government. But in the end, and mutatis mutandis, the heavy interference and the capricious will of the regime was no less oppressive for its economic supporters than for dissenters and uncompromised orthodox scientists. The vicissitudes of the conferences on corporatism and, more dramatically, the destiny of pro-fascist economists as a consequence of the racial laws are only two examples that our research

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has proposed to show that both dissent and consensus are threatened by authoritarianism. We wish to conclude, with no fear of being contradicted, that the institutional approach to the history of economics that we have adopted in this work has at least the advantage of indicating the narrow and to a large extent precarious path that this science has in front of it as a public discourse and as public reason. No study of the history of economics in this period, whether focusing on the analytical content of economic debates or on the evolution of economics as a scientific discipline, can ignore the kind of constraints that specific political contexts can put to the liberty of research and opinion.

References Augello, M. M., Bianchini, M., Gioli, G., & Roggi, P. (Eds.). (1988). Le cattedre di economia politica in Italia. La diffusione di una disciplina « sospetta » (1750-1900). Milano: FrancoAngeli. Augello, M. M., & Guidi, M. E. L. (Eds.). (2001). The Spread of Political Economy and the Professionalisation of Economists: Economic Societies in Europe, America and Japan in the Nineteenth Century. London: Routledge. Augello, M. M., & Guidi, M. E. L. (Eds.). (2005). Economists in Parliament in the Liberal Age (1848–1920). Aldershot: Ashgate. Augello, M. M., & Guidi, M. E. L. (Eds.). (2012). The Economic Reader. Textbooks, Manuals and the Dissemination of the Economic Sciences During the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. London: Routledge. Augello, M. M., & Guidi, M. E. L. (2019). Economisti e scienza economica nell’Italia liberale (1848–1922). Una storia istituzionale. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Augello, M. M., Guidi, M. E. L., & Bientinesi, F. (Eds.). (2019a). An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period. Vol. 1. Adapting to the Fascist Regime. London: Palgrave-Macmillan. Augello, M. M., Guidi, M. E. L., & Bientinesi, F. (Eds.). (2019b). Italian Economics and Fascism: An Institutional View, in Augello, Guidi and Bientinesi (2019a): 1–32.

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Augello, M. M., Guidi, M. E. L., & Pavanelli, G. (Eds.). (2016). Economia e opinione pubblica. Gli economisti e la stampa quotidiana in età liberale, 2 vols. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Barucci, P. (2019). Italian Economists and the Fascist Regime: Only an Ambiguous and Painful Continuity?, in Augello, Guidi and Bientinesi (2019a): 33–64. Bianchini, M. (Ed.) (1996). Political Economy in European Periodicals, 1700– 1900. Special issue of History of Economic Ideas, 4 (3). Carpi, E., & Guidi, M. E. L. (Eds.). (2014). Languages of Political Economy. Cross-Disciplinary Studies on Economic Translations. Pisa: Pisa University Press. Castronovo, V. (1995). Storia economica d’Italia. Dall’Ottocento ai giorni nostri. Torino: Einaudi. Faucci, R. (1990). Materiali e ipotesi sulla cultura economica italiana fra le due guerre mondiali. In G. Becattini (Ed.), Il pensiero economico: temi, problemi, scuole (pp. 183–231). Torino: Utet. Foucault, M. (1971). L’ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard. Rossi, E., & Spinelli, A. (1979) [1944]. Il manifesto di Ventotene, testo originale di Ernesto Rossi e Altiero Spinelli (1941), con prefazione di Eugenio Colorni (1944), introduzione di Altiero Spinelli (1978), presentazione di Luciano Bolis (1979). Roma: Centro Italiano di formazione europea. Università degli studi Firenze, Facoltà di economia e commercio. (1984). Keynes in Italia. Atti del Convegno organizzato dalla Facoltà di economia e commercio dell’Università degli studi di Firenze 4–5 giugno 1983. Milano: Annali dell’economia italiana-Istituto IPSOA. Zagari, E. (1982). Introduzione. In O. Mancini, F. Perillo, & E. Zagari (Eds), La teoria economica del corporativismo (pp. 13–59), vol. I, Il corporativismo e la scienza economica. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane. Zagari, E. (1990). La teoria economica del corporativismo di Luigi Amoroso. In R. Faucci (Ed.), Il pensiero economico italiano tra le due guerre, special issue of Quaderni di storia dell’economia politica, 8(2–3), 459–472.

From Nationalism to Fascism: Protagonists and Journals Luca Michelini

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Economics and Fascism

The era of the fascist squads, of the March on Rome and of the birth of Mussolini’s coalition government, with its neo-liberal economic policy, found broad consensus in the community of economists. The economic policy dictated by the finance minister, Alberto De’ Stefani (De’ Stefani 1926), drew inspiration from the theoretical principles of economists such as Enrico Barone, Maffeo Pantaleoni and Vilfredo Pareto aimed at the dismantling of what they called the “state socialism” advocated by liberal governments. This initial phase of fascism was also supported by some economists who would later disassociate themselves from the regime after the assassination of the socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti. Translated by Matthew Armistead.

L. Michelini (B) University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Augello et al. (eds.), An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II, Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38331-2_2

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They included the liberal Luigi Einaudi, who worked for the authoritative daily Il Corriere della Sera, and the Liberal Democrat Antonio De Viti de Marco. Also pro-fascist for a brief period were socialist economists such as Arturo Labriola and Enrico Leone, who belonged to the socialist school of thought that had criticised socialist reformism and whose political leader until the First World War had been Mussolini. Fascism, in short, enjoyed the favour of a large part of the public opinion that had opposed Italian liberalism after it had found a powerful political dialogue in reformist socialism. Above all, it had successfully catalysed anti-socialist culture after the October Revolution and after the semiinsurrection in Italy during the so-called Red Biennium (1919–1920). The nationalist movement was a distinctive element of this anti-liberal and anti-socialist front. Born in 1910, it acquired structure during the First World War, which it had enthusiastically supported, attracting a considerable number of intellectuals destined to have a deep impact on the history of fascism and of Italy. Having merged with fascism in 1923, it was characterised from the start by two schools of economic thought. The first may be described as neo-mercantilist and corporative, while the second was linked to the free trade tradition. The most representative personalities of these strands were, respectively, Alfredo Rocco and Pantaleoni. The nationalist free trade school dominated at political–governmental level during the phase of fascism’s rise to power, that is, during De’ Stefani’s terms of office, marked by what Pantaleoni called a “Manchesterian” economic policy. Rocco’s faction became predominant when the movement and the small, minority fascist parliamentary party was transformed in stages to become an authentic regime. In other words, starting from the majoritarian electoral law and the 1924 elections that gave the fascists parliamentary majority and, above all, from the Matteotti murder and then the promulgation of the “liberticidal” laws of 1925–1926 and the turn to protectionism.1 It is essential to highlight how the most significant marginalist economists of the time, champions of the liberal cause at the end of 1 For

a detailed account of the development, for bibliographic references to the economists cited in the first three paragraphs, as well as for the existing historiography, I refer the reader to Michelini (2019a). For a free trade analysis of this turn, see Rossi (1930).

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the nineteenth century, are writers indispensable for the reconstruction of the economic and political culture of both Italian nationalism and early fascism. The collaborators of the most important Italian journal of economic theory, the Giornale degli Economisti, not only helped create an economic grammar and methodology, those of marginalism, which would shape global economic thought, reaching, through the evolution of the theory, as far as present-day textbooks, excluding those of macroeconomics. Far from simply publishing essays on pure economics, the journal also dealt with political economics, paying particular attention to Italian policy, and had a column of political commentary that boasted prestigious authors such as De Viti de Marco, Pareto and Pantaleoni. In the journal, theory and politics were explicitly linked and it is therefore no surprise that at the time of fascism’s emergence it openly took a position in favour of Mussolini, as we can see, for example, from the essays by the Pareto follower Luigi Amoroso and by Gustavo Del Vecchio (Amoroso 1922; Del Vecchio 1922). Once he obtained power, in 1923 the fascist leader nominated Pantaleoni for the senate (a royal appointment)—in return Pantaleoni defended fascism in a senate speech following the Matteotti murder—and also recommended Pareto for the same honour. But even today no picture has been formed of the economic thought of Mussolini, although he made numerous references to economists in his writings and speeches. It is however significant that the economist Agostino Lanzillo, a revolutionary socialist and, like Mussolini, an admirer of Georges Sorel as well as a devotee of the theoretical approach of Pareto and Pantaleoni, was a contributor to the Popolo d’Italia, the newspaper founded by Mussolini and the showcase of the regime for its entire twenty years (Lanzillo 1924). The neo-mercantilist and corporative approach would have much greater scientific and institutional influence when the fascist regime, especially in the 1930s, gave strong impetus to the creation of a primarily fascist economic science: to wit, corporativism. This was made, during the First World War and its aftermath, by a series of economic writings that appeared mainly in La Rivista delle società commerciali,2 the voice of great national capitalism, but also in other publications that little by 2 Established

in 1911 and later renamed Rivista di politica economica.

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little came into being in that period. Among the authors were jurists like Rocco, managers of major companies, technocrats like Filippo Carli, and economists like Gino Arias and Corrado Gini. Their writings were made distinctive by the criticism, more or less radical, that they directed against the economic grammar of the most significant contributors to the Giornale degli Economisti. The authors moreover gained distinction for trying to formulate a new economic science that was capable of embodying the aspirations of the nation. These two schools of thought shared the militant fervour that impelled Italy into the Great War, the conflict without quarter against the liberal state and the socialist movement, the rejection of political democracy and of the free development of political debate (but not of scientific debate), the organic support of fascism (whose evolution they wished to control by acting as a brake on certain aspects of its programme considered subversive of the bourgeois order), the radical aversion to policies of wealth redistribution, the creation of corporative parliamentary institutions and finally the objective of Italy adopting an imperial and bellicose policy. When in 1918 Carli proposed, as a resolution of the social question, that workers be allowed to participate in the management of companies (Carli 1918), Pantaleoni, writing in the Idea Nazionale, the organ of nationalism, accused him of Bolshevism (Pantaleoni 1918b). The idea of such participation was thus definitively expunged from the nationalist economic programme, set out by Rocco (Rocco 1919). For a while Carli distanced himself from nationalism, drawing closer to Einaudi. Pantaleoni had found reason to criticise the worker-participation line of thought even when confronted with the Charter of Carnaro, endorsed by Gabriele D’Annunzio who had promoted the political–military adventure of Fiume, in which Pantaleoni joined by managing the finances. Written by Alceste De Ambris, who belonged to the anti-reformist school of socialism, the charter promoted a form of corporativism that, according to Pantaleoni, undermined the principle of private ownership of the means of production (De Felice 1974). In short, Pantaleoni and Rocco opposed those ways of thinking that sought to attach to nationalism and fascism, of which they were integral but minority voices, a connotation that could be called labourist and which would go on to constitute the tradition of the so-called social

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fascism, or left-wing fascism. This was a tradition which, immediately after the end of the regime (September 1943), would become radicalised in the name of what it considered the monarchy and the Italian bourgeoisie’s betrayal of fascism, to which they both owed their survival, and which would end up proposing, during the Italian Social Republic (1943–1945), the ephemeral and non-credible season of socialised production (Parlato 2008). The two schools of thought did not, however, share the same view of the relationship between state and market. The corporativists wanted this relationship to be centred on the activities of the state, to the point of envisaging a radical change in economic science. In the interests of the supreme needs of the nation and of politics, economics ought to have abandoned some of its own presuppositions, principally that of individualism. The homo œconomicus theorised in the textbooks of pure economics, which had had an internationally renowned forerunner in Pantaleoni and successors of exceptional intellectual vigour in Barone and Pareto, was considered an intrinsically pernicious abstraction in terms of the elaboration of economic policy. It had showed itself to be an inconclusive concept because it was devoted, despite some concessions to protectionism, to a tendentious free trade and to state non-intervention in the economy, which undermined Italy’s industrial potential. The marginalists’ anti-protectionist polemic had led to an elitist–classist view of the state, so that, even when they supported fascism, they did not hold back from criticising the actions of the regime whenever it seemed to reproduce, in order to build mass consensus or to favour specific social classes, the logic of demagogic plutocracies, to which Pareto had paid particular attention: in other words, when it seemed to reproduce the logic of a system in which the bourgeois classes who sought the help of the state promoted economic policies designed to accommodate some of the socialist demands. In this sense, Luigi Einaudi’s La Condotta economica e gli effetti sociali della guerra italiana (1933) is the supreme and classic expression of this kind of economic and historiographical approach, traces of which can be found in all Italian marginalists of that time, primarily Pareto (Einaudi 1933). While some of them, such as Einaudi and Umberto Ricci (for Ricci’ sympathies towards the first fascism: Ricci 1923), developed this

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argument partly to detach themselves politically from fascism, others, like Giuseppe Prato and Lanzillo, merely used it—as Barone, Pantaleoni and Pareto had done before them—to distance themselves cautiously from the economic and social balances that the regime occasionally seemed to accept in the face of problems arising from economic and social realities. In short, they encouraged fascism to remain anchored as much as possible to the free trade intentions of its origins. The economists inspired by Barone, Pareto and Pantaleoni (who had all died during 1923 and 1924) reiterated this point of view when the Great Crash of 1929 laid the groundwork for a radical change in the relationship between state and market. In any case, it was because of this type of argumentation, which tended to think of the state as an instrument of parasitic stripping of the governed by the governors, that the corporativists strove to demonstrate how much the national-fascist state was instead founded on real collaboration between the classes and on the creation of true general interest (Arias 1919). Furthermore, the two schools of thought disagreed on what solution to apply to the problem of syndicalism, a force by then considered intrinsic to capitalist evolution. Rocco wanted a trade union system controlled by the state and subject to the wage policy of the government and, in the final analysis, of the fascist regime, delegating the resolution of labour disputes to the judiciary (the Labour Court created by the regime) and abolishing the right to strike. Pantaleoni, by contrast, confined himself to approving the harsh defeat inflicted on the unions by the paramilitary fascist squads, which he acclaimed and invoked, at the same time giving voice to economists who praised trade union pluralism, an altogether utopian notion given the political conditions of the times. When in April 1927 the fascist regime enacted the Labour Charter, which aimed to provide a final solution to the trade union problem and which social fascism tried to use to give real power to fascist trade unionists, there were other economists, like Del Vecchio, who instead greeted it as a historical embodiment of the economic principles enunciated by Pantaleoni focused on the exaltation of innovative entrepreneurs (Del Vecchio 1929). Since the methodological intention was to overcome liberal individualism, the authors of corporative economics were also experts or academics involved in the broadest sense in legal, sociological, political

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and historical disciplines. By no means did Barone, Pareto and Pantaleoni limit themselves to writing about pure economics, but were interested, in a more or less systematic way, in the science of finance, sociology, politics, law and history. Also, like Pantaleoni, they wrote essays on dynamic economics, seeking to overcome the static limits of the marginalist approach, to which they had given vital impetus. For this reason during the twenty years of fascism their writings were taken up and developed by authors who in that same multidisciplinary spirit and in their extra-economic texts sought underlying principles and fresh ideas for a fascist and nationalist doctrine, which was influenced—depending on the authors—by corporativism, by the problems faced and by historical circumstances. An extreme example is that of Celestino Arena: in Archivio di studi corporativi he included an essay in which he enlarged on Pantaleoni’s theory of political pricing in a way diametrically opposed to what Pantaleoni had indicated, that is, to build a neo-mercantilist economic theory of fascism (Arena 1933). There would, however, be other interpretations. In order to rationalise and curb the increasing intervention of the public sector in the economy that occurred during the First World War, Pantaleoni had proposed the establishment of the “shareholder state” (Pantaleoni 1917a, 139–154). This proposal was developed by economists who, faced with public intervention made necessary and inevitable by the Great Depression, were nevertheless opposed to the emergence of any form of economic planning that signalled a change in the economic system. It is worth taking a look at Lo Stato, a journal organically linked to fascism through the editor, Carlo Costamagna, a major intellectual of the regime who in the early 1920s was close to Pantaleoni’s thinking but became increasingly open to the subordination of the economy to the reasons of politics and of state. Leafing through the journal’s pages, one is confronted by an array of economists who, though divided in terms of how to manage the state-and-market question and of openness to corporativism, were unanimous in supporting fascism’s deflationary plans. The long period of the compression of wages launched by the regime in the early 1920s was also reaffirmed when, with the works by Keynes, the approach of the classical economists, of which Pantaleoni was an

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authoritative exponent, was called into question. Corporative economists appreciated Keynes’s criticism of liberalism but certainly not his social philosophy, nor his theory of the causes of the crisis. In short, both Pareto and Pantaleoni remained theoretical and methodological reference points of the highest importance during the fascist era for both the currents of thought that characterised the economic culture of national-fascism. Recalling the dynamics of nationalist economic thought is fundamental to underlining how fascism’s transformation into an authoritarian government constitutes an important but not decisive irruption into the history of Italian economic thought. On one side, in fact, some economists detached themselves from fascism: the intellectual parable of Einaudi, De Viti de Marco, Labriola, who would rediscover the ideas of Marx, and Ricci testify to this. On another side, however, the marginalist tradition did not oppose fascism, neither on the political level nor the scientific one, despite the fact that corporativist nationalism became increasingly hegemonic, at least as regards the cultural policy of the regime. On the one hand the desire for the construction of a principal national-fascist economic science grew ever stronger, especially on the scientific and cultural level, while, as is known, in terms of practice and economic policies fascism would essentially remain independent from the organs and corporative cultures even though it shaped and incentivised them institutionally and culturally. On the other hand, some of the Italian economists of the marginalist and free trade tradition continued to support fascism’s political, social and economic approach albeit without adhering, except for the rituals due to and imposed by the regime, to its corporative scientific perspective. Instead, it would be the regime’s economic measures, marked in depth by an increasingly radical change in the relations between state and market, that dictated the arguments and logic of the economists’ reflection. Of course, in the heyday of fascism there were theoretical attempts to syncretise orthodoxy and corporativism, as well as genuine intellectual breakthroughs, such as that of Amoroso and De’ Stefani. Nor was there a lack of economists who, while participating in the regime’s cultural initiatives, effectively fought on the side of the anti-fascist parties: Cesare Dami, for instance, on the basis of marginalist literature on planning

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took part in important fascist conferences on the so-called New Order and, as a Communist (from 1941 he fought clandestinely in the party), after the war was the first Italian economist to take a scientific interest in the Soviet economic system. Moreover, the regime’s political decisions, such as those about race, sometimes persuaded economists to make a political as well as existential change of direction, as exemplified by the case of Franco Modigliani. In conclusion, it would be unwise to confuse, on the historiographical level, the subject of the relationship between fascism and economics with that of corporativism. Corporativism was one, and only one, of the forms that the relationship between fascism and economics assumed. The dialectic between corporativists and free traders of the first stage of nationalism is therefore an essential key for the reconstruction of the history of journals openly connected to the fascist regime during its twentyyear saga.

2

Free Trade Nationalism

The adherence of Barone, Pantaleoni and Pareto to nationalism dates back to the first decade of the twentieth century. I will outline its key stages here. First of all, we must remember the brief honeymoon period with the rationale of liberal democracy, which at the end of the nineteenth century led some of them to look sympathetically at the nascent socialist movement, since they perceived it to be the only organised social force on which the small group of liberal free traders could rely. When the socialist movement seemed to enter into serious dialogue with the government forces, this short season came to a swift end. In the first years of the twentieth century the three economists abandoned their doctrinal adherence to liberalism for an approach that recognised, not only on the economic level but also on those of history, sociology and political science, the benefits of protectionism. They demonstrated how interaction between the different spheres of human activity—economic, political, sociological, ideological—gave life to different economic systems that were comparable both economically and historically.

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They also showed that bourgeois economic systems were characterised by varying degrees of adherence to protectionist policies and by different social compromises, such as that which Pareto defined as demagogic plutocracy, which in 1914 came into conflict with the central empires, where agrarian–militarist conservative ideas prevailed. With texts like I sistemi socialisti (Pareto 1902), Il Ministro della produzione dello Stato collettivista (Barone 1908) and Considerazioni su un Sistema di prezzi politici (Pantaleoni 1911), they argued that socialism, while in theory a system that could reach the frontier of efficiency, in concrete historical reality was one of the worst systems possible. On the other hand, they criticised all policies of wealth redistribution to the lower classes, considering them a gateway to socialist revolution. These works represent the theoretical and political premises for their drawing closer, in different times, to the nascent nationalist movement, of which they became the foremost spokesmen. Between 1903 and 1906 Pareto contributed to Il Regno, a journal established by the patriarch of Italian nationalism, Enrico Corradini, seeing it as the crucible of a new élite capable of opposing socialism. In 1909 Barone founded, and until 1916 edited, the openly nationalist journal La Preparazione, using it to support Italy’s colonisation of Libya and to campaign for its entry into the First World War. Pantaleoni edited the political news of the Giornale degli Economisti of 1912 to sponsor the colonial venture, was at the forefront of pushing Italy into the war, and with Giovanni Preziosi launched a press campaign for the Italianisation of the Commercial Bank, the leading investment bank in the country, demonstrating how it was a key instrument of German imperialism (Pantaleoni 1916; Preziosi 1916). After this theoretical and political period, the three economists would go on to become the guardians of the bourgeois order. In fact, they saw first in nationalism and then in fascism the political and social forces capable of engineering a final showdown with both the socialist movement, be it reformist or revolutionary, and weak Italian liberalism, which very timidly was opening up to the logic of political and social democracy. They strove to direct fascism towards an economic system that did not reproduce the economic costs and social balances typical of liberalism (demagogic plutocracy). In addition, starting in the years of the

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First World War, they constantly argued against attempts to subvert economics in the interests of corporative nationalism. The link between theory, economic policy and political militancy comprised the theme that typified other significant publishing initiatives linked to the marginalist school as well as the Giornale degli economisti. In the vanguard was the journal La Vita italiana, founded in 1910 and edited by Preziosi, an emigration scholar. From 1915 it was co-directed by Pantaleoni published around eighty of his articles before closing in October 1924. Many other economists of the free trade school contributed to it, among them Barone, Lanzillo, Pareto, Prato, Ricci and Guido Sensini. It is worth noting how by way of the articles by Pantaleoni and his cultural endeavours as co-editor of La Vita italiana, the reader is faced with the first and most systematic theorist of Italian political anti-Semitism (not biological racism). The national-fascism of Pantaleoni, of La Vita italiana and that of Preziosi, who during the Social Republic, when the Italian Jews were exterminated, became a sort of minister for race, were together the spearhead of an anti-Semitic diatribe that gave considerable polemical and editorial prominence to the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion. These were published by the journal in 1921, and republished in 1938, with a preface by Julius Evola. The Jews constituted “a state within the state” committed to the destruction of the Italian nation, encapsulating the typical workings of the social and political actors of bourgeois and liberal parasitic capitalism (of both the Giolitti and Nitti eras) on the one hand, and of socialist parasitism, primarily reformist, on the other. The Bolshevik revolution was naturally considered the fullest expression of the global Jewish conspiracy, which aimed at dividing up world domination with the English and American imperialist powers (Michelini 2011). Additionally, until 1924 Pantaleoni dictated the editorial line of Politica,3 the scientific and militant showcase of the nationalist intelligentsia, who in L’idea nazionale had the premier propaganda organ (founded in 1911, first as a weekly and, from 1914, as a daily), in which he and Preziosi, as well as Amoroso, all published articles. In the essay Finanza 3The articles in Politica were largely republished in Pantaleoni (1922). The journal also gave voice to corporativists like Arias.

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fascista Pantaleoni traced back nationalism and fascism to free trade orthodoxy in the hope of seeing the realisation of the Historical Right’s plans, which while undemocratic had undoubted economic merit. Fascism was not “revolution” as some of the fascists and nationalists might have wanted, but a complete “capitalist restoration” (Pantaleoni 1923). Pantaleoni then contributed to the daily Il Giornale d’Italia, run by Sidney Sonnino, Italy’s foreign minister during the so-called victory betrayed by the Entente powers, which did not recognise Italy’s imperial aspirations. Nationalist propaganda would make a mainstay of the victory betrayed and dominated by Anglo-American imperialism, highlighting the connection with the liberal–conservative tradition that had opposed Giolitti (who was against Italy’s entry into the First World War) and national-fascism. This conservative tradition had anticipated, in the wake of the historical school of Friedrich List, much of the free trade critiques that were to be found in the nationalists. It should, however, be remembered that there was a part of this tradition that galvanised the Radical Party of Francesco Saverio Nitti, an economist of the non-marginalist tradition who had played a part in the public intervention in economics during the liberal period. The party’s members included economists, such as Giulio Alessio, who would strenuously oppose fascism. As a minister Alessio tried in vain to have the king declare a state of siege during the March on Rome. Analytically and as regards economic policy he was a sort of anti-Pantaleoni. A signatory of Benedetto Croce’s Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, he joined the National Democratic Union led by Giovanni Amendola, who was eventually killed by the fascists. After the First World War Alessio attributed, in open dispute with the free trade nationalists, the rebalancing of the state budget to liberal governments (Alessio 1925). Pantaleoni’s writings were anything but responses to particular circumstances. Indeed the author later had most of them published by Laterza, the prestigious Bari-based publisher of the works of Benedetto Croce, who was also partly responsible for its editorial policy. In these writings Pantaleoni was clearly intent on offering an organic concatenation of economic theory and politics: for instance, Note in margine della guerra (Pantaleoni 1917a) and Tra le incognite, (Pantaleoni 1917b), both from 1917; Politica: Criteri ed eventi, from 1918 (Pantaleoni 1918b); and La

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fine provvisoria di un’epopea, from 1919 (Pantaleoni 1919). The theoretical framework of the collections is the aforementioned essay Considerazioni sulle proprietà di un sistema di prezzi politici, republished in the last volume. In the same year Barone published a book in defence of the actions of the Italian army, La storia militare della nostra Guerra fino a Caporetto, with a preface by Pantaleoni (Barone 1919), in which the military debacle of Caporetto was attributed to the socialists and not, as in reality, to the commander of the army, Cadorna, who was defended as a bulwark of nationalist patriotism. In 1922 Pantaleoni’s Bolcevismo italiano (Pantaleoni 1922), the genuine manifesto of fascism in power,4 appeared along with Cooperativismo rosso piovra dello stato, written with Preziosi (Preziosi 1922). The following year Pantaleoni published a university textbook in which he used the technique of pure economics to condemn all forms of socialism (Broglio D’Ajano and Pantaleoni 1923). In 1924 and 1925 the two volumes of the Erotemi di economia were released, in which the economist republished his classic essays on economic theory composed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, reworking them in part to demonstrate their strong political topicality. Of Pareto’s works perhaps the most consequential is Trasformazioni della democrazia (Pareto 1921), in which the author denounced the weakening of the state’s authority perpetrated by the socialists according to arguments that are found in Rocco. Also noteworthy are the essays Pareto published for the fascist journal founded by Mussolini, Gerarchia: Paragoni in January 1923, Legalità and Libertà respectively in April and July of the same year (Pareto 1923a, b, c). His political testament was however hosted by La Vita italiana: pointing out that fascism needed to pass a constitutional reform that would preserve parliament, he underlined how “a good Council of State” and “councils” of producers and consumers could mitigate its “incompetence” (Pareto 1923d). As for Barone, his La Rivoluzione francese is of particular interest. Published in instalments by La Preparazione between 1914 and 1915, in it he reinterpreted French history from a contemporary viewpoint 4 Labriola

defined Pantaleoni “Fascism’s only serious theorist” (Labriola 1923, 74).

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through the prism of “class war” in support of an authoritarian and anti-democratic solution to the Italian “crisis”. The “truth is that wealth” must be “taken as the criterion for the ability to vote: the poor, therefore, belong outside sovereignty. And it was logical. How, in fact, could we claim to be able to preserve private property by giving equal political power to everyone?” Democracy meant “the irruption of large majorities into the participation of power” and thus always meant a growing “state-ocracy”, “a diminution compared to the maximal collective utility” (Barone 1914a). This collective utility is guaranteed by a state that is exclusively “soldier, gendarme and judge”, but “strong”. The state is without “spirit of invention”, cannot be “the primary agent of progress” and is always and necessarily “the organ of certain specific interests”: hence the need to maintain “free access to private initiative” (Barone 1914b). Barone’s political reflections, published in La Preparazione became one of the chapters of the Principi di economia politica (1921), in which he warned of the danger of an imminent social revolution (Barone 1936, 285). Lastly, he was responsible for summarising the fundamental points of the Mussolini–De’ Stefani government’s programme in the journal Per la nostra ricostruzione economica, which he founded and promoted as a bulwark of fascist economic policy (Barone 1923). Given this overview, the fact that in the mid-1930s De’ Stefani promoted the publication of both Barone’s Opere economiche (Barone 1936) and the two important collections of Pantaleoni’s writings on history and financial economics (Pantaleoni 1936, 1938) should come as no surprise, but rather be seen as a sign of calculated historical continuity.

3

Corporativist Nationalism

The Rivista delle società commerciali played a leading role in determining the corporativist alignment. In 1914 Rocco had joined the nationalist ranks, taking firm control of its leadership and overshadowing historical figures such as Corradini. Carli boasted an earlier nationalist militancy than Rocco’s, having presented his paper on La politica economica della grande Italia at the movement’s first congress (1910), where it was hoped

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that the Italian “industrial bourgeoisie” would cease delegating the management of public affairs to a cowardly political class and at last take its destiny in hand (Carli 1911, 165). Even so Rocco became the main theorist of nationalism and it was in the Rivista delle società commerciali that in April 1914 the text–manifesto Economia liberale, economia socialista ed economia nazionale first appeared. In this the practical translation of the new economic principles took shape as a harsh attack on liberalism and socialism in the name of the needs of industry and empire (Rocco 1914). With the outbreak of the world war, the problem of the national economy became strategic, for the conflict proved to be chiefly an industrial one. Some of the topics on which nationalist journalistic propaganda focused most insistently, while at the same time denouncing the practical uselessness and metaphysical character of orthodox economic science, were: the nationalisation of credit and industrial bodies; the end of free competition and domination of large industrial and workers unions; polemics against orthodox free traders who advocated the harmfulness of industrial protectionism and the futility of dumping; exaltation of protectionism and resultant industrialism, the only guarantee of the economic efficiency needed to prosecute the war; exaltation of mechanical and iron and steel industries; affirmation of the artificiality of industry and contestation that there exists a natural kind of international labour division; denunciation of the economic damage suffered by British agriculture due to free trade. Rocco’s hope of finding new theorists of a national economy seems to have been fulfilled: Arias, Carli, Gini, among others, attempted to induce a real theoretical shift and a positive economic science that aimed to understand and evaluate Italian wealth in order to devise an organic intervention programme to potentiate it. They did this so as to achieve economic dynamism, as opposed to the static theory of the orthodox economists, which is to say to satisfy the needs of industrial development, to meet extra-economic, political and moral objectives intended to temper the dictates of individualistic economic principle, and to achieve industrial trustification and class cooperation. A historian of medieval corporativism, with his Principii di economia commerciale, published in 1917, Arias sought to move beyond orthodox economics to construct a veritable scientific corpus possibly

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definable as neo-mercantilist (Arias 1917). Gini also acquired considerable importance, confirming his role as one of the “soloni” (advisers) called by Mussolini to redesign the institutional architecture of fascist Italy (Gini 1926). Inquiries concerning the amount of national income foreshadowed plans for economic programming which led to a reflection that summarised the arguments of nationalist theorists and developed them in several ways, giving rise to a systematic and synthetic analysis of national and international economic changes that occurred before, during and after the war years. When there appeared in 1923 a new journal entitled Economia, which supported the cause of economic nationalism, Gini published the study La revisione del processo contro il protezionismo in its first edition. This was followed by Considerazioni sul valore pratico delle teorie economiche, which—like the earlier study—echoed all the arguments of the nationalists (Gini 1923a, c). The “economic pathology” which Gini identified as the new branch of economics, rather than studying situations that were “abnormal” and symptomatic of “economic illness”, such as international wars, actually studied situations that were historically normal (Gini 1923b). This was in fact the fountainhead of Italian studies on the “great economic spaces”, destined to become the object of increasing interest by fascism in its endeavour to realise its power politics. In this regard, we must take into account Catholic economic nationalism. Despite having distribution channels different to those of the aforementioned authors (their publishing houses and journals were not the same), Catholic nationalism proved of considerable importance, backing the gradual rapprochement between the Catholic Church and the fascist regime established with the signing of the Lateran Pacts in 1929. The economist Jacopo Mazzei, a pupil of Giuseppe Toniolo and teacher of Amintore Fanfani, in fact supported an actual neo-mercantilist revival. Having studied American protectionism and English mercantilism (Mazzei 1924), Mazzei would help found the Rivista di studi politici internazionali (1934), by the agency of which power politics and geopolitics become the subject of specialised scientific studies and university courses, in order to prepare the regime’s new ruling classes. Mazzei’s neomercantilism would be inserted organically into the attempt by a significant part of fascist economic culture to undermine the tradition of

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pure economics. The third volume of a new book series of foreign and Italian economists entitled Storia economica included a long contribution by Mazzei on mercantilism, alongside, among others, Friedrich List’s National System of Political Economy and Keynes’s The End of LaissezFaire and Economic Autarchy (Luzzatto 1936).

4

Types of Journals

Before beginning the study of fascist journals, I believe it is necessary to point out certain methodological points. The task of the economists in these journals was three-fold. They wrote articles on politics, economic policy and economic theory. In the first two cases support for the regime was always clear and substantiated. In the third the question was more nuanced because the effort made to found a primarily fascist form of economics differed from economist to economist, especially when the regime imposed by law the fascistification of the discipline. It is of course only by studying the intellectual biography of individual economists that one can assess with precision the level of their adhesion to the regime. Then there is a historiographical problem, the significance of which varies according to the importance of the author under consideration: it was not unusual for economists in openly fascist magazines to write reviews or essays of a technical nature. The most obvious example is that of Lello Gangemi, who had studied under Pantaleoni in the early 1920s (Gangemi 1924). In the 1930s, he was working for La Vita italiana, objectively chronicling government financial measures, when the same numbers of the journal carried many essays of anti-Semitic content during the years of racial persecution. I believe it is reasonable to consider the kind of editorial collaboration given by Gangemi to be a de facto sharing of the periodical’s programmatic direction. It is no coincidence that, immediately after the liberation, the newly formed Republic would set itself the legal challenge of establishing, partly on the basis of editorial collaborations of this sort, the degree of involvement of economists with the fascist regime. Regardless of the outcome of those judicial efforts, in this case too only the intellectual biographies of each economist can settle the matter. If, however,

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we look at the history of journals from an institutional point of view, it becomes clear that the techniques of individual scientific disciplines were in fact made to serve the general policy of the regime. The journals that were organically linked to fascism were many and significant because they connected political and social plans favourable to the regime to theoretical and scientific propositions. In short, they did not set out to be mere propaganda publications. It would therefore be unwise to label as fascist journals only those newspapers and magazines that served an explicit political purpose. A complete review of all these editorial productions would take up more than one volume, which shows the considerable effort that both the regime and the economists devoted to building in the field of economic studies what Antonio Gramsci called a real hegemony. To offer an exhaustive picture of fascist journals and of the way in which they dealt with the economy would basically involve writing a history of fascist culture and therefore of fascism as a school of thought. A quick overview of some of the publications, which can be divided by type, bears witness to this. Among the magazines organically linked to fascism were, first and foremost, two which could be called generalist, meaning that they dealt with all aspects of national and international life. These were Gerarchia (1922–1943), founded by Mussolini, and Politica (1920–1943), the scientific mouthpiece of Italian nationalism, edited by Francesco Coppola and Rocco. In second place there were journals that were the works of prominent intellectuals and politicians of fascism, so much so that the histories of the journals were deeply intertwined with their authors’ political and intellectual stories. Among the others, we must mention: Educazione fascista (1927– 1933), which later became Civiltà fascista (1934–1945) and belonged to Giovanni Gentile; Costamagna’s Lo Stato (1930–1943); Giuseppe Bottai’s Critica fascista (1923–1943); and Preziosi and Pantaleoni’s La Vita italiana (1913–1943). These were titles which displayed a strong commitment to fascism on a political level, which dealt in full with national and international affairs, and which gave considerable space to economic and theoretical-economic issues, carrying contributions from economists and others who commentated on economic matters. In this

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category were periodicals intended to develop the primarily corporative approach to the field of economic science. Among the remainder, there were: Archivio di studi corporativi (1930– 1943), the organ of the Higher School of Corporative Sciences of the University of Pisa, edited by Bottai until 1936; as well as Nuovi studi di diritto, economia e politica (1927–1935), founded by the philosopher Ugo Spirito with Arnaldo Volpicelli. Finally, there were the magazines with a decidedly militant slant directed by less important cultural or political personalities than the aforementioned, but no less interesting on account of the economists who collaborated with them: one of them was Dottrina fascista (1937–1944), edited by Nicolò Giani. Given that I have to be selective, I shall concentrate on one publication from each of the types.

5

Gerarchia: Mussolini’s Journal

The monthly Gerarchia had a high standing among fascist journals, having been founded by Mussolini who for a long time was its editor-inchief. Later Benito’s brother Arnaldo, the art critic Margherita Sarfatti (1925–1933) were its actual editors, followed by Mussolini’s nephew Vito (1934–1943). The programmatic intent of the periodical was to “preserve the values of the hierarchies that have not exhausted their task” and to graft onto this trunk “new elements of life” to “prepare for the rise of new hierarchies”. More widely, the objective was to undertake “a cultural work of criticism and greater choice, more complex and very dedicated and profoundly different” than the one carried out by the daily Il Popolo d’Italia (Direzione 1922). There were three distinct phases in the history of the journal. The first ran from 1922 to 1927, the date of the promulgation of the Labour Charter. While accommodating both stances on nationalist economic thought, the period exhibited a clear predilection for the free trade current. Apart from the aforementioned writings of Pareto, Gerarchia also published articles by Volt, a pseudonym of Vittorio Fani Ciotti. The monthly used Volt’s contributions to criticise the idea of creating a new economic science, arguing against Arias, who also wrote for the journal

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(Volt 1923). Volt, we should not forget, distanced himself from social fascism, identifying and siding with a “Fascist right” (Volt 1924) and, like De’ Stefani, extolling the thinking of Pareto (De’ Stefani 1923). It is also important to remember that Prato contributed to Gerarchia, thereby linking the measures taken by the Mussolini governments to the dictates of classical economics (Prato 1922, 1925, 1926). We may attach to these texts what Mussolini wrote in Stato, anti-Stato e fascismo, where he stated that “the Italian pseudo-liberal state is monopolist” and fascism was instead “emphatically anti-monopolist” (Mussolini 1922, 298). Within this phase the trade union issue was of great import. As already said, the debate within fascism focused on the monopoly/pluralism dilemma of trade unions. While not pre-judging the issue, Mussolini recalled the contents of the December 1923 Palazzo Chigi Accords between Confindustria, representing business, and the fascist trade unions (Mussolini 1925) and simply stressed their importance. He said nothing instead about the fact that the agreement constituted a definitive setback to the socio–economic aspirations of the fascist unions, that is, integral syndicalism. Anticipating that the industrialists would have, in exchange for their renewed political support, an autonomous representation distinct from that of the workers, the aspiration of giving the workers effective power—about which fascist syndicalism had deluded itself and, moreover, tried to delude the workers—was in fact defeated. The debate on pluralism and monopoly came to an end with the law of April 1926, the significance of which was explained by Rocco. He said that this “constitutes an organic and complete set of rules designed to bring the trade union phenomenon into the orbit of the state and obtain the peaceful and juridical resolution of labour conflicts”. The corporations became organs of the state and thus the question of the transformation of the trade union phenomenon was placed within a new state framework (Rocco 1926, 412). Bottai pushed for the law to open up new horizons for economic research: the Labour Charter totally devalued “the individual economy” and the “universal” one, while only the “national economy” assumed importance. The “classic” economy was dismantled, while the “myth of the freedom of economic initiative” was “rejected” since it was recognised only in so far as it served the national interest:

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hence there could be “control”, “encouragement” and “direct management” of companies by the state. In essence, the time had arrived for the building of a “new corporate economy” (Bottai 1927b). The years running from 1927 to 1934 marked the second phase of the journal’s history. These were the years that separated the passing of the Labour Charter from the legislative and administrative institution of corporations. The period was without doubt characterised by the theoretical approach of Arias, who wrote many essays in support of the attempt to renew economic science in the interests of corporativism. Yet it was the Great Crash of 1929 that gave further momentum to this effort, even though articles in Gerarchia reveal that it also provoked disorientation among those who would have liked to establish a new economy. The items on the agenda became insidious, being those of the collapse of capitalism and of the theoretical and historical rationality of socialism. Even the fascist economists were faced with the problem of economic planning and of a more organic role for the state in the management of the economy. In this regard, the text by De’ Stefani entitled Lo Stato e la vita economica was notable (De’ Stefani 1932). Arias also went in that direction: the Bank of Italy dominated the money market “and can control, as it wishes, the activity of private finance, contain it, manage it, and unify it” (Arias 1928, 10). Although Arias’s corporativist policy prevailed, it actually echoed Pantaleoni’s teaching. In the first place, Arias expressed firm opposition to those who, through the pages of the journal, tried to present the Labour Charter and fascism as ideologies and socio-political practices capable of adopting, by overcoming the free trade periods of the regime, some aspirations of socialism. This left-wing reading of the Labour Charter was encouraged by a number of essays. Bottai let slip that the Charter, though lacking “formal legality”, set out a series of suppositions “that no social-democratic legislation has ever arrived at conferring” (Bottai 1927a, 323). The editors presented fascism not only as a bulwark against socialism, but also as an exponent of whatever in socialism was “a useful, just and fruitful renewing principle, a human assertion, responding to the spirit of the times” (Gerarchia 1927, 83). These were reflections that Francesco Saverio Merlino, a former eighteenth-century anarchist protagonist of the birth of anti-Marxist

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revisionism, overstated. To his mind the Charter marked the end of the free trade period of fascism: “nothing that refers directly or indirectly to work should be considered outside of the competencies of the workers’ associations” (Merlino 1927, 38–39). The continuity between socialism and fascism could be found, in the final analysis, not in collectivism or syndicalism, but in the importance given to social legislation (Arias 1930). As said, it was Arias who criticised Merlino’s reflection, in an ideological framework aimed at underlining how the Great Crash of 1929 gave rise to the crisis of liberalism and not of capitalism, as the socialists instead argued (Arias 1931a). However, the author had already had occasion to reiterate how free initiative was central to the Labour Charter and, by insisting on distinguishing fascist corporativism from state socialism, he had spelled out what he meant when he affirmed that corporativism implied, “a spontaneous self-discipline of production by the same categories” (Arias 1929, 371). As he said: “I believe it will be necessary to prevent even the legally recognised Fascist trade unions from dedicating themselves exclusively to an action aimed at obtaining economic improvement for the working masses, if we do not want to get them to turn on themselves at some point” (Arias 1929, 468). These words of warning were shared and repeated by Bruno Biagi, a deputy who held various important institutional roles (and would become the president of INPS), including that of minister of corporations, as well as being a university law professor. He warned against “futuristic solutions, especially if they conflict” with what was codified by the law and the Labour Charter, “since it would be very easy for them to slip into a form of corporate-based socialism, which is completely antithetical to the fascist conception of economic policy” (Biagi 1933a). There was a “third way” between capitalism and collectivism: Italy, following the pointers of Mussolini, “is and must remain a mixedeconomy nation” (Biagi 1933b). Following this, Renato Trevisani, who among other things was the editor of the important journal Politica sociale criticised, in Gerarchia, Spirito’s proposal for a “proprietary corporation”, citing what Arias had said on the subject (Trevisani 1932). There was a second element of continuity with Pantaleoni’s teachings in the interpretation of the Great Crash. According to Arias, it could be

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described as “a crisis of overconsumption” (Arias 1931b) brought about by high salaries, the “unpredictability of the working classes,” financial speculation, and “the unlimited increase in production and wealth” with “the most open violation of all the most elementary norms of public and private morality” (Arias 1933, 216). In democracies, under the influence of socialism, public investment to create jobs become an “ideology”, and drove the state to take on “the social risk of unemployment”, often favouring welfare policies to the detriment of productive investments. The corporative state, where such investments prevailed, established extraordinary and temporary measures “while waiting for the employment of labour in private companies to return to normal” (Arias 1931b). Some authors even highlighted the novelty of Roosevelt’s experiment seeing that it was detached from the precepts of classical economics. The economist Ernesto D’Albergo explored this approach, noting how the state was not at the root of the crisis but, on the contrary, its help was vital to getting out of it; he also defended American monetary policy (D’Albergo 1933a). However, Gino Borgatta, a member of the Pareto school, barred the way to these interpretations, presenting policies of high wages as stimulus to demand and the positions of those who underlined the existence of technological unemployment as “ideologies”, and ultimately rejecting the validity of the triad of American economic policy: budget deficit, devaluation and inflation (Borgatta 1933). D’Albergo, moreover, had already retracted his theses because they had gone too far in comparing fascist economic policy with that of America, and he ended up extolling the fixed exchange rate pursued by the regime (D’Albergo 1933b). As for the way that Gerarchia addressed the issue of the 1929 crisis, while paying scant attention to the birth of the Italian industrial state with the foundation of the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), it must be said that on the subject of the crisis the articles submitted were not impressive either in terms of clarity or profundity but rather bore witness to the theoretical and historical paucity of fascist ideology. This dearth was resolved in the effort to present fascist corporativism as a system that had prepared itself in advance of the epochal change in the relationship between state and market, without falling for socialist

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or social-democratic prescriptions (D’Albergo 1933c). The theme of fascism as a third way between capitalism and communism, however, did not become particularly significant. Even the most daring authors, such as Carlo Emilio Ferri, when endeavouring to overcome pure economics, predicated their reasoning on the writings of Pantaleoni. Ferri attempted to attribute to the corporation the role of finding a strategic centre for the “economic complexes”, that is, for the phenomenon of the “trustification” of the economy studied by Pantaleoni in a famous essay of 1903 on workers and industrial unions (Ferri 1934). The journal’s final season began in late 1934, and the following years—1935 to 1943—were marked by war: first in Ethiopia, then in Spain and finally the Second World War. As in the second phase the theme of the “third way” was not given emphasis in Gerarchia. The war years were also marked by racial persecution, which first transpired during the colonial war and then was implemented with the anti-Jewish legislation of September 1938. The end of Arias’s work for the publication—which also came in 1938, since, as a Jew, he fell victim to the racial persecutions—coincided with the diminishing importance of theoreticaleconomic thought. During the war there were a few sporadic reflections that went beyond mere economic news: Alberto Asquini, an important fascist and exponent of the Republic of Salò (leading the IRI) as well as a law professor, envisaged a Europe united by nazism and fascism centred on a “regulated economy” (Asquini 1941). Finally, we come across Ferri, who critiqued the law of October 1941 with which corporativism was introduced in Vichy France. In actual fact it was a corporativism that had not learned the lesson of fascism because it lacked recognition of the centrality of the state and of the Fascist Party and opened a dangerous passage to the “democratisation of companies” (Ferri 1942, 123, 126).

6

Lo Stato: Carlo Costamagna’s Journal

An important politician in the regime, as well as a magistrate and jurist, Costamagna was the editor of Lo Stato: Rivista di scienze politiche, giuridiche ed economiche, of which Ettore Rosboch was the authoritative

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economist. The journal presented fascism as a dictatorship and totalitarian regime that aspired to having different and superior characteristics to both liberalism and communism. Among those involved in theorising the totalitarian state were Carl Schmitt, who published various articles in the journal and who was described by its authors as the theorist of National Socialism, as well as an anti-Semite. The theoretical framework was that of the predominance of politics and the state over the economy, endorsing the regime’s intentions to create a corporative economic science while at the same time considering the corporation distinctly subordinated to the Duce, the party and the state. Corporativisim, in fact, “is an instrument, not an end” and therefore “there is no second corporative revolution to carry out”. “The premise of the new national economic order remains with the individual, and private initiative”, which is the “cornerstone of the Fascist constitution” (Costamagna 1933, 1–2). In a nutshell, Costamagna was a convinced continuator of the fascist right, an orientation that he promoted in full totalitarianism, surpassing the limits upheld by Pantaleoni, who wanted to censor the political debate but not the scientific one. Costamagna held that fascism had not been strong-minded enough in fascistising the Italian social sciences, economics included. Even Gentile appeared timid to him, having founded a Fascist Institute of Culture rather than an Institute of Fascist Culture. Costamagna was also aggrieved that Gentile had created a school of economics, that of Pisa, which had generated the “anti-Fascist” corporativism of Spirito and Volpicelli (Costamagna 1934; Direzione 1937). An entire issue of the journal was dedicated to commenting on the entry “Fascism” authored by Mussolini for the Encliclopedia Italiana, edited by Gentile, which was published in Lo Stato in October 1932 under the title, given to it by the editor, of La dottrina politica e sociale del fascismo (Mussolini 1932) Ferri and Borgatta provided the analysis of the text from the perspective of economics. Despite the critique of political and economic liberalism and the consequent exaltation of the role of the state that the text contained, the two authors underlined how Mussolini had not really expressed an opinion about the subject of economic doctrine (Borgatta 1932; Ferri 1932). Indeed, the text did not even mention the need for a refoundation of the science of economics. Central, on the other hand, was the concept that we have come across in the paragraphs

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on the Gerarchia, namely that the Great Crash of 1929 signalled the crisis of liberalism, and not of capitalism. “It is the state that can resolve the dramatic contradictions of capitalism. What is called a crisis cannot be resolved except by the state, within the state” (Mussolini 1932). There were economists among the writers in Lo Stato who, although fascists, gave little credence to the possibility of transcending classical economics and therefore restricted their activities to meeting the needs of the regime by reproposing the Pareto juxtaposition of independent disciplines. The articles by Sensini and Del Vecchio are cases in point. They developed Pareto’s distinction between the “maximum of utility for a community” and “the maximum of utility of a community”, and thereby highlighted how the interest of the state, which could be studied with the help of the disciplines of sociology, political science and history, and of the science of finance, was not necessarily the resultant, the sum, of individual interests, but was instead that superior and independent entity of individuals about which every fascist theorist spoke endlessly.5 The prospect indicated by the two economists was clear, because it was intended to reaffirm the validity of Pareto’s economic theory (Sensini 1932). The hope, scientifically interesting though not developed analytically, was that a series of studies on the corporative economic system would be set up (Del Vecchio 1930). The reason why there is no trace of these developments is clear: albeit from the fascist point of view an anatomy of the social classes and élites that supported the regime would have to be articulated, this incurred the risk of obfuscating and damaging the fascist ideology aimed at increasing the regime’s capacity to deliver the general interest and the supreme good of the nation. What is more, the corporativists had a significant problem, that of passing from the critique of liberal economic science to the construction of a new economic science. In truth, when it comes to this issue—the creating a new economic grammar—we find in Lo Stato only essays that proposed vague and rhetorical reasoning, which did not correspond to the appropriate categories of political economy or to social and political analysis but which merely exalted the role of the fascist state: I refer in 5This was a reflection shared by Costamagna, who referred back to Pareto (Costamagna 1935, 126).

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particular to certain contributions by Costamagna (1930) himself, and to those of Ferri (1931). Corporativism was, however, only one of the instruments (much criticised in Lo Stato) used in building one of the foundational totalitarian aspects of the new economic science, which was to promote a new synthesis of the relationship between politics and economics in which the former, the embodiment of the people, the nation and the state, perforce prevailed over the latter. With the colonial war economic autarky became an instrument as equally effective as corporativism—if not actually superior to it—to use in the creation of the new science: superior due to the fact that it accentuated the role of the state. And superior also because there was a solid tradition of economic thought—first mercantilist, then protectionist and finally neo-protectionist and neomercantilist—that justified its aspirations: this line of thought was pieced together by Roberto Michels, a sociologist and the first Italian professor of the history of economic doctrines, and published in the first issue of Lo Stato (Michels 1930). The journal revitalised this neo-mercantilist way of thinking, with particular regard to the theory of administered prices, which Pareto and Pantaleoni had criticised for being an anti-economic rejuvenation of erroneous doctrine. Even so, it was an anti-economic approach that during the Great War became indispensable when organising the industrial–military defence of the country, as Barone contended. A pupil of Prato, Vincenzo Porri, as well as Ferri, both grappled with the theory of administered prices (Porri 1930; Ferri 1930). Yet the essays that the young Franco Modigliani, still a university student, wrote on this theme outclassed those of the two corporativists for lucidity and rationality. They valued protectionism, autarky and the Fascist Party as building tools of the new economic science and the new nation, mounting (with reference to the works of Arias, Carli, Costamagna and List) a harsh, direct attack on pure economics.6 It was in this context that the young economist expressed approval of, and analysed in depth, the possibility of implementing a “progressive regulation of the whole economy” through the action of the state and the Fascist Party (Modigliani 1937, 439–442). The texts reveal an interest in a form of public intervention 6 For

a detailed analysis of Modigliani’s texts, see Michelini (2019b).

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radically different from the classical-liberal one, so much so as to become confused with that of the socialist economy and to arouse criticism from other contributors to the journal, who invoked the theoretical solidity of Prato’s classical economics (Binello 1937). In short, the fascist free trade school distanced itself from the young student. More generally, this was a distancing from insidious themes. The Great Crash and the profound change that it imposed on the relationship between state and market explain the growing interest in the Soviet economy and planning. Lo Stato followed the historical evolution of the Soviet Union, especially in regard to law, while voicing strong criticism: it was concerned that fascist literature which showed an interest the Soviet experiment could trigger a socialist turn in fascism. Both Costamagna and Rosboch took the opportunity to restate the validity of Pantaleoni’s approach. The first insistently underlined how the Labour Charter safeguarded private initiative (Costamagna 1931). The second evaluated the increasing public intervention in economics, seeking to reconnect it to the approach of the master Pantaleoni, who was hostile to all forms of planning: “The economic function of the Fascist state has the welldefined task of integrating and developing as much as possible the productive activity of the private sector” (Rosboch 1930, 254). Of course, these positions were subjected to considerable tension because they had to consider not only Soviet planning, but also the economic development of Nazi Germany which was underpinned by planning. The interpretation of the Great Crash and the ensuing Depression that emerges in Lo Stato, and the formulas proposed by the economists to escape from the crisis, were classical, to use the expression of Keynes, whose ideas timidly peeped out. His ideas were said to be “interesting”: the economy’s problems arose because “the public of consumers, especially when prosperous, does not spend its entire income on current consumption” (Lo Stato 1938, 57). Modigliani was interested in this kind of analysis, which pushed him more and more into the arms of left-wing fascism (Modigliani 1938a). Far from holding a minority position, in this instance Modigliani found himself isolated. Rosboch, who dictated the journal’s stance on the subject of the economic crisis, wrote texts interpreting it, as well as articles explaining economic policy that adhered to classical theses extolling

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deflation, the reduction of public spending, the stability of the exchange rate, and he criticised Roosevelt’s political economy as ineffective and inflationary (Rosboch 1931, 1932). The academic economists who published with Lo Stato were of the same opinion. Giuseppe Ugo Papi hoped that the economic policy of the corporative “controlled economy” would translate into a rapid reduction of all revenues, taking care to also reduce public spending and to maintain the state budget in balance (Papi 1931). Marco Fanno recommended the same remedy and in his pages an analysis of A.C. Pigou, who opposed Keynes’s theories, was joined to the principles of the Labour Charter (Fanno 1931). Finally, the official position standpoint of the journal was significant. The editors emphasised that the crisis was general and therefore did not concern only Italy. In actual fact, thanks to fascism, the country had prepared in good time the socio-political prerequisites to deal with it, as international public opinion was recognising. The article insisted on calling the crisis “financial”, in other words it was a crisis caused by an “abuse of credit” both by the state and by the private sector. By contrast, the economic policy of fascism stood out, as it “has instead adopted from the beginning a policy of austere realism” (Direzione 1931). This was complete classicism. A complete justification of the work of the fascist government, which had certainly not waited for the Great Crash and Depression to offload onto the working classes the repeated rescue of the nation (Castronovo 2013, 202, 204, 234–235) in the name of the reasons of free trade nationalist-fascism.

7

Dottrina Fascista: The Journal of Fascist Mysticism

The issues tackled in Dottrina fascista were those to be found in the first two journals, but the articles had a much less academic slant and a predominantly militant content. Edited by Nicolò Giani, it was the organ of the School of Fascist Mysticism in Milan, which he founded together with Arnaldo Mussolini, the younger brother of Benito. Among the most significant authors on economic issues was Ferri; while the

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Catholic Fanfani, an economic historian, wrote a text on autarky. The journal’s programme “can be summarised in a single word: serve” (Dottrina fascista 1937). Serve Mussolini. “Fascist mysticism” was nothing but opposition to the liberal and socialist rationalist culture. The history of the journal is significant, particularly if linked with that of Lo Stato, since it provides an account of the type of culture and intellectuals promoted by fascism, of how individual intellectual biographies interact with power and because, ultimately, it reveals the historiographical problems that the history of the journals opens up. In Lo Stato the racist and anti-Semitic themes were present in the same editions that carried the articles by Modigliani and had already been accurately placed by the time of the conquest of Ethiopia. Evola, in particular, played an important role: in 1938, the year in which he introduced the revised edition of Vita italiana, he reprinted in Lo Stato the interpretation of the Protocolli that Preziosi had given him (that it was a fake but nevertheless described a real Jewish plot) in the early 1920s. In Il problema della razza, Costamagna used articulate and learned reasoning to distinguish between the nation and nationality, pointed out the fundamental role of the state in cementing or even creating the one and the other, praised their spiritual and cultural attributes, and criticised the theories of nationalist biological racism and “some ‘excesses” of German racism” (Costamagna 1938, 604) albeit not denying that there was a biological aspect to take into account. What Costamagna theorised can be found, in simplified form, in an article by Modigliani in Dottrina fascista. A “strong State” could constitute the “melting pot of different nationalities” in a single nationality. “If one does not accept this second possibility, which anyhow is proved by history, one would deny the formative value of the totalitarian state on the one hand, and on the other one would exclude the mutation in the world of nationalities”. The psychological element “is undoubtedly the greatest and indispensable constitutive factor when speaking about nation”. Less relevant, by contrast, is “the linguistic element, while it cannot be excluded that the unifying element reposes in a less spiritual concept: such as race” (Modigliani 1938b, 405). The reference to the Darwinism of Spencer and Pareto is translated into a critique, typical of fascist ideology, of liberalistic egalitarianism. The young author held

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that on the international level there is bound to be struggle, even military, between the nationalisms, even if he believed that cultures and economies were “more fruitful in terms of results” (Modigliani 1938b, 405, 407). Modigliani’s text is significant because it shows how the racial policy of the regime, with the promulgation of the anti-Jewish laws of September 1938, took the fascist Jews by surprise.7 The illusion, which Arias and other writers (the Jews Del Vecchio and Fanno had written for Lo Stato) laboured under,8 was that “spiritual” fascism would have prevailed over biological and legislative fascism. But in the event, the racist ideology of Lo Stato (Costamagna was among the signatories of the Manifesto of Race), and of Dottrina fascista and its editors, was evident and supported by the regime’s provisions.

8

Conclusions

It should come as no surprise that the caution towards and distances taken from biological racism went hand in hand with defending and sharing the measures taken by the fascist government. The spiritual racism rationale did not prevent the editors of Lo Stato from adhering to fascist policy and inciting a purge of Jews from schools of all levels. A purge to be extended to Gentile, given that being Jewish was not only a biological condition but actually a spiritual one. This heap of logical and theoretical contradictions, resolved and often praised and actively asserted, this prevailing of mysticism over rationality, was an original fact of fascist anti-Semitism and of fascist culture in general. Pantaleoni did not declare himself anti-Semitic and, having made a survey of the sciences, did not believe in the existence of different human races: nevertheless he had been a proponent of the anti-Semitic press campaign that called for the publication of lists of Jews, which he said would keep the state and the economy busy, calling for the purge. Needless to say, the totalitarian state centred on the decisions of the leader, 7 On 8 For

the Fascism of the young Modigliani see Michelini (2019b). Arias see Ottonelli (2014).

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the supreme incarnation of politics, of the people and of the nation, who when taking action made instrumental use of any ideology and any kind of ideologue. Providing a survey of the political and social factors underlying this type of regime and culture is a task that falls on the historian. The history of nationalist-fascist economic thought, caught in the dual dialectic between free traders and corporativists and between the fascist right and left, offers a major contribution to the reconstruction of the political and social implications of the debate on economic theory and economic policy which took place in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century and which in the scientific or nationalist-fascist militant journals had a showcase of great consequence. Conversely, it has been shown that the relationship between fascism and economic science cannot be identified with the issue of the birth and affirmation of corporative doctrine, although that was of considerable importance. No less important, however, was the part played by the “Fascist right”, starting with its founder, Pantaleoni, and passing through those authors and journals that wanted to adapt their theoretical and political teaching to the changing times.

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Porri, V. (1930). Gl’interventi dello Stato nel sistema nazionale dei prezzi. Lo Stato, I (2), 165–175. Prato, G. (1922). Monopolio o concorrenza sindacale? Gerarchia, I (9), 490– 498. Prato, G. (1925). Dal liberismo individualistico al liberalismo democratico. Gerarchia, 4 (12), 760–768. Prato, G. (1926). Verso il risanamento monetario. Gerarchia, V (9), 565–574. Preziosi, G. (1916). La Germania alla conquista dell’Italia. Florence: La Voce. Preziosi, G. (1922). Cooperativismo rosso piovra dello Stato. Introduction by M. Pantaleoni. Bari: Laterza. Ricci, U. (1923, June). Il miglioramento del bilancio dello Stato. Rivista di politica economica, pp. 593–612. Rocco, A. (1914). Economia liberale, economia socialista ed economia nazionale. Rivista delle Società commerciali, 1(30 April), 293–308. Also in Rocco (1938), vol. 1, 30–58. Rocco, A. (1919). Il programma politico dell’Associazione nazionalista. In A. Rocco. 1938. Scritti e discorsi politici (Vol. 2, pp. 475–481). Rocco, A. (1926). La nuova disciplina del lavoro e lo Stato corporativo. Gerarchia, V (7), 409–417. Rosboch, E. (1930). L’azionariato di Stato nell’economia fascista. Lo Stato I, 3, 256–256. Rosboch, E. (1931). Le crisi economiche. Lo Stato, 2(5), 321–328. Rosboch, E. (1932). Come si può liquidare la crisi. Lo Stato, 3(2), 81–89. Rossi, E. (1930). La questione doganale dopo la guerra. In A. De Viti de Marco, Un trentennio di lotte politiche (pp. 449–480). Rome: Collezione Meridionale Editrice. Sensini, G. (1932). Le equazioni dell’equilibrio economico in regime corporativo. Lo Stato, IIIc (5), 350–357. Trevisani, R. (1932). Il convegno di Ferrara. Gerarchia, XI (5), 390–395. Volt [Fani Ciotti, V.]. (1923). Uomini d’Italia: Vilfredo Pareto. Gerarchia, 2(4), 974–977. Volt [Fani Ciotti, V.]. (1924). Programma della destra fascista. Florence: Società Editrice “La Voce”.

Planning and Discussing Corporatism and the “New International Order” Fabrizio Bientinesi and Marco Cini

The National Council of Corporations was instituted with the Royal Decree No. 1131 of 1926, only to be dissolved 17 years later with Royal Decree No. 721. Corporatism, or rather the institution that was to guarantee its implementation, was a product of the fascist regime, and perished with the latter. But there is no easy answer to the question about the exact nature of corporatism, and of the theories supporting it. Significantly enough, historians have referred to it as “indecipherable corporatism” (Faucci 2014) or the “myth of corporatism” (Santomassimo 2006). As is the case with so many aspects of the “founding” theories of fascism, it is hard—if not impossible—to disentangle the elements This essay is the outcome of a shared research. However, § 1 and 3 should be attributed to Marco Ciniand § 2 to Fabrizio Bientinesi.

F. Bientinesi (B) · M. Cini University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] M. Cini e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Augello et al. (eds.), An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II, Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38331-2_3

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of pure propaganda from theoretical assumption. Economically, corporatism was presented as the basis for the construction of the so-called “third way”, alternative to capitalism and socialism, i.e. to the anarchy of laissez-faire and homo œconomicus on the one hand, and to rigid planning on the other. The results were far from brilliant. Giuseppe Bruguier Pacini, an economist who was certainly not unfriendly to the regime, made his view clear in 1937, in the Archivio di studi corporativi, one of the crucial journals in the debate on these issues: In order to achieve the unified and systematic reconstruction of economic science that befits scientific logical procedure, the need was in the first place to define an “economic principle” to place at the foundation of the theory, a principle that, like the hedonistic principle of minimum means and the postulate of homo oeconomicus, was to be so general as to apply to the entire sphere of economic science. But it was also, unlike them, not merely formal and abstract. It was concrete, implying as well the national goals which we have seen at the basis of the Labour Charter and corporative legislation […]. As a result of failing to address this problem with due awareness, the above-mentioned corporatist economists have not succeeded in giving us a satisfactory economic theory. (Bruguier Pacini 1937, 76–77)

The Labour Charter mentioned by Bruguier Pacini represented the legal document introduced by fascism to regulate labour relations, proclaiming that the corporations constituted “the united organisation of the forces of production” (article VI). In practice, the Charter prohibited freely organised unions and entrusted settlement of differences between employers and workers to the corporations themselves, adding that “the corporative state considers private enterprise in the field of production as the most efficient and useful means in the interest of the Nation” (article VII). Guido Melis recalls the various stages that corporatism went through without ever settling the fundamental contradiction of the “‘theoretical paradox’ – prior to the practical paradox – of a state that took it upon itself to safeguard private property but at the same time intended to take on the role of programmatic reformer of the economy” (Melis 2018, 425). In practice, thanks precisely to the participation of the corporative

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bodies in many aspects of the country’s economic life,1 corporatism became the ideal cover for the creation of a social block forged from “convergence between big business and state bureaucracy” (Castronovo 1975, 331). However, despite its evident theoretical limits—perhaps, paradoxically, precisely because of them—Italian corporatism enjoyed a certain fame abroad (Guidi 2000; Faucci 2014), in the context of a “corporatist” Europe (Maier 1975). The aim of this essay is to analyse a number of conferences, seen as crucial points in the process of forging and consolidating Italian corporatism. Equal room will be devoted to the last stage of fascism, when the regime addressed the issue of the “new economic order” that would come about when the war was over. Here corporatism—when not openly contested—was relegated to a secondary position, and debate revolved around economic planning, seen as a possible development of the economic system in post-war Italian society, and as an inevitable postponement of the corporative “third way”.

1

The Conferences on Corporatism: A Short and Contradictory Season

The main conferences organised during the fascist Ventennio (see Table 1), in their approach and in the aims pursued, are conditioned by the political dynamics within the regime, by the close confrontation between “moderate corporatists” and “integral corporatists”, as well as by the political and economic questions (crisis of 1929, autarky, war economy) with which the regime had to deal. An indicator that we can use to decipher the weight they had in orienting the public debate on corporatism is the room given to strictly economic issues and to the actors who discussed them. Undoubtedly, the first and most significant conferences took place from 1930 to 1935, in the five years in which the debate on 1 Cf.

Melis (2018, 414–448). Take the case, for example, of the law of 12 January 1933, which made prior authorisation a prerequisite to open new industrial plant, limiting any form of competition.

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Table 1 Conferences on corporatism and planning I Convegno di studi sindacali e corporativi II Convegno di studi sindacali e corporativi Convegno italo-francese di studi corporativi I Convegno nazionale di studi autarchici II Convegno nazionale di studi autarchici Convegno nazionale di studi economici e sociali su “Orientamenti dell’Economia nell’Europa Fascista” Convegno per lo studio dei problemi economici dell’ordine nuovo XLI Riunione della Società Italiana per il progresso delle Scienze Convegno nazionale dei Gruppi scientifici dell’Istituto nazionale di cultura fascista su “Il Piano economico”

[1st Conference of union and corporative studies] [2nd Conference of union and corporative studies] [Italian and French Conference of corporative studies] [1st National Conference of autarkic studies] [2nd National Conference of autarkic studies] [National Conference of economic and social studies on “Orientations of the Economy in Fascist Europe”] [Conference for the study of the economic problems of the new order] [41st Meeting of the Italian Society for the Advancement of Science] [National Conference of the Scientific Groups of the National Institute of Fascist Culture on “The Economic Plan”]

Rome, 2–3 May 1930

Ferrara, 5–8 May 1932

Rome, 20–23 May 1935

Milan, 25–27 April 1939

Milan, 25–27 April 1940

Turin, 13–14 January 1941

Pisa, 18–23 May 1942

Rome, 27 September–1 October 1942

Rome, 24–26 November 1942 and 5–6 April 1943

the foundation of the new science of corporative economics was more lively and effective (Fusco 2007; Cerasi 2019). There is no doubt that the two conferences held in Rome and Ferrara, organised in these years by the Ministry of Corporations under the careful direction of Giuseppe

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Bottai,2 represented the moment of the most intense theoretical debate on corporatism. Equally emblematic is the Italo-French conference of 1935, which can be considered a juncture between the first season of reflection on corporatism and a second stage in which corporatist themes underwent a decisive downsizing, reflecting the sudden process of crystallisation of corporative structures triggered by the Ethiopian war and the international sanctions that struck Italy. In the second half of the decade, the organisation of conferences no longer came from official institutions, which were replaced by some student associations, the Fascist University Groups (GUFs). Nevertheless, the issue of corporatism, as we shall see later, underwent a rapid eclipse, leaving room for discussions on the autarkic economy and the place of Italy in a rapidly changing international economic order. The first Conference of union and corporative studies was held in Rome on 2 and 3 May 1930, under the chairmanship of Bottai. Two hundred and thirty nine delegates attended. The prevailing topics were in the areas of public and corporative law, as well as the discipline of collective labour agreements. Economic issues, on the contrary, had a substantially limited weight, although the decision to entrust the general report of the economic section to Gino Arias3 (Arias 1930) was a clear indication of Bottai’s approach in defining the outline of the conference. Arias, in fact, in addition to being among the organisers of the meeting, had been appointed a few weeks earlier a member of the reformed National Council of Corporations. The latter body, created in 1926, had until that moment had purely consultative functions and had been scarcely incisive in orienting policies aimed at shaping the corporative structure of the state. Thanks to pressure from

2 Bottai

held the position of Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Corporations from 1926 to 1929 and was Minister from 1929 to 1932, when Mussolini took his place. Afterwards, Ferruccio Lantini, Renato Ricci, Carlo Tiengo and Tullio Cianetti took over the leadership of the department. These were figures who, as observed in historiography, had little competence in social and economic problems (Parlato 1990, 9–10). 3 From 1909 Arias taught political economy at the University of Genoa, where he stayed until 1924, when he moved to Florence and, in 1938, to Rome.

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Bottai, in April 1929 the National Council of the Corporations was reorganised and strengthened at an operational level; in addition to maintaining its previous consultative functions, it was given decision-making power regarding the coordination of the discipline of labour relations (Aquarone 1978, 189–193). Arias, like Bottai’s collaborators, identified this reform as the real beginning of the corporative organisation of the state (Arias 1929a), and on this line he built his speech at the Rome conference, centred on twelve theses concerning the “revolutionary” paradigm of corporative economics. From Arias’s speech emerges the clear intent to give a complete systematisation to the still much debated discourse on the foundations of corporative economics and its original and alternative characteristics vis-à-vis liberal (and socialist) theories. This aim clarifies the polemical and, at times, contemptuous tones adopted by the speaker, who denied the naturalistic tradition, and insisted on the fundamental inseparability of economics from politics and on the peculiarities of the corporative organisation of society with respect to the models propounded by mainstream economics. This approach turned the speech into a sort of showdown between the author and the economists who had joined corporatism, but who had worked to keep corporative economics under the umbrella of “traditional” economic approaches. To such approaches Arias and, in other ways, the “integral” corporatists like Ugo Spirito, denied any scientific foundation. In this regard, Arias emphasized that, since corporative economics was a cornerstone of the fascist political doctrine, the distinction between praxis and theory no longer had any reason to exist. Furthermore, all artificial distinctions within economics science—such as “pure economics”, “political economy” and even “economic policy”—had necessarily to disappear, to be encompassed in the concept of “corporative economics” (Ottonelli 2012, 240–246). The eighth and ninth thesis presented by the Tuscan economist completed the scaffolding built in this intervention. In the eighth thesis, Arias maintained that “the corporative economy is accomplished, at first, through the corporative organization of distribution, now a definitive conquest, according to the principles of the reforming law, of the Labour Charter, of all measures or integrating documents”. In the ninth thesis, he specified that “the unification of the categories within the Nation is

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determined above all […] through the Corporative Council; this is the necessary prerequisite of corporative production, the second and fundamental conquest of corporative economics” (Arias 2009, 131–132). Therefore, concluded Arias, if the Labour Charter had already solved the problems on the distribution side,4 the recent reform of the Council of Corporations would also solve those on the production side, since the renewed action of this body would allow “collaboration between the elements of production [to cross] the limits of simple distribution, [and to involve] productive relations” (Arias 2009, 139). It should be pointed out that Arias, with this statement, did not intend to corroborate the argument that production relations should be regulated by the state (a solution that would have led to a de facto socialist regime), but by the Council itself, which would have operated indirectly, relying on the self-discipline of the categories, since “when this discipline is felt to be necessary and spontaneously accepted, it is no longer alien to the will of the organised categories themselves” (Arias 2009, 139). Celestino Arena, Felice Guarneri, Carlo Emilio Ferri, Renato Trevisani and Lello Gangemi took part in the discussion triggered by this general report. Their critical remarks did not affect the essence of the speech made by Arias.5 Two years after the conference in Rome, Bottai organised a second conference of union and corporative studies in Ferrara. The meeting took place between 5 and 8 May 1932 and the participants were 684. Unlike the meeting of 1930, this time economic issues found more space: in addition to Gino Arias’s report (“L’economia sociale corporativa nella storia del pensiero politico” [The corporative social economy in the history of political thought]), other reports were also presented, including that of Filippo Carli (“Le crisi economiche e l’ordinamento corporativo della produzione” [The economic crises and the corporative system of production]), Carlo Emilio Ferri (“Relazioni economiche con l’estero e 4 It

is worth mentioning that Arias collaborated in the drafting of the Labour Charter (Ottonelli 2012, 229–231) and was the author of an in-depth commentary on the document (Arias 1929b). 5 During the conference two communications on economic subjects were also presented: one by Celestino Arena (“La corporazione come complesso economico” [The corporation as an economic whole]) and one by the lawyer Stefano Maria Cutelli (“L’ordinamento corporativo e l’economia nazionale” [The corporative system and the national economy]).

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politica commerciale nell’ordinamento corporativo” [Foreign economic relations and trade policy in the corporative system]) and Arrigo Serpieri (“Economia corporativa e agricoltura” [Corporative economy and agriculture]). As is well known, the report that raised most interest—as well as fierce objections—was that of Ugo Spirito, to which we will return later. However, it is worth noting that among the speakers there were some academics (such as Spirito and Carli, but also the jurists Arnaldo Volpicelli and Guido Zanobini) who taught at the School of Corporative Studies established by Bottai in 1928 in Pisa, and annexed to the Faculty of Law of the local university. The latter constituted, in many ways, a real “laboratory” of fascist corporatism in the most integral sense, and less inclined to compromise with traditional economic and legal sciences (Amore Bianco 2012). Arias’s report was largely devoted to the historical and doctrinal foundations of corporative economics, in an explicit attempt to transfer to corporatism the moral principles underlying the Thomistic tradition. After reaffirming the subordination of economics to politics, he stated that corporative economics was in continuity with the tradition of Greek–Roman ethical and political thought, altered since the eighteenth century by the progressive spread of materialistic and utilitarian doctrines and of the pseudo-scientific ideologies that fascism had the merit of denouncing and rejecting. Corporative Economics, Arias said, was “first of all, economics subordinate to politics – the ‘architectural’ science of Aristotelian thought – just as politics, in turn, is linked to ethics and depends on it” (Arias 1932, 100). From this it follows that the state and the individual, even in economic relations, “do not get confused, but are recomposed in the unity of the social order, which requires and sanctions the pre-eminence of the ‘all over the part’ and the subordination of the individual to Society. The ‘dualism’, which a vain dialectic would claim to suppress, remains, but is not antithesis, it is synthesis. The unity between the state and the individual is recomposed in the state or corporative consciousness, necessary and sufficient to form the synthesis and to maintain the autonomy of its terms” (Arias 1932, 101). The reaffirmed primacy of moral criteria over political choices, and the subordination of economics to “political science”, once again raised the

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general question of the scientific method that should characterise the economic science. It was precisely on this point that some economists, such as Lello Gangemi and Guglielmo Masci (professors of Political Economy at the Universities of Rome and Naples), addressed their criticism during the discussion: if the former openly denounced the confusion made by Arias between economic science and economic policy—stressing that economists “do not pretend to transform a pure logical scheme, which has shown and still shows vast possibilities of theoretical and practical applications, into a system of rules that governments should apply at all times and in all places”6 (Ministero delle Corporazioni 1932, vol. III, 68)—Masci articulated a more structured reflection on the possibility of building a “science” of corporative economics, putting forward the argument that “traditional” individualistic and utilitarian economics could be “a starting point for the construction of this broader and more complex science” (Ministero delle Corporazioni 1932, vol. III, 69–70). The focus of Masci’s reply was, in essence, on the question of the scientific method: like other scientific disciplines, economics—including, therefore, “corporative” economics—could not ignore simplified problems and theoretical schematisation; the scientific method necessarily proceeded by means of induction and deduction and no methodology could avoid formulating principles and hypotheses, and isolating the phenomena that took shape in the economic sphere, examining the conditions operating on them. In open contradiction with what Arias had argued, Masci maintained that “with the traditional economic-individualistic presupposition, a science has been constructed: it is a system of laws that translate only a part of reality”, but he thought it plausible that “alongside the traditional individualistic-utilitarian presupposition, which takes into account, in essence, only the interests of actual individuals, other presuppositions can usefully be added, from the scientific point of view, including, as is too obvious, those pertaining to the action of the state in the sphere of economic life”. The science of corporative economics had not yet been fully constructed and the so-called “traditional economics”, i.e. 6 It

is worth recalling that the same polemical stance towards Arias and towards the theorists of “integral” corporative economics, understood as denial of the hedonistic principles found at the basis of human action, was also made explicit by Gangemi in an article published that same year in the Giornale degli economisti e rivista di statistica (Gangemi 1932).

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classical economics and its subsequent developments, could not avoid “representing one of its constituent elements and its necessary starting point” (Ministero delle Corporazioni 1932, vol. III, 72). Through the controversy on method, the assumption that was at the root of integral corporatism—on which also corporatists of other scientific orientations, such as Arias, converged—i.e. the identity between politics and economy, was undermined. And it was through the latter argument that the conception of an economic science alien to political and moral contaminations was to be cancelled. This controversy accompanied the whole debate that took place in the thirties around corporative economics, without arriving at a univocal and definitive solution to the question. However, the paper that caused more sensation was the one presented by Ugo Spirito, who at that time was teaching Political and Corporative Economics at the School of Corporative Sciences in Pisa. For Spirito, the antinomy between the individual and the state could only be overcome when there was an effective fusion between capital and labour (Spirito 1932). The obstacle to achieving this goal was identified by Spirito in the persistence of the breakdown of society into classes, a circumstance which prevented the implementation of a fully “integral” corporative structure of society. The proof was given precisely by the legal recognition of trade unions by fascism: “For the moment corporatism is not integral – wrote Spirito – there is trade unionism next to it. This means that the distinction of classes is not completely surpassed” (Spirito 1932, 187). The presence of trade unions—which allowed the survival of the dichotomy between employers and workers—constituted, in fact, a legitimisation of the economic and social dualism on which liberal society was founded, and undermined the attempt of fascism to build the corporative state. The latter, in fact, could not limit itself to guaranteeing, from the outside, the existence of mechanisms of conciliation between classes, but had to resolve the social conflict internally. The thesis of the “proprietary corporation” put forward by Spirito aimed at achieving this objective, which could be reached after the extinction of the union in the corporation: the capital of the joint-stock companies, following the transformation of the latter into corporations, was to be distributed among the workers (company directors, clerks,

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workers), who would become the owners of the corporation–enterprise. The state, at this point, would no longer need to proceed with extemporary and unsystematic interventions in the economic field, i.e. it would no longer be “extrinsic” to the corporation, and the corporative structure would become truly “integral”, removing the market mechanisms, individual initiative and private property, which had not been questioned by the fascist legal system. The proposal of the “proprietary corporation” cost Spirito the charge of crypto-Bolshevism and provoked strong negative reactions, which continued even after the conclusion of the conference, and led to a rift in relationships between Bottai—who had been the main architect of corporatism—and Spirito himself (Perfetti 1988). It was Bottai himself who also played an important role in the organisation of the Italo-French conference held in Rome from 20 to 23 May 1935, the last one in which the reasons for corporatism were discussed in depth. The meeting, which was organised to allow scholars, intellectuals and French political militants to approach the themes of fascist corporatism, reflected the political rapprochement between the two countries, well highlighted by the Mussolini-Laval agreements signed the previous January. On the Italian side, a large group of trade unionists took part in the conference, while academic economists included only Ugo Spirito and Francesco Vito, professor of Political Economy at the Milan Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. The French delegation, composed of 26 members, mainly represented the groups “Ordre Nouveau”, “Homme Nouveau” and “Esprit”, and the magazines L’Homme réel and XXe siècle. Despite the heterogeneity of their cultural and ideological identities, most of the French delegates had a lineage that could be traced back to Sorelianism and revolutionary syndicalism, and indeed a considerable part of the congress was devoted to an attempt to reconcile the corporatist doctrine with the approach of syndicalism. This endeavour was facilitated by the fact that the final sessions of the conference were chaired by Edmondo Rossoni, then Minister of Agriculture, who came from the ranks of revolutionary syndicalism. The speeches of the two Italian economists, therefore, were partially divergent from the orientation taken by the debate. Spirito, in his address, proposed a vision

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of fascism and corporatism as a continuation of the French Revolution and, at the same time, its reversal in a new synthesis, thanks to which the goal of freedom would be achieved by surpassing the individualstate dichotomy and, in the economic field, the dualism between public and private initiative (Parlato 1990, 130–135). Vito, on the other hand, polemicised with Gaëtan Pirou and Jean Lescure, two of the most appreciated French economists of the period, who had published some critical essays on corporatism, accusing the latter of leading to the establishment of a dictatorial regime and of being less effective, in terms of regulation of production, of an economic order based on cartels (Parlato 1990, 166–168).7 Despite the intentions of the Italian organisers, the issue of corporatism remained substantially at the margins of discussions, and the contribution of the two economists was not particularly incisive. In this sense, the Italian-French conference of 1935 appears emblematic of the changing atmosphere that, from this year on, emerged around the issue of corporatism: while the university reform promoted by the Minister of National Education Cesare Maria De Vecchi in the same year weakened its centrality in the university teaching systems, in public debate the discussion showed a progressive detachment on the part of scholars, including economists. In the second half of the decade, the most significant attempts to revitalise the public discussion were made by the student organisations—above all, the GUFs—although the start of the autarkic policy, precisely since 1935, led to a tangible subordination of corporative issues to the contingent needs linked to the reorganisation both of the internal economy and of the economic and financial relationships with the international market. It was precisely the initiative of the GUFs that led to the organisation of three significant conferences. In April 1939 and 1940 the Milan Istituto per gli Studi Corporativi e Autarchici (Institute for Corporative and Autarkic Studies), created by some university groups, organised two national conferences of autarkic studies—attended by scholars of corporative economics, trade unionists, company managers and 7 Lescure

(1934) published a book entitled Le nouveau régime corporatif italien, and Pirou (1935) a book on Le corporatisme.

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entrepreneurs—with the aim of adapting the economic science to the “corporative and autarkic reality of the country”. In the First National Conference of Autarkic Studies,8 it was specified that corporatism and autarky could be considered as two successive moments of the fascist economy; in fact, autarky, far from being considered as a fallback imposed by international sanctions or by the world economic crisis, constituted a necessary aspect of the corporative system: … an unfailing concurrent and confluent force for the purpose of corporatism. If, on the one hand, the progressive affirmation of corporative economics has shown that the new economic orientation could not be reconciled with some classical principles of economics, […] on the other hand, the influence of corporatism on the use of wealth and the employment of national labour has led, as a logical and necessary completion of the system, to autarky. (Autarchia 1939, 35)

This last analysis was reiterated by Carlo Emilio Ferri in his paper (“La scienza economica e l’autarchia” [Economics and Autarky]), in which he drew attention to “the autarkic consciousness of the economic science [which] reveals itself in the increasingly numerous and organic attempts to trace general principles that justify autarky as a permanent demand arising from the very nature of economic activity, within the vast framework of a modern nation” (Autarchia 1939, 36). Autarky, in the end, was “the definitive and terminal manifestation” of corporative economics, as demonstrated by Manlio D’Ambrosio, professor of Political Economy at the University of Naples, with his original theory of “functional economics”, again presented at the conference. The paper by Giovanni Demaria, professor at the Bocconi University of Milan, focused on the theory of complementary clearings in the framework of autarkic economics, and allowed Ferri to reaffirm that the autarkic doctrine and the theory of comparative costs should avoid solving the problems inherent in comparative costs, and link themselves to the assumptions of the corporatism, which were to be sought “in the ends of the nation on the political ground, ends that economics accepts as data, to which to 8 Among

the academic economists who took part in this conference were Carlo Emilio Ferri, Francesco Vito, Jacopo Mazzei, Manlio D’Ambrosio, Giovanni Demaria and Libero Lenti.

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refer the problems of the means necessary to achieve these same ends” (Autarchia 1939, 40).9 The Second National Conference of Autharkic Studies also saw the participation of numerous academic economists.10 In general—and to a greater extent than the previous year’s conference—the topics concerned the relationship between the autarkic economy and foreign trade and the conference took place in a particular climate, marked by Italy’s imminent entry into the war, which undoubtedly conditioned its progress. In the various papers presented, the discussion on corporatism was, at best, absolutely marginal and often totally absent. Some considerations on the corporatist organisation of the economy—even though characterised by mainly propaganda intentions—can be found instead in the last conference that we consider appropriate to mention in this section, organised by the GUF of Turin in January 1941, in the middle of the war and, in particular, at a time when the war operations seemed favourable to the Axis nations.11 However, economists and academics did not attend the conference, which focused on the future political and economic structure of Europe.

9 International

economics was also at the centre of the papers by Jacopo Mazzei, professor of economics at the University of Florence, and Libero Lenti, professor of statistics at the Bocconi University of Milan. Mazzei developed an analysis of comparative cost theories, contesting the prevailing outcomes that associated it with free trade policy, and came to the conclusion that under certain circumstances a country could benefit from withdrawing from the international market and focusing on autarkic production. Lenti, on the other hand, intervened on the impact that the autarkic policy would have on Italian international trade. 10 Besides Alberto De’ Stefani, who took the presidency of the section, Jacopo Mazzei, Antonio Fossati, Guglielmo Masci, Celestino Arena, Carlo Pagni, Francesco Parrillo, Gino Barbieri and Manlio D’Ambrosio presented papers (Autarchia 1940). 11 National conference of economic and social studies on “Orientamenti dell’Economia nell’Europa Fascista” [Economic Tendencies in Fascist Europe], Turin, 13–14 January 1941. The conference was divided into five sections: (1) Principles of economic reconstruction; (2) Organisation of living spaces; (3) Corporative developments; (4) Monetary and financial perspectives; and (5) Social goals of the economic reconstruction.

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Corporatism and the International “New Order”

When Italy entered the war, the country’s position within the international Neu Ordnung that seemed to be emerging became a matter of urgency. The Italian economy, and the corporatism that should have guided it, came up against new and challenging problems. There was the need to define the respective “hegemonic economic areas” with Germany, to regulate relations between the two areas and, finally, to plan the division of labour between the countries within the two economic areas. These problems were at the centre of two important conferences: the conference of the above mentioned Fascist Youth organised in Turin in January 1941 and the famous conference on the “new order” held in Pisa in May 1942. Already lurking behind the boilerplate declarations against traditional political economy and its “pretentious logic of integrals and differential equations” (Solaro 1941b, 18) was the fear, also among the scholars closest to the regime, of being totally subordinate, both politically and economically, to the German ally.12 The Mediterranean basin, heart of the economic area that seemed to be reserved for Italy, was perceived more as a probable prison than an opportunity for development (Solaro 1941b). Furthermore, the situation created through the war called for revision of some of the watchwords that had marked fascist economic policy, including autarky. Obviously, extending the policy of autarky to “minor” countries within the hegemonic spaces, implying a policy of ISI—Import Substitution Industrialisation—, would reduce the economic influence of the leader country.

12 “It

is now easy to see through the uselessness, indeed the inanity, of the distinction between living space and economic space made by comrade Alfieri along the lines of certain German scholars. The distinction is clearly intended as justification: as long as the Axis was limited to the nearer and colonial territories (inferior economies), the legality of the action was summed up with living spaces; with extension over a vaster area with greater objectives, economic space was evoked like legitimation of a natural son (occupation of Nations with advanced economies but in rapid decline). At this rate one might even go as far as justifying rule of a single Power over all the earth as world space” (Solaro 1941a, 164). On these aspects, see also Collotti (2002), Amore Bianco (2018).

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Significantly enough, the same conference saw references to the practical consequences of the different demand elasticities between agricultural goods and manufacturing, with the countries producing the latter enjoying greater bargaining power than the others (Solaro 1941a). The problem for Italy, then, seemed to be to prevent its own economic area from specialising in providing primary products to the German economic sphere, limiting industrial development to the national territory alone. No less urgent appeared the problems regarding the monetary and financial arrangements of the “New Order”. Nazi Germany was formulating a plan, outlined in the famous speech by Walter Funk on 25 July 1940, that entailed the progressive elimination of the gold standard and transition to a “labour-backed currency”.13 The characteristics of the new monetary system were—and would remain—vague.14 On these issues, a very particular contribution was made by Innocenzo Gasparini, a pupil of Giovanni Demaria, who was to play a maverick role in the conference at Pisa the following year. Gasparini began by identifying the three functions of gold: covering the internal circulating medium, regulating exchange and covering balance of payments deficits. On the limitations involved in the first of these, Gasparini had no qualms about evoking the general contribution offered by Keynes on the possibilities of achieving monetary stability with a managed currency.15 Autarky, with the inevitable increase in production costs and the high wages necessary to guarantee a market for domestic production, would also compromise the working of the second function of gold. There remained the role of settling balance of payments deficits, reserved for exceptional circumstances.

13 See

Fonzi (2011). aspect emerged clearly even in publications close to the regime, cf. the articles in Gerarchia: Pavese (1939), Passardi (1940). 15 “It was precisely in the field of stability, the acknowledged prerogative of gold, that Keynes had to launch a serious attack. He asserted that price stability can be achieved with paper currency, the means being both adjustments of the discount rate and open market operations. Essentially, the quantity of circulating medium must be determined on the basis of the conditions of exchange, of the labour market, of the discount policy and of the issue of Treasury Bonds” (Gasparini 1941a, 84). 14This

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However, Gasparini had no hesitation in pointing out the practical difficulties that the adoption of a labour-backed currency would raise for monetary control,16 provoking reactions from the fascist hardliners.17 Besides abandonment of the gold standard, Funk’s plan also involved a further extension of the clearing system that had developed in the course of the previous decade.18 Here, too, the position shown by the most clear-sighted Italian scholars like Silvio Golzio were far from enthusiastic: If evaluation of prices in gold can play a part in determining less favourable trading relations for the markets poor in metal, the dangers of unfavourable relations are by no means less with a bilateral or, possibly, multilateral clearing system in which the ‘strongest market’ can obtain them through the twofold adjustment of the prices at source or imposed on imported and exported goods, and exchange rates differentiated on the basis of countries and products. (Golzio 1941, 146)

In this context, what role was to be reserved for corporatism? Actually, over and above the boilerplate formulas on the corporative capacity for “economic mobilisation”, it was, at some time in a future yet to be defined, to have the task of reducing the social inequalities which plagued capitalist economies.19 The following year, on the occasion of the conference on the new order in Pisa, Jacopo Mazzei proposed corporatism as the answer to the “social question”, acknowledging its basic theoretical and practical irrelevance to

16 “What

is the quantitative limit to labour-backed currency? Inevitably, the first step will be to consider labour not in its potential state, but as employed in the production of tradable goods, i.e. the labour that produces wealth” (Gasparini 1941b, 97). 17 In the discussions following upon the presentation of Gasparini’s report, Giuseppe Solaro, a future outstanding figure in the RSI (Italian Social Republic)—the puppet state created after 8 September—affirmed in support of the labour-backed currency: “We support the labour-backed currency not only because Italy and Germany are rich in labour forces. We support it above all because it fits into the framework of our entire ideology aiming to remove in toto the economy of the people from the impersonal control of technicality and the financial combines and gold monometallism have found the most favourable conditions to thrive” (Gasparini 1941b, 97). 18 On the subject, see League of Nations (1935, Id. 1945), Nyboe Andersen (1946), Tribe (1995, 241–262). 19The aims of the cooperative systems were to be “social justice, shortening of distances, family wages and demographic increase” (Zaccagnini 1941, 107).

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international economic relations (Mazzei 1942, 485).20 From this point of view, the conference in Pisa took the form of an attempt to answer the unsettled questions raised at the conference in Turin, and, in the first place, the definition of the respective spheres of economic influence, with a major contribution offered by Corrado Gini.21 The trend towards the formation of autarkic territorial entities—potentially risky if taken too far22 —was seen, on the one hand, as the result of political choices (autarky as support for power politics), and on the other hand as a natural evolution towards “complex” economic systems.23 Taking the creation of two areas under Italian and German leadership as finally settled after Walther Funk’s speech in October 1941, the Italian scholar saw as their most probable economic objective the attainment of a “satisfactory autarky”. Gini’s hypotheses, presented in the two Tables 2 and 3, calibrated in accordance with different political scenarios and different degrees of economic self-sufficiency, convey an idea of the megalomaniac dreams that fuelled the Axis in mid-1942.

20 Dino Gardini, clearly no anti-fascist, wrote at the same conference: “Are we really sure that the criticisms made in good faith have done more harm than the praise lavished on it?” (Gardini 1942, 99). Yet more severe was Federico Maria Pacces, a scholar of business administration and a fascist from the outset who, on the occasion of a conference on economic planning held in two stages in Rome—in November 1942 and April 1943—observed that “one of the reasons for the good fortune of the word corporatism lies in the fact that each has seen in the corporations what he wanted to see” (Melis 1997, 86) and “If today, with the advantage of a certain detachment, several years having passed since these discussions were indeed heated, we look at the doctrinaire constructions that have been attempted in the field of economics, I believe we can conclude that these doctrinaire constructions have been made more in a spirit of indulging in a political approach than out of the personal convictions of the scholars. This can account for two facts that have always been extremely worrying. The first is the scarcity and poverty of this cooperative economic doctrine, the second the fact that whenever in the course of our duties we have our daily meetings with young people, we see that there is a distance between the best of them and these studies, because the young do not feel this need and this political indulgence” (Melis 1997, 234). 21 On Corrado Gini cf. Cassata (2006). 22 “If achieving the desirable autarky costs so much as to permanently impoverish the nation, the possibility cannot be ruled out at the result of a policy of autarky will be not to enhance but enfeeble its resistance” (Gini 1942, 232). For a lucid analysis of the limits to autarky, see Jannaccone (1940). 23The concept of “complex economy” developed by the French economist Lucien Brocard was adopted and further developed in Italy by Francesco Vito, cf. Vito (1935).

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Table 2 The various “economic areas” hypothesised under Italian control

Source Gini (1942, 236)

The viewpoint on optimal economic areas offered by Manlio Resta was completely different from Gini’s. Instead of considering the possible inflow of raw materials and manufactures from the various countries for the diverse levels expected for self-sufficiency, Resta started from the assumption that the optimal area was the one that could offer returns on their factors of production equal to their marginal productivity. This hypothesis, clearly derived from the thoroughly detested and abovementioned “economics of differential equations”, led Resta to criticise the fascist population policy, which was one of the cornerstones of the regime’s propaganda. The steady increase in labour supply would worsen

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Table 3 The various “economic areas” hypothesised under German control

Source Gini (1942, 242)

conditions for the working classes, with scant hope of improving production and with a probable increase in production costs (Resta 1942, 300–301). And yet neither Gini’s nor Resta’s report offered any indications regarding the division of labour to be established between the two hegemonic areas. From this point of view, the problem for Italy was to prevent technological dependence on Germany from growing into adverse specialisation between the areas under Italian and German control. This entailed two consequences: on the one hand, to support autarky as a standard condition for trade between the two areas, limiting trade to outputs related to climatic and geological conditions; on the other hand, to ask that, in order to fuel the war effort, no constraints be placed on

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technological transfers from Germany.24 This approach was endorsed by Carlo Pagni in his report to the Pisa conference, envisaging a tendential autarky between the Italian and German economic areas.25 However, Pagni added a solution to regulate relations within the single areas. Autarky, the keystone of the fascist corporative economic system, could not be implemented within the individual countries, for it entailed the risk of weakening the hegemonic capacity of the leader country. For this reason, the principle of comparative costs, hitherto opposed as one of the most dangerous elements in individualistic economics, was revived.26 As Pagni wrote: “Within the scope of each great area, trade will prove the more intensive and fruitful the more the hegemonic states are able to organise their own production and that of the satellite countries in such a way that the specialisation matches the effective natural capacities” (Pagni 1942, 269, italics added).27 Thus, within the single economic area, the theory of comparative costs was presented as the theoretical means to justify the role of the supplier of industrial products to the leader country and that of primary and intermediate goods to the satellite countries,28 albeit within a highly original framework of “multinational hierarchical solidarity” (Travaglini 1942, 139). The reshaping of international relations could not be accomplished without addressing the issue of the future monetary system. The Pisa conference showed the general consensus on the marginal role that gold was to play in the “new order”.29 Far less unanimous was the judgement 24 “Nationalistic

separatism for patents would be incompatible with a continental corporative basis if we are to conceive of it as an ethical reality and not an agglomerate of materialisms” (Note editoriali 1941, 677). 25 “Within the greater area considered as a whole, on the other hand, autarky will have the right to citizenship precisely because the greater area tends to be a complete economic unit. Unless the idea is of formal agreements between the various great areas (an idea not borne out by the contents of the established programmes), specialisation and integration will apply only within each great area, and all the great areas will seek to ensure themselves the maximum degree of autonomy” (Pagni, 269–270). 26 Allow me refer readers to Bientinesi (2011). 27 Significantly enough, in another contribution Volrico Travaglini observed that the Ricardian principle had “come back into fashion” (Travaglini 1942, 169). 28 Fiaccadori (1942). 29 Both Gambino (1943) and D’Albergo (1943) limited movements of gold to balance of payments settlements with the Asian and American areas. D’Albergo foresaw a general reduction

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on the monetary system that was to replace the gold standard. From this point of view, Francesco Vito’s report took on a central role. The asymmetries in economic relations certainly had nothing to do with the gold standard,30 the malfunctioning of which in the aftermath of the First World War had been caused—according to Vito—by the protectionist measures that had stood in the way of free movement of goods and capital. Whatever monetary system would be chosen to replace gold, it should, in any case, guarantee stability either in exchange or in domestic prices. Could the so-called labour-backed currency comply with these needs? Vito’s answer was trenchant: The importance that labour takes on with the new monetary policy would appear to justify use of the expression ‘labour-backed currency’. This, after all, is the only plausible meaning that can be attributed to that phrase. To use the phrase ‘labour-backed currency’ with the sense that the purchasing power of the unit of currency will be based on a given quantity of labour (as in the gold standard it is based on a given weight of fine gold) is simply absurd. Nor can it be more meaningful to explain that national labour constitutes the guarantee for the purchasing power of the currency; it is, in fact, evident that, the labour performed by the community remaining equal, the purchasing power of the unit of currency can fall considerably if the quantity of circulating medium increases out of all proportion with the mass of existing goods. (Vito 1943, 186)

In explicit contrast with Vito’s position was the stance taken by Giuseppe Zuccoli, delegated by the Confederation of Credit Companies and destined to become one of the top directors of Banca Commerciale Italiana. Zuccoli proposed a truly singular solution with the issue of currency being tied to the production of energy.31 in autarkic policies, diffusion of which had been justified by “a principle of vital necessity” (D’Albergo 1943, 110). The idea of using reserve currency for extra-area settlements had been raised by Coppola D’Anna (1943). Clearly, it remained to be seen what reserve currency should be established in the context of the “new order”. 30 “It is undeniable that such abuses will always be liable to occur given imperfect human nature whatever the kind of international monetary system, until positive measures are in place with guarantees for true international collaboration” (Vito 1943, 170). 31 “‘It does not appear, indeed, that one can simply postulate the absurdity of the attempt to define the exact unit and quantity of labour that might serve as term of reference for

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The issue of the post-war monetary regime was bound up with the problem of the future of international trade relations. As we have seen, the 1930s had seen the clearing system spreading in response to the scarcity of international means of payment. Germany had made of this system a highly effective vehicle for propaganda, upholding it against the gold standard. Coppola D’Anna contemplated the possibility of adopting the clearing exchange relations as a basis for a future system of exchange for currencies not convertible into gold. These relations had, however, been based, with various empirical adjustments, on situations with which the war had played havoc.32 Decidedly more drastic was the position taken by Antonio Gambino, who condemned labour-backed currency and clearing alike: Far more serious than those now considered are the problems that arise with the adoption of labour-backed currency at the international level. Indeed, we must acknowledge that the common and, indeed, prevalent opinion that unconvertible paper currency could only give rise to an international clearing system has certainly not endowed the labourbacked currency with prestige and trustworthiness. The snags and shortcomings of such a system are, in fact, generally recognised, especially in its original form of bilateral clearing. (Gambino 1943, 146)

The shortcomings of the clearing system were perfectly evident to the eyes of Giovanni Demaria, by far and large the most critical contributor

the purchasing power of the unit of currency’ (Vito). It is perfectly understandable that it would be illusory to seek it in a mean of wages in particular places because it would lead to a crystallisation of wages corresponding to that of the prices that would have created Irving Fisher’s “basket dollar”, but it does not seem impossible that a basis for the currency unit can be found in something representing labour accumulated and labour directly applied, such as the “kilowatt hour of electric energy”, taken in certain conditions and quantities. It would represent in a large percentage labour accumulated in relation to hydroelectric energy, but mainly directly in relation to the thermoelectric energy produced with coal. It would in any case still represent labour, and it would be the basis of the unit of value in terms of a product whose expansion proceeds pari passu with the expansion of the productive activity. Nor would it appear reasonable to reject this basis of unit of measure on account of the variability of the production of electric energy considering that the production of the metal that we have so far used as basis to measure values has more than tripled in the last 40 years” (Zuccoli 1943, 189). 32 Cf. Coppola D’Anna (1943).

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to the Pisa conference—so critical, in fact, that his speech was not published.33 Demaria had identified the mechanisms through which clearing exchanges were likely to amplify what Albert O. Hirschman would call the “influence effect”.34 In the course of the conference he not only confirmed his views, but launched a frontal attack to fascist economic policy as a whole, to its underlying assumptions and the proposals for the “New Order”. Demaria deemed overly unrealistic and harmful both the continental autarky to be achieved through clearing agreements,35 and the supranational agreements between productive cartels.36 By contrast, with a good deal of courage, he proposed the “Anglo-Saxon industrial world” as a model, based on the “private responsibility and initiative of all the economic forces” (Demaria 1951, 479). The solutions Demaria envisioned to boost Italian industrial development in the aftermath of the war were the exact opposite of those discussed in the conference: an end to autarky, production oriented to international demand in accordance with the country’s competitive advantages, resort to the international financial markets, reduction of wages and increase in productivity. Demaria’s contribution was accused of “relying on Judaic economics” and was not included in the two volumes published on the Pisan conference.37 The confidential report on the episode written for Mussolini and later published by Demaria himself, concluded:

33 Cf.

Pavanelli and Porta (1995). Hirschman (1945), Demaria (1939). 35 “The absurd outcome would be that no country would look to autarky within its borders but all would depend on one another in order to achieve continental autarky. This dependence would be of negligible importance for the big countries but would become intolerable for the small ones” (Demaria 1951, 476). 36 “The advocates of this solution for the industrial reorganisation of Europe totally fail to notice that it would automatically give rise to a difference in individual wages, tenors of life and individual and collective fortunes as utterly unjustified as it would be unbearable. The serious danger of the authoritarian solution with international cartels in the first project is, then, that the European economy would move in the direction of forms of economic planning proving oppressive for the single countries” (Demaria 1951, 478–479). 37The charge was made by Guido Menegazzi, a scholar close to Alberto De’ Stefani, cf. the report by Carlo Alberto Biggini, dean of the University of Pisa and director of the School of Higher Studies in corporative disciplines to Mussolini, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, fondo Segreteria particolare del Duce, carteggio ordinario, 509.741/3. A third volume on the proceedings of the Pisan conference had been planned but was never published. 34 Cf.

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A superficial observer might receive the impression that Demaria’s previously mentioned contribution destroys corporatism. I am inclined to believe that, despite being incompatible with the principles of corporatism, it is the result of a salutary reaction to deviations of a twofold nature. At times – as I have said – our economic policy may have departed from the very principles of corporatism, while it is not clear to everyone – as it ought to be – that the picture of the country in wartime do not correspond to that of the country in victorious peace. Both men of science and practical men revolt against certain tendencies towards extreme forms of oppressive and carking control that might even turn preference towards collectivist solutions. As Celestino Arena pointed out, the corporative order was made to shift and eliminate strains from the economic organism, not to create new ones. It was made to stimulate and encourage the action of individuals, not to stifle it and render it sterile. It was made to promote all the energies of men’s labour, initiative and intelligence, far from the oppression and imperiousness of the plutocratic, super-capitalistic world that indeed our Regime rose up against, creating the corporative system. (Demaria 1951, 501–502)

A magnificent example of doublethink.

3

The Conference on “Economic Planning”

The Pisa Conference constituted the premise for the debate on “The economic plan” that was held in Rome from 24 to 26 November 1942 at the National Institute of Fascist Culture (INCF), chaired by Camillo Pellizzi. Actually, the meeting was more like a study workshop than a full-fledged conference. It saw the participation, among others, of Paolo Fortunati, Giuseppe Bruguier Pacini, Ugo Spirito, Guido Carli, Giovanni De Francisci Gerbino, Jacopo Mazzei, Francesco Vito, Federico M. Pacces, Ferdinando Pasini and Pietro Onida. A second session followed in April 1943, dedicated to further study of the issues that had emerged in the earlier meetings. Both occasions saw discussion, often quite heated, of the theoretical aporias of corporatism, but above all debate revolved around the future post-war pattern of the Italian economy, with the contrast between planning and market economy as the central issue.

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The economists invited by Pellizzi were of markedly different political–cultural and scientific leanings, in some cases not shared by the president of the Institute himself. As he would write some years later, Pellizzi had made this choice “because in the ‘historical vacuum’ that had been created he preferred to offer an arena for these old positions that, ‘faute de mieux’, where re-emerging, in the hope that something new and positive might come out of it. It was by now clear that fascism had outlined, but not actually launched, the corporative development of the social structures”.38 The hope for something “new” expressed by Pellizzi derived from the awareness that the contemporary economy had to varying degrees tried out processes of production planning which, while distorting the economic underlying of the capitalist countries, had also introduced evident aporias into the Italian corporative model. Thus it was a question of getting down to addressing the whole issue of planning, without eschewing an unbiased look at the Soviet Union, which had first applied it. Significantly enough, Pellizzi entrusted the report on planning to Paolo Fortunati, professor of Statistics at the University of Bologna (Prévost 2014), who had secretly adhered since 1941 to the Italian Communist Party.39 The planning issue had emerged on various occasions in the 1930s (Barucci 1972, 1325–1331; Melis 1997, 16), but it was precisely during the war years that attention turned more insistently to this option. In particular, in the course of the Pisa conference at least two contributions had addressed the subject of planning. The first, clearly showing greater scientific rigorousness, was by Cesare Dami, who presented to the conference a detailed overview of the literature that had dealt with planning (Dami 1942).40 The second one came from someone who did 38 A

letter from Pellizzi to Fortunati, 27 February 1955, published in Breschi and Longo (2003, 184). 39 In 1941 Fortunati approached the clandestine organisation of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in Bologna, participating in the intellectual group “Antonio Labriola”, a politically varied group of anti-fascists (with Communist, Socialist, Catholic and republican militants) which clandestinely published from July 1944 to March 1945 a journal entitled Tempi nuovi. After the war he was elected senator for the PCI in the first five terms. 40 As from 1941, Dami was secretly enrolled in the Italian Communist Party. On 15 September 1943 he enrolled in the Brigate Garibaldi and took part in the fight of resistance against Nazi-fascism. He was elected to Parliament in the first and third terms of the Italian Republic

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not belong to academia, namely the Lombard industrialist Giuseppe Giacoma (1942), who proposed a model explicitly oriented towards the planning of national production, based on a new institution called the Economic Regulatory Body, whose characteristics and objectives had already been outlined in a volume published in 1940 (Giacoma 1940). The issue loomed large once again in the course of the 41st Congress of the Italian Society for the Progress of Sciences, held in Rome from 27 September to 21 October 1942. The session on “Legal and Social Sciences”, presided over by Giuseppe Ugo Papi, was in fact dedicated to the subject of planning and the possibility or impossibility of combining economic planning with free private enterprise. Noteworthy here was the contribution by Papi, who returned to a proposal he had already advanced in an article published the same year (Papi 1942), arguing that planning would inevitably lead to private enterprise being subjected to the control of state bureaucracy, while the plan should have “defended ” private initiative “from any illogical pressure that events might exert” (Zaganella 2015, 73–75). Giuseppe Di Nardi—a pupil of Demaria— took an even bolder position, asserting both the incompatibility between an economic system that contemplated freedom of economic enterprise and a planned economy, and the intrinsic instability of the latter. If planned economy were to function properly, it would be necessary for the central authority to have constantly at hand all the data on individual psychology (utility functions and demand curves) and the technicaleconomic organisation of the enterprises (production functions), and follow their variability over time so as to be able constantly to adapt the general plan to the variations arising in tastes and in the combinations of production coefficients due both to the effect of technical progress and the selection continually introduced by the competition of the entrepreneurs. (Di Nardi 1943)

But the state, according to Di Nardi, could not obtain such information. During the Congress, Paolo Fortunati’s ideas on planning met the among the members of the Communist Party. At the end of the war, in 1945 and 1946 he published two articles about planning in the Communist-leaning journal Società (Dami 1945, 1946).

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irritated reactions from all those attending the Conference, with the sole exceptions of Papi, Di Nardi and Attilio Da Empoli.41 Fortunati returned on the issue in his opening speech at the INCF conference of November 1942. Here Fortunati started from the consideration that, in view of the international scenario that would emerge at the end of the war, the partial and sectorial planning that came in during the 1930s as a consequence of the experimental transformations of the world productive and industrial systems in the aftermath of the First World War would call for a specific regulation that could only be brought in by instituting a national plan. According to Fortunati, fascism had failed to close “its destructive-constructive cycle, also on account of the programmed graduality” of the policies it had brought in42 : nevertheless, the ongoing war inescapably called for a solution to the problem facing all modern revolutions, namely “to resolve political self-government into political life and economic self-government, taking into account the needs of coordination implied by the complexity of the lives of enormous masses of humans”. With corporatism the self-discipline of society organised in economic categories had been achieved but, Fortunati pointed out, “self-discipline is not [political-economic] self-government”; the latter did not mean “trade for the tradesmen, agriculture for the farmers, industry for the industrialists, but means that the political-economic life of the national community, from the periphery to centre, is regulated by united representative bodies in which all the producers – and all the members of all the categories are equally producers – steer all production”.43 Only through planning would it be possible to modify the distribution of income—which Fortunati considered “the pivot of the economic conditions” of a nation—allowing for complete identification between producer and consumer. This identification was considered fundamental if political-economic self-government was to be achieved, and, Fortunati pointed out, constituted “the most revolutionary innovation”.44 Fortunati’s entire analysis rested on the assertion that most family incomes 41 Da Empoli rebutted Fortunati’s theories with a particularly polemical article 1943). On Da Empoli, see Bini (2012). 42 Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista (1942–1943). Contribution by Fortunati, 43 Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista (1942–1943). Contribution by Fortunati, 44 Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista (1942–1943). Contribution by Fortunati,

(Da Empoli 56. 57. 69.

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were at the very limit or below the basic needs for a decent life: according to calculations based on Confindustria45 surveys, in 1931 the average earnings of working-class families fell below the national average income. The low rate of national savings, and thus the limited amount of savings channelled towards productive investments, was precisely due to the poverty suffered by the major part of Italian population.46 The failure of the corporative regime lay precisely in these data. In practical terms—and here the proposal became decidedly vaguer— planning would be implemented through the “synthesis of successive formulations, bottom-up, from the periphery to the centre, over increasingly vast areas – municipality, province, state […] and so on up to the final, central formulation of the plan as synthesis of the peripheral proposals”47 ; in particular, the fundamental body on which the entire planning process hinged was the municipality, which should be transformed into “municipal corporation” with the task of formulating, implementing and controlling the first, fundamental stages of the plan at the local level. This progression was necessary to prevent planning from boiling down to a simple, undesirable transfer of functions from individual entrepreneurs to bureaucratic state entities. To this end, Fortunati returned to the proposal advanced some years before of a corporative registry (Fortunati 1936), that is, “a structure to record, within the family demographic environment and in connection with the demographic variations and conditions of the family unit, the economic dynamics and efficiency (contextualising production)”.48 Fortunati’s proposal was characterised by a great many undertones and reservations which made it hard to grasp at times. And indeed, with such a radical project caution was bound to get in the way of clarity. It was in fact in response to the unclear parts of the contribution that many economists taking part in the debate showed a distinct cultural distance from the proposal and although replies were not totally dismissive, the general reaction of those present was opposed to Fortunati’s scheme. 45The

Italian association of employers. Nazionale di Cultura Fascista (1942–1943). Contribution by Fortunati, 191–195. 47 Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista (1942–1943). Contribution by Fortunati, 63. 48 Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista (1942–1943). Contribution by Fortunati, 65. 46 Istituto

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The most radically hostile positions to the idea of planning were by far and away those of Francesco Vito49 and Guido Carli50 : while taking very different approaches, both contested the postulate of Fortunati’s proposal, which aimed at curtailing free private enterprise, stressing the incompatibility between a planned economy and private property. This latter observation was far from being politically and scientifically neutral since the corporative doctrine of fascism had never questioned the central importance of private property. Thus planning, as Federico Maria Pacces would point out with greater clarity in his contribution, sounded like categorical rejection of fascist corporatism, whose limits Pacces recognised in practical application, but which he had no intention of dismantling as if it were an experiment doomed to failure.51 No less clear-cut was the criticism of the Catholic economist Jacopo Mazzei, who pointed his finger at the impossibility of combining planning with one of the main objectives indicated by Fortunati, namely achieving social justice.52 The speech with the most solid theoretical contents and political weight was indisputably that of Ugo Spirito. The arguments Fortunati had advanced in his contribution echoed the positions taken a decade earlier by that philosopher. In particular, there was an evident affinity with the concepts of de-privatisation of the economic dynamics and the need to take a radically different view from that of liberal culture on the concept of private property. These were the arguments on “proprietary corporation”, i.e. corporation ownership, that, as explained above, Spirito had audaciously advanced in Ferrara in 1932 (D’Urso 2011; Martone 2006, 506–510). In his 1942 contribution, Spirito raised some critical questions about the rationale of planning, arguing that “it is an ineluctable rationale, but also a terrible rationale. The rationale of planning implies gradual timing of human life, it implies subjecting the span of a day to set laws which cannot be overridden once accepted”.53 Moreover, Spirito issued

49 Istituto

Nazionale Nazionale 51 Istituto Nazionale 52 Istituto Nazionale 53 Istituto Nazionale 50 Istituto

di di di di di

Cultura Cultura Cultura Cultura Cultura

Fascista Fascista Fascista Fascista Fascista

(1942–1943). (1942–1943). (1942–1943). (1942–1943). (1942–1943).

Contribution Contribution Contribution Contribution Contribution

by by by by by

Vito, 110–111. Carli, 91–95. Pacces, 127. Mazzei, 76–77. Spirito, 101.

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a warning to the audience, stressing that “the concept of economic programming, of an organised state regime in the present characteristic form of communist origin, is a rationalistic concept, and thus in the spirit of the Enlightenment and mechanical at the abstract level, thereby mechanizing the whole of society”,54 pointing out with this observation the political and cultural distance between the fascist doctrine and planning. Although he was convinced that the latter would inevitably characterise the post-war economic system, inevitably following along the lines of development of the communist systems, Spirito raised questions about the need to preserve an area of “freedom of contemplation” for individuals in order to break down the mechanistic rationale of the Soviet regime and defend the “typical universalistic mentality” that had constituted the fulcrum of corporatism, qualifying it as “third way” between liberalism and communism.55 During the second session of the conference, held on 5–6 April 1943, exchange of opinions on Fortunati’s proposal resumed with a certain intensity although less comprehensively than in the previous session of November. Particularly significant was the contribution by Giuseppe Di Nardi, who made explicit reference to classical economics in openly contesting the idea of planning proposed by Fortunati, and accusing him of not having given sufficient thought to the constraints linking the national to the international economy. Equally explicitly, he returned to the theme of the equilibria represented by the corporative solution, which did not leave “to the individual total and archaic freedom for his initiative [and] allowed for affirmation of the human personality”.56 Fortunati replied that “the planned economy stands today as a historic attempt to respond to the effects inherent in individual, competitive capitalistic organisation”.57 He concluded the conference by stressing that only through planning, it would be possible to succeed where both the capitalistic regimes and fascism itself had failed, namely achieving

54 Istituto

Nazionale Nazionale 56 Istituto Nazionale 57 Istituto Nazionale 55 Istituto

di di di di

Cultura Cultura Cultura Cultura

Fascista Fascista Fascista Fascista

(1942–1943). (1942–1943). (1942–1943). (1942–1943).

Contribution Contribution Contribution Contribution

by by by by

Spirito, 112. Spirito, 102–103. Di Nardi, 168. Fortunati, 173.

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substantive social equality by means of a radical modification of the mechanisms regulating income distribution. Fortunati’s attitude—and, to a certain extent, that of Pellizzi himself—can more readily be understood if seen in the light of the severe judgement, repeated in the numerous replies to the contributions of his opponents, on the failure of the market economy experienced between the two wars, a setback that, in the case of Italy, also coincided with the failure of the country’s bourgeoisie and entrepreneurial class. The explicit accusation was that the ranks of the bourgeoisie had failed to guarantee effective selection of the “national energies”, which revealed the historical failure of the Italian bourgeoisie and fascism itself. Planning, on the other hand, would have brought out the latent energies that burst out through this new system and carry along with them inventive, cultural and technical processes; in short, they will do what capitalism had done to the culture of the feudal system, with the outburst of new energies from all the ranks of social life, without taking into account an original pre-constituted family position.58

Shortly after the dramatic session of the Grand Council of Fascism on 25 July 1943—which saw Mussolini’s dismissal—Fortunati returned to this issue once again: writing to Pellizzi he claimed he had foreseen the crisis that was underway and had made its causes clear: You still refuse to believe in the failure of the Italian bourgeoisie (as an economic, cultural and technical class). It is up to the authentic workforces alone to trigger new energies and find a new Italian unity with a new ferment. Just think. You are one of the few, of the very few, that listened to me when it was all euphoria and the nation – fools!59

A few days later, Fortunati returned to the issue he had previously raised with his friend Pellizzi, coming up with a judgement on the Italian bourgeoisie and, implicitly, on fascism, which we may consider definitive: 58 Istituto 59 Lettera

Nazionale di Cultura Fascista (1942–1943). Contribution by Fortunati, 198. di Fortunati a Pellizzi, 10 August 1943 (Breschi and Longo 2003, 184).

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as things stand today, and as they have stood for decades, the great mass of rulers of Italian society have been selected solely among the bourgeoisie. […] Now this bourgeoisie has failed. Failed at the cultural level, failed at the military level. Failed, I say, as mass phenomenon and as value of the ruling classes. […] We must desperately rely on the forces of the proletariat, in the hope that the social turnover of the last thirty or forty years in Italy did not work on account of social constraints, and that there may therefore be in the proletariat sound abilities and the will to give Italy a face, a structure and a sense of direction in the framework of a new United Europe.60

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“Breaking Down the Ivory Tower”: Economic Culture in the Italian Academies Under Fascism Rosario Patalano and Marco E. L. Guidi

1

Introduction

At the level of high culture, fascist Italy became heir to the rich, complex legacy of the pre-unification political divisions which had spawned deeply differentiated local intellectual traditions. This diversity was

The authors wish to thank Matthew Armistead for carefully revising the text, and Chiara Bechelli, Elisa Cacelli, Daniela Giaconi and Raffaella Sprugnoli of Cipei—Interuniversity Centre of Documentation on Italian Economic Thought, Pisa—for kindly providing information on the academic affiliations of the Italian economists.

R. Patalano University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy e-mail: [email protected] M. E. L. Guidi (B) University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Augello et al. (eds.), An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II, Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38331-2_4

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unquestionably an obstacle to the regime’s plans to ensure the fascistification of all of Italian society, including the universities, academies and similar high cultural institutions (Morgan 2004, Chapter 6).1 Before fascism, attempts to centralise and homologate the country’s institutions of high culture had failed due to the dominance of local interests: the only noteworthy result was the single regulation for universities imposed in 1862 immediately after unification. No such measure was taken at that time with regard to local academies (at the beginning of the Fascist regime, more than fifty high-culture institutions were operating in the various regions, gathering between 8000 and 10,000 exponents of the national culture, Turi 1999: 409), but in 1923 the first step in this direction was taken with the establishment of the Union of Academies. This was followed three years later by a special Directorate General of Academies and Libraries under the Ministry of Education, and the centralising operation was completed in 1929 with the creation of the Royal Academy of Italy (see Ferrarotto 1977; Turi 2016). This was the paramount cultural institution promoting fascist ideology and championed by Benito Mussolini himself, who wanted to emulate the centralised model of the Académie Française.2 The aim, then, was to mobilise the most eminent intellectuals in support of the new regime’s aims by somehow prising them from their relatively sheltered sanctums. The traditional academies were perceived to be abstract institutions—“ivory towers” detached from the construction of a new national culture—and thus the National Fascist Party deemed

1The

fascistification process began with the Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals, published on 21 April 1925 in the major newspapers (and considered the first ideological document of the fascist element of Italian culture). It was then consolidated with the birth of the Istituto Fascista di Cultura (then Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista) in December 1925 and with the project for the publication of the Italian Encyclopaedia, started in the same year under the direction of Giovanni Gentile. Beyond the specific institutions, fascist cultural politics centred on the Press Office of the Council of Ministers (see Cannistraro 1970), transformed in 1934 into the Secretariat for Press and Propaganda, in 1935 into the Ministry for Press and Propaganda and finally in 1937, into the Ministry of Popular Culture (commonly abbreviated to MinCulPop). 2The Royal Academy of Italy was created on 7 January 1926 by royal decree but was not inaugurated until 28 October 1929.

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it necessary to transform them in a way that would oblige intellectuals throughout the country to acquiesce (Turi 1999, 404).3 As Renzo De Felice has observed: “the attitude of intellectuals is the most difficult to grasp in an authoritarian political system that—given its nature—has among its most exasperating peculiarities that of controlling, limiting and even avoiding that the avenues through which the activity of the intellectuals are carried out can develop or even reveal any opposition or criticism of the system itself ” (De Felice 1974, vol. IV, 105–106). A decisive step towards gaining complete control of all intellectual activity was taken in October 1931 when university professors were required to swear an oath of allegiance, a similar measure being introduced three years later for members of academies. 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.4 The role of economists in the high culture institutions of the fascist era has largely been overlooked by even the most assiduous historians (Isnenghi 1979; Turi 1980, 2016; see also Faucci 1990a, 195), 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.

3A

successful example of the control of scientific activity by a totalitarian state is that of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The Soviet example was followed by all Communist countries. 4 An indication of the attitude of the economists towards the regime is given by a sentence pronounced by Giovanni Demaria in 1942 at the Pisan convention on the Economic Problems of the New Order: “I close myself in the ivory tower and I say if a student shows up in my presence denying the truth of our theorems, I fail him” (Demaria 1951, 501).

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The paper is structured as follows: the next section describes the process of fascistification (1926–1939) and the loss of all spaces of autonomy through the imposition of the oath of allegiance and racial laws, which had a major impact on the discipline of economics: in this period a new generation of economists closer to the needs of the fascist dictatorship came to the fore, as Italy became more markedly totalitarian with the establishment of the corporatist system and of autarky. The third section focuses on the period of active militancy (1940–1943) in line with wartime requirements, while the fourth offers some concluding remarks.

2

The Process of Fascistification (1926–1939)

In his Manifesto of the Anti-fascist Intellectuals, published on 1 May 1925 in response to Giovanni Gentile’s Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals, Benedetto Croce urged intellectuals not to blame the “limits of the office assigned to them”, because “contaminating politics and literature, and politics and science is a mistake”. Their only duty, he stressed, was to carry out “the work of inquiry and criticism, and the creation of art, to raise equally all men and all parties to the highest spiritual sphere” (Il Mondo, 1 May 1925). In essence, Croce urged the dissident intelligentsia to take refuge in their ivory towers, to avoid involvement in active politics and to adopt a waiting position. This was the general attitude of not only the signatories of the Manifesto but of most liberal economists,5 and it revealed an opportunistic compromise. In exchange for their neutrality or formal consensus, often made easier by adherence to nationalistic values and conservative sentiments, economists, like other intellectuals, implicitly asked to be left alone to continue their scientific activities and their teaching undisturbed 5The supporters of Croce’s Manifesto included Giulio Alessio, Luigi Einaudi, Augusto Graziani, Costantino Bresciani Turroni and Arturo Labriola. Among the supporters of the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals, published on 21 April 1925, were Gino Arias, Agostino Lanzillo and Ugo Spirito. Of Jewish origin, Arias joined fascism, actively collaborating with the regime, but was then forced into exile due to the racial laws, see Ottonelli (2012).

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within the privacy of university classrooms and academic forums. In the early years of the fascist regime, when the discipline of economics benefited from relative autonomy, its technical nature was accentuated. In this phase the shelter provided by the institutions—including the prestigious Academy of the Lincei—acted as an autonomous space in which the academics carried on their work while steering clear of politics. Many economists were members of anciently established local academies of science and letters, very often cumulating more than one membership either as regular or as corresponding affiliates. Since the nineteenth century,6 a seat in one of these academies represented a kind of social and cultural capital that created an élite group within the scholarly community, granting visibility and social prestige both at local and at national level, not to mention the role it played as a pre-condition for the political career of scientists and experts. Looking at the list of academies covered by Table 1, a clear hierarchy emerges, with the Academy of Lincei at the top, immediately followed by the academies located in the capitals of the ancient regional states—like the Academy of Science of Turin, the Lombard Institute of Science and Letters, the Venetian Institute of Science, Letters and Arts, the Neapolitan academies (Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and Pontaniana Academy) and the Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Palermo—and in the cities traditionally home to universities—the Galilean Academy of Science, Letters and Arts of Padua and the Academy of Science of Bologna. Economists from all parts of Italy were especially attracted by the Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence, whose President was the florentine economist Riccardo Dalla Volta until 1926, when Mussolini imposed to replace him with Arrigo Serpieri, Under-Secretary to Agriculture in his cabinet. At a more local level, the Deputations for Homeland History (Deputazioni di storia patria) offered a venue for civically engaged research, where liberal economists with a passion for history like Luigi Einaudi, Augusto Graziani or Emanuele Sella, eminent anti-fascist economic historians like Gino Luzzatto and Armando Sapori and other historians more actively compromised with fascism—Vittorio Franchini and Pier Silverio Leicht

6 See

the various chapters devoted to academies in Augello and Guidi (2000: II, 3–220).

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among others—could work side by side on topics that did not alarm the official censorship. A glance at the prosopographic study provided by Chapter 9 in the present volume may help to understand a further important role the academies played. Since the 1870s and 1880s, when the Associazione pel progresso degli studi economici rivalled for some years with the Società Adamo Smith in attracting academic and non-academic economists (Augello and Guidi 2001), no society of political economy had existed in Italy, and the fear of suffering the heavy interference of the fascist regime probably dissuaded economists from founding a scientific and professional association in the interwar period (the Società Italiana degli Economisti was established only in 1950) (Quadrio Curzio 2000). This fact, coupled with the good level of internationalisation of Italian economics, may explain the numerous affiliations of Italian academics to foreign economic societies like the Société d’économie politique, the Royal Economic Society, the American Economic Association, and other International Associations of sociology and statistics. This kind of membership was perceived outside Italy as an indispensable component of the professional profile of an economist (Coats 1993 [1991]), and Italian academics may have looked for affiliations outside their country for the same reason. But, as far as Italy was concerned, membership of Academies was the only alternative available to the economists to seek recognition and prestige. By virtue of an implicit syllogism, if academic affiliation was the recognition of the professional status of a scientific community, being a member of academies was a mark of the professionalisation of economics. There was actually an association that guaranteed specific professional recognition to economists, the Italian Society for the Advancement of Science, founded in 1907 at the Congress of Parma and remained active until at least the eve of the Second World War (and still existing today, albeit with less visibility than in the past). In this association there was a Section, n. XIV, dedicated to “Statistics and Economic Sciences”. At the time of its establishment, the section was chaired by a national central committee, which included Luigi Luzzatti as President,

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the statistician Luigi Bodio and the economists Maffeo Pantaleoni and Bonaldo Stringher, as well as an unspecified “Presidency of the Society of Economists”. The local organisers were Luigi Lusignani and Ferdinando Zanzucchi. Pantaleoni was also a representative of the Bari Chamber of Commerce and the Bari School of Commerce, while Ulisse Gobbi represented the “Luigi Bocconi” University of Milan (Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze 1908, x–xi; Myres 1923).7 The association regularly published the proceedings of its scientific meetings, in which numerous writings by economists were included. An overall study on this association (see Linguerri 2000) and on the role of economists in it is still missing. A first examination of the proceedings shows, however, that while section XIV was born in the first decade of the twentieth century with a clear scientific intent,8 in accordance with the initial cosmopolitan attitude of the association, in the Ventennio the topics of discussion increasingly revolved around corporatism (Benini 1930) and the economic choices of the fascist regime (Majorana 1924, 1927), an evident consequence of the direct control that Giovanni Gentile as minister of education and Benito Mussolini himself had taken over the institution since 1923, in order to transform it into a pro-government body of technical consultancy and propaganda (Linguerri 2000, 70–78). On the other hand, similarly to the case of “generalist” journals,9 participation in the regular meetings of academies apparently provided a more protected sphere for autonomous dissemination of economic research and relatively free debate with scholars of other disciplines. The data made available by Massimo Augello (2013), combined with other bibliographic studies (Firpo 1971), reveal that in the interwar period many economists actively participated in the scientific life of academies,

7The list of members included Gustavo Del Vecchio e Luigi Einaudi. See Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze (1908, 290–323), Linguerri (2000, 57–58). 8 In the early annual meetings Pantaleoni (1908, 1909, 1911) presented some of his most influential economic papers. 9 See Dal Degan and Simon in Vol. 1 of the present collection.

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presenting memoirs that were subsequently included in their transactions. To make a few examples, Rodolfo Benini published 17 memoirs in the Atti della R. Accademia dei Lincei and 2 books with the press of the Academy, 2 works in the series Pubblicazioni dell’Accademia d’Italia and 1 memoir in the Rendiconti dell’Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere; Riccardo Dalla Volta, published 9 memoirs in the Atti della R. Accademia Economico-Agraria dei Georgofili di Firenze; Luigi Einaudi offered 2 memoirs to the Lincei, and 14 papers to the Atti della R. Accademia delle Scienze di Torino and finally, Augusto Graziani honoured his numerous affiliations by publishing 6 memoirs in the transactions of the Accademia dei Lincei, 26 contributions to the Atti della R. Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche di Napoli, 12 memoirs in the Atti del R. Istituto d’Incoraggiamento alle Scienze Naturali, Economiche e Tecnologiche of Naples and 5 memoirs in other academic journals. Of the economists included in Augello (2013), only Antonio De Viti de Marco, Maffeo Pantaleoni and Alberto Zorli, for different reasons, ignored the academies as venues for their publications. The majority of these contributions focused on theoretical, methodological and especially historical aspects. Benini in addition to some economic papers, presented a series of memoirs on Dante’s Comedy, a subject in which he was a true specialist, and, similarly to Graziani, some obituaries and technical reports on academic events and awards. Only Dalla Volta interpreted his presidency of the Georgofili in a more political sense, commenting in a favourable way the economic strategies of the fascist regime (Dalla Volta 1922, 1923, 1924). His role in the academy confirms what we observed concerning the Society for the Advancement of Science, i.e. even in the early years of fascism, the cultural institutions in which the economists played a distinctive role were more regimented and put under direct political control than others. However, generally speaking, from 1922 to 1926, fascist cultural policy demonstrated no particular interest in the activities of the academies,

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which it regarded as quaint and of no practical importance (Turi 1999, 404).10 This climate of indifference left the various academic institutions free to retain their board of directors even when they included exponents of anti-fascist views. Such was the case of the Academy of the Lincei where Vito Volterra held the presidency until 1926, and of the Pontaniana Academy of Naples, which was directed by Croce during the same period. An example of this relative independence is given by the highly critical discussion of the university reform that Gentile had proposed in 1923. The debate took place at the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Royal Society of Naples between March and June 1925, and one of the most active participants in this was Augusto Graziani, a supporter of Croce’s Manifesto, who claimed that university autonomy was essential to the freedom of teaching (see SRN 1925, vol. L, 3–34).11 However, such moments of open opposition were rare, given that most academic economists tended to take refuge in scholarly studies and lie low or to assume dishonourable positions. Two members of the Lincei and of important local academies, Luigi Einaudi and Achille Loria, were typical of those who kept themselves to themselves and out of sight. However, the truce between the fascist regime and intellectuals was not to last for long. The policy of tolerance changed due to the efforts of Gentile who, between 1925 and 1926, promoted the developing regime’s

10 Negative

opinions on the role of the academies were quite common in Italian culture. Gramsci observed: “One can compare Italian and French cultures through a comparison of the Accademia della Crusca and the Academie Française. They are both rooted in the study of language, the Crusca, however, has the viewpoint of a nitpicking grammarian, of someone who is always watching how he speaks. The French point of view is that of ‘language’ as a conception of the world, as the basic foundation—popular-national—of the unity of French culture. Therefore the French Academy has a national role in the organisation of high culture, whereas the Crusca… (what is the current status of the Crusca? It has certainly changed its character—it publishes critical texts, etc.—but what is the current status of the dictionary among its activities?)” (Gramsci 1996, vol. 2, 119–120). 11 In 1924 in a dissertation read at the Pontanian Academy of Naples, commenting on the economic policies of the new Labour government of James Ramsay MacDonald, Graziani reaffirmed the primacy of liberalism in spite of the continuous change of ruling parties: an example of liberal hegemony among Neapolitan academics (Graziani 1924; see also Loria and Graziani 1990, 115).

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key cultural initiatives, in particular the National Institute of Fascist Culture and the ambitious Enciclopedia Italiana project (Bobbio 1973, 214– 217; Turi 2019a). These schemes were aimed at reining in liberal-minded intellectuals and establishing a fascist hegemony over intellectual life comparable to that achieved in the political sphere. Indeed, 1926 was the year when all political opposition was banned, and the dictatorial character of the regime was by then plainly apparent. The regime then gave greater attention to the cultural sphere, the hiding place of dissidents who cultivated the unorthodox views that posed a political threat to the stability of the new order. The clearest signal of the regime’s readiness to intervene directly in Italian intellectual life was the foundation of the Academy of Italy in January 1926. The purpose of this new institution, which began operating in 1929, was that of “promoting and coordinating the Italian intellectual movement in the field of science, literature and the arts, to preserve the pure national character, according to the genius and traditions of the ancestry and to favour its expansion and influence beyond the borders of the State” (Art. 2, Royal Decree 7 January 1926, see also Turi 1999, 405; Turi 2019b). According to Gentile, the new institution would respect the value of tradition, not by destroying, but by acting as the “organ of a new national movement” (Gentile 1990, 311–319). In like manner, during a parliamentary debate in January 1926, Mussolini told the Senate that the Academy would assert “Italian primacy” and give “wise and useful aid to the government in the study and resolution of the most serious problems related to the national culture”. But Critica Fascista, an authoritative journal of the regime, used much harsher words in stating that the Academy would act as a “brake to the excessive individualism of our intellectuals”, who “will have to remember that neither art nor philosophy nor science are sufficient titles to stand against the nation” (Volt 1926, 64). As for the Enciclopedia Italiana, it defined the objectives of the new institution in this way: There is no lack of such academies and institutions in Italy. And there are excellent ones, legitimised by a centuries-old tradition and uninterrupted, highly respectable work. But the history of the academies in Italy

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reveals, from the Renaissance onwards, continuous and progressive differentiation and specialisation. It is therefore clear how one might conceive of an organ that, although required to collaborate with others, would be broader and more universal, that is one that would represent all the intellectual activities of the nation; one which would represent, besides the sciences, also culture, or at least information from outside the universities; one that would feel closer and more directly linked to the various spiritual needs of our time, more ready to hear its calls, more able to influence the mass of educated people, more varied and pliable and solicitous in its work, and more willing to perceive science in terms of its political and national function. (Enciclopedia Italiana 1929, vol. I, 186)

And Mussolini in the inaugural speech for the Academy of Italy stated: None of the existing Academies in Italy perform the functions assigned to the Academy of Italy. They are either limited in space, or restricted in subject. Some of them are famous and almost all of them, even the minor ones, are respectable, but none has the universality of the Italian Academy. This was born out of two events destined to play a formidable role in the life and spirit of the people: the victorious war and the fascist revolution. (Speech of 28 October 1929, in Mussolini 1958, 152–153)

The overtly political nature of the new institution was underscored by its administrative structure. The academic body had sixty members, half of whom were nominated by the head of the government and appointed by royal decree; the rest were appointed from within the academy itself after the presentation of three names for each vacancy. The holders of indispensable offices were considered equal to the great officers of the state and received, unlike members of other academies, a fixed allowance (36,000 lire) as well as attendance tokens. The president of the Academy was by right a member of the Grand Council of Fascism. The Academy’s study programme had four divisions: moral and historical sciences; physical, mathematical and natural sciences; literature; art. In parallel to the establishment of the Academy of Italy, the regime brought political pressure to bear on other academic institutions in an effort to bring them into line and restrict their autonomy. In February 1926, the anti-fascist mathematician Vito Volterra was urged to resign

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from the presidency of the Lincei before the end of his term of office, despite the solidarity shown towards him by various fascist intellectuals. Peripheral institutions were also subjected to increasing political pressure. The fascistification measures impacted the reform of the statutes of local academies, requiring them to make declarations of loyalty to fascist ideology, to make Mussolini an honorary member and to accept presidents appointed by the government.12 The Fascist Party had initially underrated local academic institutions but had come to see their potential as instruments that could help achieve consensus and mobilise collective action. Sometimes when there was local resistance to homologation, the regime did not hesitate to suppress the academic institutions: this was the case with the Pontaniana Academy, which was terminated by being merged into the Royal Society of Naples in 1934 on the pretext that Naples already had two academies. The real reason, however, was that many of its members were demonstrably anti-fascist.13 Economists themselves were included in this complex process of political reorganisation of national intellectual life. The regime reserved several places for them in the Academy of Italy: in the first round of appointments of 1929, the governor of the Bank of Italy, Bonaldo Stringher, was admitted, and later Pasquale Jannaccone (1930), Rodolfo Benini (1932) and Alberto De’ Stefani (1932) became part of the Class of Moral and Historical Sciences (De’ Stefani was also the vice president of the Academy) (see Table 1). The selection of these names was part of a political plan. Stringher, the first economist to receive the title of Academic of Italy, fitted well with to the concept of economists being technicians, which was highly valued by the fascist regime (see Benini 1931). Even De’ Stefani fitted the image of the technician, although he had a more political approach. As a leader of the militia and a convinced fascist, he was the organic expression of the new ruling class while enjoying the approval of financial and industrial 12 Founded in the eighteenth-century, in 1927 the Accademia dei Georgofili of Florence established a new statute that gave the head of the government the right to appoint its president, while the other ten members of the academic council were appointed by the minister of the national economy. 13 In a letter to Loria of 25 November 1936, Graziani described the suppression of the Pontaniana Academy as “sad”, saying that “we do not know why it was decreed” (Loria and Graziani 1990, 209).

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circles for his committed adherence to the Italian liberal tradition.14 As Minister of Finance (1922–1925) and of the Treasury (1923–1925) in Mussolini’s government, he in fact pursued a programme of liberalisation and adopted a policy of rigid fiscal consolidation. Conservative in social terms and an advocate of industrial modernisation, De’ Stefani was a bridge between technocratic fascism and the liberal culture, to whose ranks his most prestigious collaborators (Umberto Ricci, Jannaccone, Maffeo Pantaleoni) belonged. His neo-liberal policy, however, stood in stark contrast to both the protectionist tendencies of Italian capitalism and the fascist interventionist policy aimed at supporting banks and industries in crisis. Although in the 1930s he abandoned his intransigent liberalism to comply with the corporatist and autarchic turn in policymaking, he never fully aligned himself with the regime.15 His appointment to the highest Italian academic forum should perhaps be seen as part of a plan to establish a broad consensus of research. The same logic applies to the inclusion of Jannaccone, who did not support the regime (Faucci 1990a, 190). His collaboration with Minister De’ Stefani in the reorganisation of the tax and financial system probably had a bearing on his appointment.16 If he belonged to the group of unallied academics who retained a certain latitude, Benini, out of all the academics, is to be considered the only “organic intellectual” of the fascist movement. With Ugo Spirito and Bruno De Finetti, he belonged to the most radical wing of corporatism, advocating the organic intervention of the state in the economy, the limitation of private property through a highly progressive tax system weighted in favour of corporative ownership. In May 1932, at the Ferrara conference, the theses of radical 14 According

to Luigi Albertini, director of the Corriere della Sera, Einaudi was on Mussolini’s list of potential ministers in the aftermath of the March on Rome, but due to political pressure from banking and industrial sectors, his name was later removed (Einaudi and Albertini 2012, vol. II, 2091). 15 In the crisis followed by the Matteotti murder in 1924, De’ Stefani proposed that Mussolini should resign so that fascism could strengthen itself in the free political struggle (see Aquarone 1965, 50). In July 1943 he was one of the signatories of the motion by Grandi that brought about the crisis. 16 In 1929 De’ Stefani proposed the candidacy of Jannaccone as a member of the newborn Academy of Italy. In 1932 Benini and Jannaccone were nominated by De’ Stefani (Rigano 2015, 484). Jannaccone was co-director of La Riforma Sociale, suppressed by the regime in April 1935.

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corporatism of Benini, De Finetti and Spirito were openly disavowed, and instead the practice—as interpreted by Luigi Amoroso and Felice Vinci—of reconciling corporatism with postulates of orthodox theory prevailed (Bruguier 1937, 65–96; Faucci 1990b, 17; Duchini 1994; Cavalieri 1994; Guidi 2000, 31–58; Maccabelli 2008, see also Mancini et al. 1982; Santomassimo 2006; Barucci et al. 2017, Chapters 3 and 4). The process of the regimentation of the intellectual community reached its climax with the oath (“to King and Fascist Regime”) of 1931 and 1934, to which the majority of academics acquiesced. Of the economists with tenured professorships, only Antonio De Viti de Marco refused to take the oath, and only four left the Academy of the Lincei for the same reason, namely De Viti, Giulio Alessio, Umberto Ricci and Costantino Bresciani Turroni (see Table 1).17 Despite strong pressure from the regime, the institutes of high culture echoed the debate on corporatism only in subdued tones. An example of this detached attitude is the report presented in 1934 by Augusto Graziani to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Royal Society of Naples. According to him, the corporatist regime could not contradict the fundamental laws of economic life, the respect for private property and free economic initiative (Graziani 1934, 386), and therefore “the work of the corporations must be to inform and provide an impulse, rather than taking direct action, to give help and advice to private economies as well as to the public, to control in harmony with the supreme directives of the state the general interest of the nation” (Graziani 1934, 399–400). The racial laws of 1938 marked a further important step towards the construction of an authoritarian regime. The purge struck 27 members of the Lincei, among them the economists Riccardo Bachi, Gustavo Del Vecchio, Marco Fanno, Augusto Graziani, Achille Loria and Giorgio Mortara.18 No expulsion was carried out in the Academy of Italy, simply 17The

oath for tenured professors and professors appointed to the Royal Institutes of Higher Education was introduced with the Royal Decree No. 1227 of 28 August 1931. The oath was then extended to cover members of the academies and institutes and the association of science, literature and arts, with Royal decree no. 1333, 21 September 1933 (law 12 January 1934, No. 90). See Goetz (2000). 18Those who survived were reinstated between 1945 and 1947.

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because no Jew had ever been admitted to it (Turi 1999, 417; Capristo 2001, see Table 1).19 Finally, in June 1939, the Academy of the Lincei was dissolved and absorbed into the Academy of Italy, which described itself as “the highest cultural institution”. Thirteen of the 24 Italian academics appointed on 16 June 1939 were chosen from the members of the Lincei, while the other national and corresponding members were included in the new category of “aggregates to the Academy of Italy”, among them the economists Francesco Coletti, Luigi Einaudi, Federico Flora, Guglielmo Masci and Giuseppe Ugo Papi (see Table 1).

3

Active Militancy (1940–1943)

As is well known, until the crisis of 1929 the fascist regime’s economic policy was broadly in line with the dominant economic culture, and even when marked by increasing authoritarianism and interventionism it allowed economists some scope for initiative accompanied, in most cases, by a benign indifference to the dictatorship that rarely entered into open opposition. It was only with the advent of the totalitarian corporatist state that the economists’ room to manoeuvre was drastically reduced in response to new political demands. The increasingly aggressive politics of fascism, which culminated in the military alliance with Nazism, along with its autarchic and nationalist propaganda, would compel the mobilisation of intellectuals, who were

19 In

a letter to Loria of 29 November 1937, Graziani expressed anguished concern about the racial laws: “It is very painful that even in Italy these prejudices penetrate: we do not reach legal interdicts as in Germany, but without writing it in the laws and regulations, these exclusions are implemented and not only by the Academy of Italy” (Loria and Graziani 1990, 226). On the racial laws in the Italian universities see Galimi and Procacci (2009).

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forced to abandon their ivory tower once and for all.20 The active militancy required of the Italian intellectual class was reflected in the works of the Academy of Italy, which by then had become the only national institution of high culture after the abolition of the Lincei.21 In fact, the scholarly output that characterised the early years of the academy’s activity was replaced by works directly related to the political mobilisation that the regime demanded. In the new political context, determined by the needs of the wartime economy, the contribution of economists gained greater visibility. This new phase was animated by Guglielmo Masci (who died in January 1941) and Giuseppe Ugo Papi, both, as we have seen, economists co-opted into the Academy of Italy as aggregates after the suppression of the Lincei. Reports presented at that time addressed the primacy of maximising national production to meet the needs of the war effort, for which reason inflationary pressures had to be kept under control.22 A short research paper presented by Papi in December 1940, just a few months after Italy’s entry into the war, was dedicated to the problem of wartime inflation. In it, he proposed the traditional anti-inflationist position of Italian economists, siding in favour of the mechanisms of a

20This

alignment with the regime is evidenced by the position of Luigi Einaudi. In a letter addressed to Benito Mussolini, in July 1933, Einaudi wrote: “I know that your excellency and his government are applauded particularly in the section of world public opinion that has always been the most critical and difficult to win over. The theme could be much more widely developed through a verbal exposition rather than a letter, which is already too long. Your far-sighted views on international peace and internal tolerance are certainly not opposed by old men, who have kept to one side, but instead by the little men who climb on the shoulders of fascism to satisfy personal ambitions that would be worthy if justified by merit but are despicable if reached through exclusive rights and opportunities, in which hustlers disguised as jurists have always excelled”. (Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Particular Secretariat of the Duce, reserved correspondence, b. 74. Letter published in the newspaper La Repubblica, 20 January 1990, with a comment by Eugenio Garin). Augusto Graziani’s alignment with the regime was more difficult. Accused by the Minister of Education Francesco Ercole of ignoring the fundamental assumptions and principles of fascism and the economic institutions of corporatism, Graziani was forced to demonstrate adherence to the principles of the regime (see Loria and Graziani 1990, 159). 21 Before its suppression, the Academy of the Lincei also began to address political issues pleasing to the regime (see Bachi 1937; Loria and Graziani 1990, 235–236). 22 Jannaccone remained rather secluded, still focused on neutral themes of erudition, see Jannaccone 1941–1942.

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managed and planned wartime economy.23 The use of inflation could be a last resort in systems based on free enterprise, but in a corporatist economy characterised by the “discipline of economic activity” and homogeneous interests, production controls and rationing of consumption were easily implemented (Papi 1940, 92). A well-considered economic policy directive that takes into account the main activities of a people and, during longer or shorter periods, manages them in such a way as to subordinate the needs of individuals to those of the state at war, is much more likely to bring success than is inflation, with its unpredictable consequences. The proof is there for all to see in our country, where examples of economic discipline in support of war have already been abandoned, and where inflation—at least for now— has not appeared. This is really the characteristic of today’s war finance, compared to that of 1915. (Papi 1940, 92)

According to Papi, therefore, the administrative apparatus of the corporatist economy could make possible the control of production, the rationing of consumption and credit in order to meet wartime needs, thus avoiding the use of forced savings mechanisms such as those revised by Keynes. The only risk of this regulated economy was “the diffusion among the citizens of a disposition to put everything into the hands of the state: production and choice of consumption, with a decisive move towards systems of collectivist economy” (Papi 1940, 93). The complex problems posed by the war economy were confronted by Masci in a short, posthumous research article (April 1941). The theme of total war entered Italian literature at the end of the 1930s, with the Italian translation, published by Einaudi, of Stefan Possony’s book, Die Wehrwirtschaft des totalen Krieges (Possony 1938). In 1938 the Austrian economist had raised the theoretical problem of the “military economy”, a term used to refer to “of needs” (Possony 1939, 17). In summary, the military economy concerned “the changes brought to the economy of peace in view of an eventual war” (Possony 1939, 18).

23 On

the subject of Italian economic thought regarding military spending and wartime finance, see Patalano (2017).

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According to Masci, the war economy stood out from the economy of peace due to “the change in both private and public needs” (Masci 1941, 410). The theoretical economy in the Walrasian–Paretian version, based on the sovereignty of individual preferences, failed to grasp the reality of mixed economies requiring state intervention, such as the corporatist approach, and even less the needs of a wartime economy. Indeed: A wartime economy like the current one, in which the pure and simple realisation of the theory of balance of marginal utility for all individuals would be in stark contrast to the national interest, which demands that individual tastes and preferences be sacrificed to the needs of the struggle. (Masci 1941, 413)

The corporatist model was the most suitable instrument for managing a wartime economy. Corporatism, in fact, directed and controlled individual choices and added to them the public choices made by the organs of state (Masci 1941, 414). According to Masci, the corporatist economy presented itself as a system aimed at mediating between extremes, at achieving a synthesis between the complex economic activity of individuals and the needs of the nation. During peacetime the corporative regime prepares its foundations and the conditions or prerequisites for its functions for a possible wartime economy. In individualistic regimes there is a clear antithesis and contrast between the peacetime and wartime economies, but in the corporative regime the latter is no more than a continuation or at most the accentuation of the former. (Masci 1941, 414)

The failure of the short-lived war, which had disillusioned politicians and the military, placed the theme of total war at the centre of the economists’ reflection on the conduct of war. The issue related directly to the problem of self-sufficiency, which is to say the need to ensure economic independence for the country as regards exploitation of raw materials and foodstuffs.24 The theme, totally irrelevant in the context of short-lived conflict, was vitally important in that of a prolonged one. 24 On

the debate between Italian economists on autarky, see Bientinesi (2011, ch. III).

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The problem of financing a war was therefore viewed from a new economic perspective in which the planned utilisation of strategic resources was considered a pre-requisite for supporting the war effort. Thus the concentration of most raw materials in the colonial territories presented the problem of access, a question that could not always be dealt with peacefully, partly because of increased autarky in the extraction of raw materials (Mortara 1938). The idea of the “living space” (Lebensraum, the “place in the sun” in fascist propaganda) gradually became central in the Italian economic literature of the thirties (see Mortara 1936; Lenti 1936). Papi interpreted these expectations well when he wrote: Since even the countries that are the least well-supplied will have to become self-sufficient, they will find themselves forced to procure a fertile territory with at least some raw materials. The possession of territory, which is of little importance when exchange remains easy, becomes vital when a country is confined to its borders. The “place in the sun,” can thus no longer be considered a label of political imperialism, as it is often said. Instead, it becomes the expression of an irrepressible need determined by the absurd behaviour of the richest. This is because even force will be used to escape from the confines that gradually suffocate the economy of a country. (Papi 1938, 606)

In a short research article presented in April 1942 at the Royal Academy, he again took up the theme by separating it from autarky (Papi 1941–1942) Autarchy is a tendency to concentrate on one’s own productive forces, the spazio vitale 25 is a tendency to combine one’s own forces with those of other countries. It [the spazio vitale ] is a theory, mainly of politics, which in its ultimate form derives from the voluntary autarchy of the richest and strongest states, essentially from the anti-economic behaviour of the allies during and after the peace that followed the war of 1914-18. It is a theory created by those who, instead of coming to terms with a reflex of autarchy, with harmful consequences looks to other countries—ones more easily dominated due to their proximity, lower stage of economic development 25 An Italian adaptation of the German Lebensraum (living space) concept supported by the Nazi Party.

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or political tendencies—for more efficient combinations of productive factors. From this point of view, the theory of the spazio vitale can be defined as an alternative to self-sufficiency in terms of its aim, which is in fact the same as that of a colonial approach, namely of restoring balances that have been disturbed in the country that promotes it. (Papi 1941– 1942, 222–223)

According to Papi’s theory, “living space” was a forced complementarity which allowed the dominant country to use the productive assets (labour and capital) of the country included in its sphere of political influence to obtain products that would make it possible to direct domestic production towards goods considered more profitable or strategic (Papi 1941–1942, 223). In the first case—observed Papi—the living space offered the maximum benefit to the occupying country, while in the second case the satellite country could obtain favourable exchange values if it possessed goods required by the dominant country, and thus the hierarchy was reversed. Moreover: Trade should take place not only in the context of the domestic sphere, but between as many markets as offer the greatest benefit. If, on the other hand, the countries complementing a spazio vitale are obliged to sell, or to buy, only on its markets—whether or not these present the greater advantages mentioned—they will be far from gaining all the benefits that can be derived from producing their goods and will inevitably create a situation of inferiority, which certainly cannot constitute an aspect of compactness or persistence, of a spazio vitale. (Papi 1941–1942, 224)

Similar problems of efficiency arose from the autarchic system. A country was forced into autarky by the disadvantages of international free competition and unequal development which cause lower prices, which in turn reduce commercial outlets (Papi 1941–1942, 214). And this autarky—compelled but voluntary—induced a passive autarky in other countries as protection against the negative consequences of market closures (Papi 1941–1942, 215). Papi criticised the idea of the Neuordnung Europas (New Order) supported by Nazi Germany, in which fascist Italy was given a subordinate

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position after the failure of the parallel war. He highlighted the inefficiency of autarky as an instrument of development, considering it to be an effect of the stagnation of international trade after the Great Depression (see also, Papi 1938). In his last intervention at the Academy of Italy in November 1942, Papi reinterpreted the concept of planning in the light of marginalist principles, once again propounding the principle of individual initiative as the cornerstone of economic action. Instead of an integral planning, he basically recommended a mixed economy in which the action of the state was subordinated to the same economic approaches of individual action (Papi 1942).

4

Concluding Remarks

Speaking in a session of the Class of Moral and Historical Sciences of the Academy of Italy, Papi humbly addressed his colleagues with the following words: I previously felt the need to apologise to the class for the fact that economic issues eventually force us to shift attention from serene visions, from pleasant disputes to the tricky lines of reasoning needed to venture into the heart of social problems with some chance of success. I have to repeat this mortification today, in an attempt to clarify concepts that the needs of the people have brought back to the fore and which, in part for this reason, require deeper consideration and objectivity, and in order to drag them from the fire of particular interests and examine them, free from doctrinal prejudices, in terms of prevailingly economic causes and consequences. In playing with fire, economists live a dangerous life. May they be protected, even from you, by their love of knowledge and—forgive them—by their desire to serve their country, if only in the most modest way. (Papi 1941–1942, 208)

It is evident from Papi’s words, that economic science was at the low end of the scale of academic disciplines and was attributed a limited role within Italian culture, which was strongly defined by the neo-idealistic matrix. It was in fact a young, still evolving discipline that only a few

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years earlier had emancipated itself from law and found its niche within the newly established university faculties of economics and commerce. Placed in an ancillary position, economists were held to be marginal within high culture, just as they were in their support of the regime. Moreover, the economists’ rather formal adherence to the totalitarian fascist state was prevalent in the academic sphere, as it was in the theoretical debate. Even in the period of active militancy imposed by the regime, the economists present in the Academy of Italy, having survived the various purges, did not hesitate to denounce, in Jannaccone’s words, “the unrealistic desire to replace an autonomous theory of corporatist economics with traditional economic science” (Jannaccone 1932, 11). The role of economists in the fascist project of politicising high culture institutions was indeed minor, but the need for a reform of those institutions was asserted not only by the fascist regime but also by the Communist opposition, as Antonio Gramsci showed, writing the following in his Prison Notebooks: With the arrival of the common school, the academies will have to become the intellectual organization (for intellectual coordination and creativity) of those individuals who on completion of common school do not attend university but get started immediately in a profession. These individuals should not lapse into intellectual passivity; rather, they should have available to them an organism, specialized in all the industrial and intellectual fields, in which they may collaborate and wherein they will find all the necessary means for the creative work they want to undertake. The whole system of academies will be reorganized and revitalized. Territorially, it will have a hierarchy—a national center that will embrace all the great national academies—regional divisions, and urban as well as rural local units. There will be separate specialized sections, all of which will be fully represented at the national and regional centers but only partially represented on the local level. They will be based on the same principles as the cultural institutes of specific social groups. Traditional academic work—that is, the systematization of knowledge (the Italian type of academy in its present form) and the channeling as well as the stabilization, according to a standard [(standard thought)], of intellectual activities (the French type of academy)—will become [only] one aspect of the new organization, which should engage in creative activity and the

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dissemination of knowledge and have collective authority. It will oversee industrial meetings, lectures and activities related to the scientific organization of labor, experimental factory laboratories, etc., and it will serve as a selective mechanism for improving the individual abilities of those who are on the periphery. Each local unit of this organization should have a section devoted to ethics and political science, but at the request of interested individuals it could also form a section of applied science to discuss from a cultural viewpoint issues related to industry, agriculture, and the organization and rationalization of labor in the factory, in farming, and in the bureaucracy. Periodic congresses, to which representatives are elected, will bring the most capable individuals to the attention of directors in the higher echelons, etc. In the regional divisions and at the center, all the different activities should be represented, with laboratories, libraries, etc. Official contacts among the various levels will be maintained by lecturers and overseers. The regional divisions and the center (which may be a replica of the College de France in its present form) should periodically invite representatives from the subordinate units to present academic reports; they should also organize competitions and establish prizes (scholarships at home and abroad). It would be useful to have a comprehensive list of all existing academies and of the prevalent themes treated in their published proceedings (for the most part, these are cemeteries of culture). (Gramsci 1996, vol. 2, 213–214)

Appendix See Table 1.

From 1935 to 1938 (dismissed in accordance with the racial laws)

From 1908

Rodolfo Benini (1862–1956)

From 1916 to 1934 (resignation for not swearing allegiance to the regime)

Riccardo Bachi (1875–1951)

Gino Arias (1879–1940)

Giulio Alessio (1853–1940)

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei

From 1932

Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

Table 1 Economists members of Italian academies during the fascist regime (1922–1943)

Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Arts in Padua; Royal Venetian Institute of Science, Letters and the Arts Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence (Vice-President); Colombaria Society of Florence Royal Academy of Science of Turin; Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence Royal Lombard Institute of Science and Letters; Royal Roman Institute of Science, Letters and Arts; Royal Venetian Institute of Science, Letters and Arts

Membership of other Italian Academies

122 R. Patalano and M. E. L. Guidi

Giovanni De Francisci Gerbino (1883–1948)

Riccardo Dalla Volta (1862–1944)

Francesco Coletti (1866–1940)

Costantino Bresciani Turroni (1882–1963)

Gino Borgatta (1888–1949)

From 1930 to 1935 (resignation for not swearing allegiance to the regime) From 1914

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei

Aggregate member following the abolition of the Accademia dei Lincei (1939)

Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

(continued)

Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence (President); Royal Virgilian Academy of Mantua; Colombaria Society of Florence Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Palermo

Royal Lombard Institute of Science and Letters

Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence; Royal Lombard Institute of Science and Letters Royal Academy of Science of Turin

Membership of other Italian Academies

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Luigi Einaudi (1894–1961) Senator

Antonio De Viti de Marco (1858–1943)

Alfonso De Pietri Tonelli (1883–1952) Alberto De’ Stefani (1879–1969) Parliamentary Deputy; Director of the Istituto di politica e legislazione finanziaria

Gustavo Del Vecchio (1883–1972)

Table 1 (continued)

From 1896 to 1935 (dismissed for not swearing allegiance to the regime) From 1906

From 1924

From 1937 to 1938 (dismissed in accordance with the racial laws)

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei

Aggregate member following the abolition of the Accademia dei Lincei (1939)

From 1932 (from 1939. Vice President of the Accademia d’Italia)

Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

Royal Academy of Science of Turin; Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence; Royal Deputation of Homeland History of Turin

Scientific-Literary Academy of Concordi of Rovigo Royal Venetian Institute of Science, Letters and Arts; Academy of Science, Letters and Arts of Verona; Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence

Royal Academy of Science of Bologna

Membership of other Italian Academies

124 R. Patalano and M. E. L. Guidi

From 1923

Federico Flora (1867–1958) Senator

Vittorio Franchini (1884–1970)

From 1930 to 1938 (dismissed in accordance with the racial laws)

Marco Fanno (1878–1965)

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei

Aggregate member following the abolition of the Accademia dei Lincei (1939)

Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

(continued)

Royal Venetian Institute of Science, Letters and Arts; Royal Academy of Science of Bologna; Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Arts in Padua Royal Academy of Science of Bologna; Royal Academy of Science of Turin; Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence; Royal Academy of Udine National Committee for the History of Risorgimento; Royal Deputation of Homeland History for the Province of Modena; Royal Araldic Commission of Romagna; Royal Deputation of Homeland History for the Marche

Membership of other Italian Academies

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Ulisse Gobbi (1859–1940)

Corrado Gini (1884–1965) President of the Istituto centrale di statistica; Director of the Istituto di statistica e politica economica; Director of the Scuola di statistica

Attilio Garino-Canina (1881–1964)

Table 1 (continued)

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

Society of Homeland History for Eastern Sicily; Royal Deputation of Homeland History for the Ancient Provinces and Lombardy Royal Venetian Institute of Science, Letters and Arts; Sardinian Society for Economic and Social Studies (President); Roman Society of Anthropology (Vice President); Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Arts of Padua Royal Lombard Institute of Science and Letters (President)

Membership of other Italian Academies

126 R. Patalano and M. E. L. Guidi

Augusto Graziani (1865–1944)

From 1903 to 1938 (dismissed in accordance with the racial laws)

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

(continued)

Royal Lombard Institute of Science and Letters; Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Art of Modena; Pontaniana Academy of Naples; Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of Naples; Royal Institute for the Encouragement of Natural, Economic and Technological Sciences of Naples; Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence; Siena Commission of Homeland History

Membership of other Italian Academies

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Pietro Gribaudi (1874–1950) Member of the National Committee of Geophysics and Geodesy; Member of the National Council of Research (Geographic Committee) Filadelfo Insolera (1880–1955) Member of the Higher Council for Social Security and Insurance Pasquale Jannaccone (1872–1959) Secretary-General of the Institut International d’Agriculture, Rome

Table 1 (continued)

From 1909

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei

From 1930

Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

Royal Academy of Science of Turin; Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence; Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Arts of Padua

Gioenian Academy of Catania; Mathematical Club of Palermo

Royal Academy of Agriculture of Turin; Royal Deputation of Homeland History for the Parma Provinces

Membership of other Italian Academies

128 R. Patalano and M. E. L. Guidi

Pier Silverio Leicht (1874–1956)

From 1920 to 1944 (dismissed by the Allied Military Government)

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

(continued)

Royal Academy of Science of Bologna; Royal Venetian Institute of Science, Letters and Arts; Royal Deputation of Homeland History for Friuli (President); Royal Deputation of Homeland History for Romagna; Royal Deputation of Homeland History for Venice; Royal Deputation of Homeland History for Tuscany Provinces; Royal Deputation of Homeland History for the Provinces of Modena and Reggio Emilia

Membership of other Italian Academies

“Breaking Down the Ivory Tower”: Economic Culture …

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Giovanni Lorenzoni (1873–1944)

Table 1 (continued)

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

Royal Academy of Science, letters and Fine Arts of Palermo; Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence; Agiati Academy of Rovereto; Royal Deputation of Homeland History for Friuli

Membership of other Italian Academies

130 R. Patalano and M. E. L. Guidi

From 1887 to 1938 (dismissed in accordance with the racial laws)

From 1875

Achille Loria (1857–1943) Senator

Luigi Luzzatti (1841–1927)

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

(continued)

Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence; Royal Venetian Institute of Science, Letters and Arts; Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of Naples; Pontaniana Academy of Naples; Institute of Encouragement of Naples; Peloritana Academy of Messina; Virgilian Academy of Mantua; Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Arts in Padua Royal Venetian Institute of Science, Letters and Arts

Membership of other Italian Academies

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Guglielmo Masci (1889–1941)

Eugenio Masè Dari (1864–1961)

Mario Marsili Libelli (1875–1971)

Gino Luzzatto (1878–1964)

Table 1 (continued)

From 1932

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei

Aggregate member following the abolition of the Accademia dei Lincei (1939)

Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

Royal Deputation of Homeland History for the Marche; Royal Deputation for the History of Veneto; Royal Deputation for the Homeland History of Tuscany; Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence Virgilian Academy of Mantua; Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Art of Modena; Peloritana Academy of Messina

Membership of other Italian Academies

132 R. Patalano and M. E. L. Guidi

Francesco Saverio Nitti (1868–1953)

From 1895 to 1935 (resignation for not taking the oath to the regime)

From 1932 to 1938 (dismissed in accordance with the racial laws)

Giorgio Mortara (1885–1967)

Alfredo Niceforo (1876–1960)

From 1932

Roberto Michels (1876–1936)

Publio Mengarini (1885–1949)

Jacopo Mazzei (1892–1947)

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

(continued)

Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of Naples Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of Naples; Pontaniana Academy of Naples

Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence; Colombaria Society of Florence Royal Deputation of Homeland History for the Ancient Provinces and Lombardy Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of Naples; Pontaniana Academy of Naples

Membership of other Italian Academies

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133

Armando Sapori (1892–1976)

Umberto Ricci (1879–1946)

Giuseppe Prato (1873–1928)

Maffeo Pantaleoni (1857–1924) Giuseppe Ugo Papi (1893–1989)

Table 1 (continued)

From 1932 to 1935 (resignation for not taking the oath to the regime)

From 1935

From 1892

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei

Aggregate member following the abolition of the Accademia dei Lincei (1939)

Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

Royal Deputation for the Homeland History of Tuscany

Royal Academy of Science of Turin; Royal Academy of Agriculture of Turin; Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence; Royal Lombard Institute of Science and Letters; Royal Deputation of Homeland History for the Ancient Provinces and Lombardy

Membership of other Italian Academies

134 R. Patalano and M. E. L. Guidi

Bonaldo Stringher (1854–1930) Camillo Supino (1860–1931)

Pietro Sitta (1866–1947)

Arrigo Serpieri (1877–1960)

Emanuele Sella (1879–1946)

Arturo Segrè (1873–1928)

From 1907

From 1897

From 1932

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei

From 1929 to 1930

Aggregate member following the abolition of the Accademia dei Lincei (1939)

Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

(continued)

Royal Lombard Institute of Science and Letters (Vice-President)

Royal Deputation of Homeland History for the Ancient Provinces and Lombardy; Royal Deputation for the History of Veneto, Lombard Historical Society Royal Academy of Science of Turin; Royal Deputation of Homeland History for the Parma Provinces Royal Academy of the Georgofili of Florence (President) Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence; Ferrara Deputation of Homeland History

Membership of other Italian Academies

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135

Alberto Zorli (1854–1939)

Filippo Virgilii (1865–1950)

Paolo Ignazio Maria Thaon di Revel (1888–1973) Felice Vinci (1890–1962)

Vincenzo Tangorra (1866–1922)

Table 1 (continued)

From 1919

Membership of the Accademia Nazionale Reale dei Lincei Membership of the Reale Accademia d’Italia

Royal Academy of Science of Bologna; Royal Academy of Science, letters and Fine Arts of Palermo Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence Royal Deputation of Homeland History for Emilia; Royal Deputation of Homeland History for the Provinces of Romagna; Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Ravenna

Royal Economic and Agrarian Academy of the Georgofili of Florence

Membership of other Italian Academies

136 R. Patalano and M. E. L. Guidi

“Breaking Down the Ivory Tower”: Economic Culture …

137

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Pantaleoni, M. (1911). Considerazioni sulle proprietà di un sistema di prezzi politici. Comunicazione fatta al Congresso dell’Associazione per il progresso delle Scienze di Napoli, ottobre 1910, Giornale degli Economisti s. 3, XXII/XLII(1), 9–29; (2), 114–133. Abstract in Atti della Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze, IV riunione tenuta a Napoli, dicembre 1910. Pavia: F.lli Fusi, 1911, p. 880. Papi, G. U. (1938). Perché sorge il problema dell’autarchia economica. Giornale degli Economisti e Rivista di Statistica, Fourth series, 78/53(8, August), 601– 609. Papi, G. U. (1940). L’inflazione nella finanza si Guerra. Atti della Regia Accademia d’Italia, Rendiconti della Classe di Scienze Morali e Politiche, Series VII, III, November–December, 84–93. Papi, G. U. (1941–1942). Autarchia e spazio vitale, Atti della Regia Accademia d’Italia. Rendiconti della Classe di Scienze Morali e Politiche, Series VII, III, December–March, 208–225. Papi, G. U. (1942). Considerazioni sul piano economico. Atti della Regia Accademia d’Italia, Rendiconti della Classe di Scienze Morali e Politiche Series VII, IV, July–December, 32–48. Patalano, R. (2017). How to Pay for the War: Military Spending and War Funding in Italian Economic Thought (1890–1918). In F. Bientinesi & R. Patalano (Eds.), Economists and War (pp. 150–172). London: Routledge. Possony, S. T. (1938). Die Wehrwirtschaft des totalen Krieges. Vienna: Gerold & Co. English Translation: To-morrow’s War: Its Planning, Management and Cost. London: William Hodge & Co. Possony, S. T. (1939). L’economia della guerra totale. Torino: Einaudi. Quadrio Curzio, A. (Ed.). (2000). La Società italiana degli economisti: 50 anni di attività. Bologna: Il Mulino. Rigano, A. R. (2015). Alberto De’ Stefani: un politico accademico. In P. Barucci, S. Misiani, & M. Mosca (Eds.), La cultura economica tra le due guerre (pp. 463–490). FrancoAngeli: Milano. Santomassimo, G. (2006). La terza via fascista. Il mito del corporativismo. Roma: Carocci. Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze. (1908). Atti della Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze, Prima riunione, Parma, Settembre 1907. Roma: Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze. SRN. (1925). Sulla riforma dell’ordinamento dell’istruzione superiore. Considerazioni. Atti dell’Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche - Società Reale di Scienze Lettere e Arti in Napoli L, 3–34. Turi, G. (1980). Il fascismo e il consenso degli intellettuali. Bologna: Il Mulino.

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Turi, G. (1999). Le accademie nell’Italia fascista. Belfagor, 54 (4, July 31), 403– 424. Turi, G. (2016). Sorvegliare e premiare. L’Accademia d’Italia, 1926–1944. Roma: Viella. Turi, G. (2019a). Enciclopedia Italiana. In V. De Grazia & S. Luzzatto (Eds.), Dizionario del Fascismo (Vol. I, pp. 471–473). Mondadori: Milano. Turi, G. (2019b). Accademia d’Italia. In Victoria De Grazia & Sergio Luzzatto (Eds.), Dizionario del Fascismo (Vol. I, pp. 3–4). Milan: Mondadori. Volt (Vincenzo Fani Ciotti). (1926). Necessità di una accademia. Critica fascista (15, February), 64.

The Italian Economists as Legislators and Policymakers During the Fascist Regime Giovanni Pavanelli and Giulia Bianchi

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The Italian Economists as Legislators and Policymakers During the Fascist Regime

From the mid-nineteenth century until recently, Italian economists’ work has been characterised by a close interaction between theoretical thinking and an insightful analysis of the most complex issues facing the economy and society and requiring adequate policy decisions. Thanks to a path breaking research, coordinated recently by M.M. Augello and M.E.L. Guidi, we know now quite a lot about the multifaceted work as legislators done by the economists in the Italian Parliament during the “liberal G. Pavanelli (B) University of Turin, Turin, Italy e-mail: [email protected] G. Bianchi University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Augello et al. (eds.), An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II, Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38331-2_5

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age” (1861–1922).1 No overall analysis, however, was available of the same activity in the following years, in particular during the interwar period. This paper, whose methodological approach draws on the abovementioned research, aims to analyse the role played by the Italian economists as members of the government and of the Parliament (the Chamber of deputies and the Senate) during the fascist regime. To this end, section two analyses the deep institutional changes that took place during this period, focusing in particular on the radical change in the balance of power between the executive and the legislative; section three provides an overview of the economists who played a significant role as legislators and policymakers under fascism; section four examines the work of the economists who became members of the government as ministers or under-secretaries (Alberto De’ Stefani, Giacomo Acerbo, Arrigo Serpieri and Giuseppe Tassinari); the last two sections analyse the legislative work of the economists who were, respectively, members of the Chamber of deputies and of the Senate.

2

The Institutional Framework: The Changing Role of Parliament and of Government During Fascism

Recent literature (Melis 2018; Soddu 2008; Gentile 2002; Fimiani 2001) has highlighted the fact that during fascism there was a profound change in the functions exercised by the Parliament and the executive and indeed in the very nature of these institutions. From its very beginning, fascism rejected the principle of the “sovereignty of the people” as expressed through a freely elected, pluralistic Parliament and acted to shift the balance of power in favour of a government led by a charismatic duce.2 The degree of representativeness of the Chamber of deputies was then 1 Augello

and Guidi (2002, 2003). For a comparative analysis of the role of the economists in Parliament in several European countries during the years 1848–1920 cf. Augello and Guidi (2005). 2The main objectives of fascism from a constitutional point of view were, observes Fimiani (2001), “the destruction of the pluralistic parliamentary system in its various articulations” and the establishment of the “absolute supremacy of the executive” (p. 95). On this point, it should

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progressively reduced (the other Chamber, the Senate, was not elective: its members were appointed by the king and kept their office for life). The process that led to the emptying of the functions of the elective chamber, however, was anything but linear: only in 1939, after many studies and analyses made by committees appointed by the regime, the Chamber of deputies was formally repealed and replaced by the “Chamber of Fasces and Corporations”. A first step in this direction was the Acerbo law,3 approved in November 1923. This law attributed two-thirds of the seats (356 on 535) to the list that had obtained the highest number of votes. The quorum was set at 25%. As a consequence of this mechanism and of the climate of violence and intimidation established by the extreme right, the elections of April 1924 secured a large majority for the fascist and nationalist side. In November 1926 then, the residual voices of dissent were silenced by a measure that declared the deputies of the opposition no longer in office. The final blow to the Chamber’s representative functions was given by a new electoral law passed in May 1928 and further amended in January 1929. The new law, drawn up by Alfredo Rocco, at that time minister of justice and a leading figure of the nationalist movement, established a single national constituency and a single list, that included all the candidates (400 in total). The task of drawing up this list was attributed to the “Grand Council of Fascism”, the highest constitutional body of the regime, on the basis of one thousand candidates chosen by the union confederations, various national associations, universities and academies (Salvemini 1937; De Felice 1968, 324–325). This law, applied during the 1929 elections, transformed the elections into a plebiscite: voters were called upon to approve in full (or, in theory, to reject) the list elaborated by the regime. Indeed the appeal to voters, underlined Alfredo Rocco, did not take place in the name of an hypothetical “popular sovereignty” but to “test their state of mind, to improve the contact between the State and the masses” (quoted in be remembered that anti-parliamentarism was a widespread attitude in the nationalist literature since the beginning of the twentieth century. 3 Giacomo Acerbo, the deputy who drafted this law, was at the time under-secretary to the presidency of the council of ministries and therefore a key advisor to Mussolini. Cf. infra, note 19.

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Fimiani 2001, 106). In other words, the regime did not at all consider itself bound to achieve popular legitimacy. At the same time, the legislative function of the lower Chamber was substantially reduced: in the XXIX legislature (1934–1939), for example, the vast majority of the bills passed were of government initiative (Melis 2018, 307). The debate on the floor, in accordance with the antiparliamentary rhetoric of the regime, was also compressed: particularly in the second half of the 1930s, several measures were approved without discussion. Finally, as mentioned, in 1939 the Chamber of deputies was replaced by a “Chamber of Fasces and Corporations”. In this body the legislative function was exercised entirely inside the various committees: the draft laws were examined and, in general, approved without discussion and then transmitted to Mussolini and to the king for the final seal. The evolution of the Senate is partly different: the senators were appointed by royal decree, maintained their function for life and came largely from the pre-fascist political élite, from the top of the judiciary and the army, or from academia. During the 1930s, however, also this Chamber was progressively “fascistised” (an active role was played by the “Fascist National Union of the Senate”: cf. Gentile 2002; Gentile and Campochiaro 2003); from 1939, moreover, membership to the PNF became compulsory for newly appointed senators.4 The dissent could be manifested through abstaining from taking part to the discussion on the floor (this was the position adopted by Luigi Einaudi). Having said that, it appears reductive to see the Parliament under fascism as simple rubber stamp for the initiatives of the government (cf. Soddu 2008; Melis 2018). The Parliament was rather a “consultative body”: deputies and senators cooperated to varying degrees in the final drafting of legislative measures with amendments, suggestions and recommendations. Furthermore, it must be added that in several circumstances the debate in both Chambers reflected the views of different and sometimes conflicting interest groups inside the fascist regime (e.g. the landowners, the 4This obligation did not apply to the incumbent senators: Achille Loria and Luigi Einaudi, for example, never joined the Fascist Party.

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industrialists, the representatives of the fascist trade unions and of the professional associations). This happened in particular during the discussion of the annual budgets of the various ministries, which by law were submitted to the analysis of parliamentary committees and had then to be approved in the general assembly of both Chambers. In some cases, this offered the opportunity of real debate and even of criticism, albeit usually expressed with caution and masked by facade praise.5 This point was underlined also by an authoritative journal such as The Economist in a few correspondences from Italy, attributed to Luigi Einaudi.6 The role of the government also changed substantially: not surprisingly a clear centrality was assumed by the head of government (Mussolini). For many years the duce held also ad interim several key ministries, while the remaining ministries were entrusted mainly to experts in the respective fields, called to prepare legislative measures aimed at implementing key policy decisions inspired by the head of government.

5 In

several cases the ministries recognised openly that the topics raised during the debate were indeed relevant and promised to take note of them. Particularly in the Senate the discussion became sometimes frank and direct. See in this regard a lively exchange of views between the senator Ugo Ancona and the minister of finance, Paolo Thaon di Revel, during the discussion of the budget of the same ministry, in May 1935. Ancona: “The official total of public debts amounts to 105 billion. Now, in reality, the overall figure is much higher”; Thaon: “It is not true Senator Ancona. I have provided precise data to the Chamber”; Ancona. “Pardon, Honourable Minister. I have this habit, good or bad, of scrutinizing the relevant documents. Now if we sum up all the debts of the State, we reach at least 160 billion”; Thaon: “This is the estimate made by Salvemini abroad”; Ancona: “No, Minister, this is the estimate made by the Financial Times, which reaches 160 billion and I believe that the figure is correct”; Thaon: “I rule out that the Financial Times can be better informed than the Italian Minister of Finance” (A.P., Senate, 28 May 1935, 1327). Gaetano Salvemini, former professor of history at the University of Florence, was a leading anti-fascist in exile, very critical of Mussolini’s regime. Cf. Salvemini (1936). 6 Cf. this passage, drawn from an article attributed to Einaudi, published on The Economist, 13 July, 1929, p. 70: “Budgets for the financial year from July 1, 1929, to June 30, 1930, have been unanimously approved by the Corporative Chamber of Deputies and by an overwhelming majority of the Senate. Notwithstanding, Parliament has not spared criticism of increases of expenditure and methods of accounting. The reports by deputy Mazzini to the Chamber and by senator Mayer to the Senate, on behalf of their respective Budget committees, are very interesting and it cannot be said that the two committees are less outspoken in their criticism than in the pre-war years” (Rpt. in Marchionatti 2000, 475–476).

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The Role of the Italian Economists as Policymakers and Legislators: An Overview

In this context, the Italian economists played a crucial role as builders of the “new” fascist state but also, in a few cases, as bearers of critical views, to the extent that these could be still expressed.7 Taking into consideration the period 1924–1943 (which includes four legislatures) several scholars of economics and statistics with academic status became members of the government or of Parliament: four of them (Alberto De’ Stefani; Giacomo Acerbo; Arrigo Serpieri; Giuseppe Tassinari) played a key role in the government and, at the same time, were members of the Chamber of deputies.8 Nine were members of the Chamber of deputies only: three of them (Antonio Graziadei; Arturo Labriola; Angelo Mauri) were anti-fascist and as such were stripped of office, as mentioned, in 1926; the remaining scholars (Agostino Lanzillo; Gaetano Zingali; Gino Arias; Vincenzo Ricchioni; Attilio Da Empoli and Zeno Vignati) were instead to various degree supporters of the regime. During the same period, four authoritative economists were members of the Senate: Achille Loria; Luigi Einaudi; Pietro Sitta; Federico Flora. Despite the diversity of their scientific and professional biography, it appears significant that several of the above-mentioned authors and policymakers were applied economists. In particular, it is worth to underline the presence of a substantial group of agricultural economists (six in total, three of whom participated in government activities). This appears to confirm the centrality of agriculture for the regime both at an economic and social level (more than half of the labour force was employed in agriculture). The presence of ideologists and/or theorists of corporatism is significant but, nevertheless, circumscribed.

7 For

recent, insightful analyses of the main distinguishing features of the Italian economic thought in the interwar period, cf. Faucci (2014), Barucci et al. (2017). 8 Arrigo Serpieri, after being part of this Chamber from 1924 till 1939, on that year was appointed member of the Senate.

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Building the Behemoth: The Economists at the Government

Analysing the activity of the economists at the government during the fascist period, it is difficult to over-estimate the role played by Alberto De’ Stefani, minister of finance from November 1922 (and of treasury from December of the same year) till June 1925.9 During his formative years De’ Stefani was strongly influenced by Fedele Lampertico—an author whose methodological stance resembles that of the “German historical school”—but also by the leading representatives of economic liberalism such as Francesco Ferrara, Vilfredo Pareto and Maffeo Pantaleoni. From the very beginning, then, he was an eclectic thinker, who singled out as a key challenge facing the Italian economy the need to increase its productiveness: this had to be achieved through a valorisation of the national resources and skills, the cooperation between workers and entrepreneurs and a more efficient and lean public administration. After fighting as a voluntary during World War I, De’ Stefani adhered to the Fascist Party and played an active role in the squads’ actions against the socialists. Elected in Parliament in 1921, he emerged in the early ‘20s as the most authoritative economist inside the fascist movement. In his writings and public discourses, he stressed the need to defend private initiative and middle-class savings against excess taxation and inflation. Public expenditures should be severely checked; the government, however, should play a robust role in coordinating and promoting growth. In 1922, on the eve of the “march to Rome”, De’ Stefani’s views perfectly fitted Mussolinis’s plans to appeal to the Italian conservative public opinion and the leading businessmen, by accrediting himself as a moderate leader, who favoured fiscal and monetary orthodoxy. Not surprisingly, when at the end of October Mussolini was asked by the king to form a 9 De’

Stefani (Verona, 1879−Roma, 1969) taught political economy at the Universities of Ferrara, Padua and Venice. In October 1925, he became dean of the newly founded faculty of political science at the University of Rome. His writings include several essays on monetary theory, history of thought and demography. From 1926 till the end of the Thirties he was also the leading commentator on economic and financial matters for the Corriere della Sera, one of the most influential newspapers in Italy. Cf. Marcoaldi (1986, 1991).

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new government, he selected the young De’ Stefani as his minister of finance. Once in government, De’ Stefani presented at the Chamber of deputies, on 25 November 1922,10 an ambitious programme aimed primarily at balancing the budget by eliminating the huge amount of deficit inherited from the war period and promoting investment and capital accumulation in the private sector (cf. Guarneri 1986; Clough 1964; Zamagni 1993). The first task was achieved by De’ Stefani through substantial spending cuts (through a reduction of military expenditures and the dismissal of several public sector’s employees) and an increase in tax revenues, achieved primarily through a widening of the tax base—by including categories previously exempted such as skilled workers—and a reduction of tax evasion. In 1925 a progressive income tax was introduced. To foster saving and capital formation in the private sector, De’ Stefani drastically reduced wartime taxation on corporate profits and abolished the rule that stocks had to be registered in the owner’s name (De’ Stefani 1926). Some fiscal measures adopted during this period clearly aimed at fostering the support of the middle class. Among them, a property tax reduction, the abrogation of the inheritance law and the liberalisation of rents. With reference to customs policy, De’ Stefani worked to restore multilateralism in trade and to keep customs duties at moderate levels (Clough 1964, 224–225) On the whole, fiscal consolidation was successful: speaking at the Chamber of deputies on 30 May 1923 and at Senate on 8th December of the same year,11 De’ Stefani was able to announce that the task of balancing the budget had been nearly achieved. By far less effective, on the contrary, was his action on monetary and exchange rate stabilisation. De’ Stefani had to support Bank of Italy’s bailout of the Banco di Roma and of other financial institutions which, mainly for political reasons, the fascist regime had decided not to let bankrupt. At the same time, he was unable to take concrete steps to consolidate the huge external debt 10 Parliamentary Papers (hence A.P.), Chamber of deputies (hence Chamber ), 25 November 1922, 8654–8656. 11 A.P., Chamber, 30 May 1923, 9508–9511; Senate, 8 December 1923, 5744–5753.

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accumulated during the war by Italy with its allies. Not surprisingly, the liquidity injected into the system to save the banks brought an increase of inflation, while adverse expectations fuelled a substantial devaluation of the lira. De’ Stefani reacted to this setback by adopting restrictionary measures on financial speculation, a policy which resulted in a serious stock market crash. In spite of a resolute defence of his policy at the Chamber of deputies on 2nd June,12 this brought in July 1925 to his dismissal as a minister of finance. From this date, the phase of economic liberalism was quickly abandoned and replaced by the adoption of protectionist measures and a strengthening of state intervention in the economy. Starting from the mid-twenties, the regime strongly promoted also measures to foster agriculture, a crucial sector in terms of economic and social stability. The first, highly publicised initiative was the so-called “battle for grain”, launched in 1925 and aimed at reducing the balance of trade deficit and at ensuring national self-sufficiency in the consumption of corn (Tattara 1973; Daneo 1980, 119–122). This objective should have been achieved mainly by means of productivity increases and was only partially successful. Even more ambitious was a vast programme of land reclamation and improvement (“bonifica integrale”) launched in December 1928 through the so-called “legge Mussolini”. This law set objectives that went far beyond the traditional works of drainage of swampy land and the fight against malaria, in that it aimed to substitute extensive with intensive cultivation and to promote colonisation in vast areas of the country, including potentially one-fifth of the national territory. In this context, the government was in charge of the fundamental works of drainage and land reclamation; instead the landowners were responsible for the works aimed at increasing the productivity of the land and fostering its colonisation (irrigation canals, rural buildings, drinking water supply). The government in this case helped with subsidies which covered a part of the expense (Daneo 1980, 130).

12 A.P.,

Chamber, 2 June 1925, 4116–4122.

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In spite of its denomination, the “Mussolini law” had been actually inspired by Arrigo Serpieri, by far the most gifted and authoritative agrarian economist in Italy at that time.13 A leading expert in forestry and land reclamation, Serpieri had been appointed in 1923 under-secretary of state for agriculture in the first Mussolini ministry, a post he held until 1924, when he was elected to the Chamber of deputies. In these years he drafted important legislative measures on the redemption of mountain areas and on land reclamation and improvement. In 1929 he was appointed under-secretary in charge of the implementation of the “bonifica integrale”14 and worked with great energy, documented by five detailed annual reports drew up by himself and distributed among all members of Parliament. Although the resources allocated by the government to the reclamation project were considerable, he wrote in his first report, these projects had to be selected with great care, according to a criterion of “maximum national utility” which included, in addition to economic utility, the supply of stable employment to a large number of temporary workers, rooting them permanently in a specific rural area (Serpieri 1931, 194). In Serpieri’s intentions, therefore, the aim of the “bonifica integrale” was that of the transformation of large areas of Italian territory with the intention of establishing intensive production methods and promoting small- or medium-size farms. This would have helped in reducing the number of temporary agriculture workers, traditionally underemployed and prone to “subversive” propaganda, transforming them into wealthy peasants and sharecroppers faithful to the regime. 13 Arrigo Serpieri (Bologna, 1877–Florence, 1960) taught agricultural economics at the Universities of Perugia, Milan and Florence. In 1925 he founded the National Institute of Agricultural Economics in Florence, which he presided until the Second World War and in 1926 was appointed president of the “Accademia dei Georgofili”. In 1939 became member of the Senate. After the fall of fascism Serpieri was temporarily deprived of his professorship at the University. His academic writings focus on forestry, land reclamation and on the evolution of Italian agriculture. Cf. among others: Serpieri (1930, 1935, 1957). On Serpieri’s life and work cf. Dini (2010), Misiani (2018). For an overview of academic research on agricultural economics in interwar Italy cf. Zaganella (2015). 14This happened in the framework of a significant organisational change inside the executive: the ministry of national economy, which had been deprived of most non-agricultural competences in favour of the ministry of corporations, was renamed as ministry of agriculture and forestry and entrusted, as we will see later, to Giacomo Acerbo.

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To this end, however, it was crucial that the major reclamation works borne by the state were accompanied by works of improvement by the landowners. He therefore promoted a new law, approved in 1933,15 which attributed the responsibility for the reclamation work to ad hoc institutions, the consortia. These were bodies led, as a rule, by administrators elected by the landowners of the area but supervised and controlled by the ministry of agriculture. Among the preliminary tasks of the consortium, there was that of elaborating a “general plan of land reclamation” which included the public works required but also the plan of agrarian transformation to be realised by the landowners. The owners who were not able to carry out the works to which they were entitled, would have been expropriated and the property of their land transferred to private capitalists or to foundations (the most active during these years was the “Opera nazionale combattenti” that carried out the colonisation of the Agro Pontino). Serpieri recognised that expropriation was an extreme sanction16 ; indeed the ongoing economic crisis had aggravated the position of many owners, who did not have sufficient financial means to complete the work for which they were responsible. A possible solution, in his view, should have been for them to sell part of their land and improve with the proceeds the productivity of the remaining part of the property. On these aspects, as we will see, a strong contrast with the class of owners would soon have been triggered in Parliament.17 It is worth remembering that Serpieri could hardly have carried out his reform projects without the support of Giacomo Acerbo, who had been appointed minister of agriculture and forestry in September 1929. This ministry, by the way, had been constituted on that occasion, unifying the control of agricultural issues managed since 1923 by the ministry 15 “Testo

unico sulla bonifica integrale”, 13 February 1933, no. 215. his opinion, however, this measure was justified in the case of owners who were “stubbornly failing to fulfil the duties that the fascist State attributes to property as a social function” (Serpieri 1933, 80). 17 In a speech held at the Senate in 1933 Francesco Rota, a landowner and silk entrepreneur of northeast Italy, openly criticised Serpieri’s approach: “Fascism guarantees the right of ownership that is, despite all the declining bolshevism, the cornerstone of our civilization. These doctrinal statements of large, indeterminate expropriations are dangerous” (A.P., Senate, 21 March 1933, 5933). 16 In

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of national economy18 : a measure interpreted by many observers as a further sign of the crucial role attributed to the agricultural sector by the regime. A leading member of the Fascist Party and a close collaborator of Mussolini who, as already mentioned, had entrusted him with the drafting of the electoral law of 1923, Acerbo was also an authoritative agrarian economist.19 Called to join the government in 1929, he had supported Serpieri’s appointment as under-secretary and shared his vision on the subject of land reclamation. As soon as he took office in his ministry, however, the biggest challenge he had to face was the collapse of the prices of the agricultural products and of farm incomes as a consequence of the world depression. His report on the budget of his ministry, held in the Chamber of deputies in April 1930, for example, is dominated by the theme of the sharp reduction in the prices of basic agricultural goods such as wheat, wine, livestock products. While not denying the seriousness of the problem, Acerbo expressed at that time the confidence that the crisis was temporary, bound to be solved through a decrease of the stocks of foodstuffs available for sale and a reduction in nominal wages.20 The following three years were characterised by the persistence and even worsening of the economic depression. The parliamentary papers in this period document several severe complains—albeit usually tempered by declarations of allegiance to the regime—and pressing requests of help

18 In the previous years the ministry of national economy had been deprived of most of its nonagricultural competences in favour of the ministry of corporations and was therefore suppressed. 19 Giacomo Acerbo (Loreto Aprutino, 1888–Rome, 1969) graduated in agronomy at the University of Pisa in 1912. In the post-war period he started an academic career as assistant professor in political economy at the University of Rome and at the same time took part to political activity as an active member of the Fascist Party. Elected at the Chamber of deputies in 1921, he became a close collaborator of Mussolini. In the meantime he carried on academic work in agricultural economics and in 1928 became professor on that discipline at the “High School of Commerce”, later faculty of economics, University of Rome. Minister of agriculture and forestry till January 1935, on that year was appointed president of the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome. Member of the “Great Council of Fascism”, in July 1943 voted against Mussolini. Cf. Parisella (1988). 20 A.P., Senate, 9 April 1930, 2346–2349.

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by the representatives of the farmers and landowners, presented during the discussion of the annual budgets of the ministry.21 In two encompassing speeches delivered respectively in the Chamber of deputies and the Senate, respectively in February and March 1933,22 Acerbo recognised the gravity of the crisis while claiming the validity of the criteria adopted by the government “to defend and strengthen” the sector. The most serious problem, he agreed, was the collapse of the prices of most agricultural products, which in turn had led many farmers to face a “reduction in agricultural revenues below production costs”. The situation appeared to be particularly serious with regard to livestock farming and silk and wine production. The government, maintained this time Acerbo, had not waited for “the slow unfolding of market rebalancing forces” to bring back equilibrium.23 On the contrary, it had defended national producers by preventing, through import duties and other measures, domestic prices from falling at the international level. The government had also promoted the improvement of production techniques and the increase in the use of chemical fertilisers. Another key problem, partially connected with the previous one, was that of indebtedness. The total debt of Italian agriculture, Acerbo estimated, amounted to 9–10 billion lira, out of a total value of production of about 25–30 billion. This sum, although not excessively high at an aggregate level, was strongly concentrated in some regions: in particular, Emilia, Lazio, Veneto. In this case the government had intervened by granting aid to “meritorious” farmers: abandoning them to ruin would have been a “serious political error as well as an economic one”.24 In his speech held at the Senate, Acerbo strongly defended the project of “integral reclamation” coordinated by Serpieri. In three years it has allowed to carry out reclamation works for an amount of 1600 million lire and to ensure employment to tens of thousands of workers. The execution of the works by the state had to be followed now by those due by 21 Complains

focused on the collapse of the prices of the main agricultural goods but also on the high tax burden and the high interest rates on the loans to farmers. Cf. A.P., Chamber, 21 February 1933, 7672–7705; A.P., Senate, 21 March 1933, 5926–5952. 22 A.P., Chamber, 24 February 1933, 7804–7818; A.P., Senate, 24 March 1933, 6001–6016. 23 A.P., Chamber, 24 February 1933, 7805. 24 Ibidem, 7813–7816.

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the private sector: if a few of them were unable to do so due to lack of capital, they would have had to voluntarily give up part of their property to those who had that will, before they were forced to do so.25 On this point, however, a tough contrast soon arised between the representatives of the landowners in Parliament and the ministry of agriculture. Until 1933–1934, the norms on the obligations of the landowners had remained a dead letter. In December 1934, however, Serpieri presented in Parliament a draft law to make these norms effective. This new law, maintained Serpieri and Acerbo intervening at the Chamber, did not intend to violate the right of property; it simply reaffirmed the social duties of the owners towards the nation.26 After an extensive debate, the proposal was indeed approved by the Chamber of deputies but was then put into a standstill, as a consequence of the fierce opposition by the landowners. This setback, almost unprecedented during the regime, led, in January 1935, to the resignation of Acerbo and Serpieri. They were replaced, respectively, by Edmondo Rossoni—an ambitious leader of the fascist trade unionism who, however, possessed hardly any notion of agronomy27 —as a new minister of agriculture, and by Gabriele Canelli, a lawyer from Apulia who enjoyed the trust of the landowners, as undersecretary for land reclamation. Canelli maintained this position until his death in April 1937. It is not surprising that, for at least two years, the land reclamation initiatives were radically scaled down. In the same period, probably as a consequence of an implicit deal between the landowners and Mussolini himself (Daneo, 1980, 132–133) most of the resources previously invested in agriculture were diverted by the regime to finance the war in Ethiopia and to the rearmament programs.

25 A.P.,

Senate, 24 March 1933, 6013–6015. Chamber, 12 December 1934, 494–507. 27 For a tranchant judgement of Rossoni’s work at the ministry cf. the Diaries of Giuseppe Tassinari, at that time under-secretary of agriculture. In this text, recently published, Tassinari judged Rossoni “an incompetent and slacker minister, concerned exclusively with his own interests” (Tassinari 2019, 68). 26 A.P.,

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To partially compensate this standstill to agricultural policy, in January 1935, Giuseppe Tassinari28 a first-rate agricultural economist, was appointed under-secretary of the same ministry, in addition to Canelli. In May 1937, Tassinari also took the responsibility for land reclamation and finally, at the end of October 1939, was appointed minister of agriculture. At the beginning of his scientific training, in the early 1920s, Tassinari had been strongly influenced by Serpieri’s teaching; after 1930– 1931, however, he started to criticise the model of land reclamation advocated by the latter, as, in his opinion, it relied too much on the goodwill of the landowners. Once in the government, he advocated instead a project of land reclamation focused on specific uncultivated areas in Southern Italy: these had to be expropriated by the state, provided with adequate infrastructure build by public agencies and transformed into small- and medium-size farms. In this period a new priority for Mussolini had become indeed the pursuit of national self-sufficiency (“autarky”) and then in 1939–1940, this time overcoming the resistance of the local landowners, he gave his assent to an ambitious plan to expropriate and transform large properties in Sicily (Zaganella 2010). At that time, however, Italy was sliding towards the war and this project could not be completed.

28 Giuseppe

Tassinari (Perugia, 1891−Salò, 1944) taught agricultural economics at the Universities of Perugia and Bologna, where he became full professor in 1926, and forestry at the National Institute of Agricultural Economics in Florence, presided by Serpieri. From 1929 till 1939 was member of the Chamber of deputies and then, from 1939, of the “Chamber of Fasces and Corporations”. After September 1943, albeit critical of the fascist ruling élite, which he judged to be corrupt and incompetent, he adhered to the “Repubblica Sociale Italiana”, the puppet State created by Mussolini with the help of the nazi regime and died in Salò in 1944 during an aerial attack (cf. Zaganella 2010). In his academic writings Tassinari focused on the structural problems of the Italian agriculture, on the distribution of income among Italian farmers and on corporatism (Tassinari 1931, 1933, 1937).

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The Economists at the Chamber of Deputies

As mentioned above, thanks to the Acerbo law and to systematic violence and intimidation, in 1924 the Fascist Party managed to gain a large majority in the Lower House. Several deputies, however, were elected in the ranks of the opposition parties. Among them, three were university professors in economics: Angelo Mauri, a catholic intellectual, Arturo Labriola, member of the socialist party and Antonio Graziadei, a co-founder in 1921 of the Italian communist party. As a result of the dramatic sequence of events that led in 1924–1926 to the abolition of the fundamental political rights and the establishment of a personal dictatorship by Mussolini, their role in Parliament, however, was bound to be de facto ineffective. In the summer of 1924, after the kidnapping and killing by the fascists of the socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti, both Mauri and Labriola joined the strategy adopted by the socialist and centrist opposition to boycott parliamentary work until violence had ceased (the so-called “Aventine secession”). It is not surprising, then, that the parliamentary proceedings do not include in this period any speech by Mauri, while Labriola held only a minor speech, in April 1924, against an attempt by the majority to change the composition of the permanent commissions. Graziadei, together with the communist party, did not join the boycott and continued his opposition from inside the Lower House, where he took the floor to attack the economic policy of the government. In a speech given in March 1925,29 in particular, he denounced the continuous increase in the cost of living in Italy, in a context in which wages had remained unchanged or had even decreased. This, he maintained, had resulted in a sharp deterioration in the standard of living of the workers. At the same time, Graziadei lamented the strong depreciation of the lira which had brought increases in the prices of imported goods and higher inflation. No less severe was his criticism of De’ Stefani’s fiscal policy and of government’s decision to favour the bailout of a few credit institutions linked to the regime. 29 A.P.,

Chamber, 11 March 1925, 2439–2445.

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These sharp remarks, which identified several weak points of the fascist policy, were of course not welcomed by Mussolini. In October 1926, in the framework of a tightening of the dictatorship, all opposition members were expelled from the Chamber. After this date, then, the remaining voices of the anti-fascist opposition were silenced. This does not mean, however, that the Chamber of deputies became simply an amplifier of the duce’s will. While from the second half of the 1930s conformism and even flattery became dominant, before this period the debate on the floor still reflected different positions within fascism. Among the deputies who, while adering to fascism, maintained a critical and non-conformist view, one of the most stimulating is undoubtedly the corporatist economist Agostino Lanzillo. Lanzillo was a leading exponent of the “revolutionary syndicalism”, a movement which maintained that factories should be owned and managed by the people who worked in them and which drew inspiration from the ideas of Georges Sorel.30 After graduating in law at the University of Rome, he started a successful academic career as an economist but took also an active part in the political debate, becoming an outspoken critic of the socialist orthodoxy and advocating a synthesis between syndicalism and nationalism. In 1914–1915 he actively campaigned in favour of Italy’s participation to the war and then adhered very early to fascism, becoming a columnist of Popolo d’Italia, the official newspaper of the fascist movement. In 1924 Lanzillo was elected at the Chamber of deputies and the following year became a member of the so-called “Commissione dei diciotto”, a committee selected by Mussolini to shape Italy’s political institutions according to the new regime (cf. De Felice 1968, 42–46; Aquarone 1965, 52ff.). In this committee, he became supporter of a radical view of corporatism, seen as a system supporting the

30 Agostino Lanzillo (Reggio Calabria, 1886−Milano, 1952) taught as assistant professor at the University “Bocconi” of Milan and at the University of Rome; in 1923 got the chair of political economy at the University of Cagliari. From 1934 was professor in the same discipline at University “Ca’ Foscari”, Venice. In his original and controversial writings (Lanzillo 1918, 1936, 1937) he focused on the crisis of liberalism and socialism and analysed the perspectives of capitalism after the Great Depression.

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self-government of the productive categories. In his view, the corporations, not the government should take the key decisions in the spheres of production and distribution. This position, hostile to statism and centralisation, brought to a gradual marginalisation of Lanzillo inside the regime. His speeches at Chamber of deputies, between 1924 and 1929, reflect his views as a “leftist” fascist intellectual. In March 1925, commenting on the political situation,31 he expressed strong criticism of the “Aventine secession”. The events of the First World War demonstrated, maintained Lanzillo, that liberalism and democracy had failed: on that occasion the national interests had been defended not by the majority of population, who was against the war, but by a pugnacious minority, led by the fascists. This movement had therefore the right and indeed the duty to lead the country until his programme had been fulfilled. To this aim, violent means had been used in the past and would have to be used in the future; in Lanzillo’s view, however, fascist violence was “ennobled by idealistic motivations” and led by a clear will to modernise the country.32 In another key speech, delivered in December 1925, Lanzillo commented critically the proposal, drafted by Alfredo Rocco, aimed at enacting a strict control by the government of both trade unions and employers’ organisations.33 According to this proposal, which anticipated the so-called “Charter of Labour”, only strictly fascist workers’ and employers’ organisations were entitled to draw “collective” labour contracts, i.e. deals whose provisions were binding also for non-unionised workers. To this aim, each area of activity could be legally represented only by a single, fascist, workers’ and employers’ organisation, which had to apply for a formal recognition by the government and be submitted to continuous control. Labour conflicts and the fixing of wages had to be dealt by special judiciary courts (“magistratura del lavoro”). Strikes and lockouts were forbidden and punished as a crime. In his speech Lanzillo expressed support to the broad principles underlying the above-mentioned proposal; as a matter of fact, however, he raised several critical observations. According to the syndicalist 31 A.P.,

Chamber, 10 March 1925, 2392–2396. 2395. 33 A.P., Chamber, 5 December 1925, 4849–4855. 32 Ibidem,

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programme, indeed, Lanzillo wished that the newly organised unions would take a leading role in the production process and in policy decisions. As a consequence, he expressed reservations to government’s control of everyday activity of the unions and opposed the view that the conflicting interests of workers and employers, including the determination of wages, should be entrusted to a specific labour judiciary. The very concept of “fair wage”, as well as that of fair price, he told the Chamber, was metaphysical. The struggle for income distribution and even strikes, provided they were not motivated by political reasons, were instrumental in fostering efficiency and productivity. Given Lanzillo’s heterodox views inside fascism and his independence of judgement, it is not surprising that in the following elections, scheduled in 1929, he was not included in the list of candidates to the Parliament (De Felice 1968, 476). In the 1930s he became increasingly at odds with Mussolini’s policies and focused on academic work at the University of Venice, writing several essays on corporatism and on the challenges facing capitalism after the great depression. Some of these were published on Critica Fascista, the journal edited by Giuseppe Bottai. Another leading theorist of corporatism was Gino Arias, professor of political economy at the Universities of Genoa, Florence and Rome.34 In 1924–1925, similarly to Lanzillo, he was selected by Mussolini to take part in a key committee delegated to institutional reforms (“Comitato dei diciotto”): on that circumstance, he supported a moderate and more “orthodox” view of the role of the trade unions: to perform their functions, these should obtain indeed a formal recognition by the government; in each productive sector, however several unions had to compete 34 Gino

Arias was born in Florence in 1879 by a Jewish family. A prolific writer, he published between 1901 and 1906 several essays and monographs on the history of mediaeval economic and social institutions (cf. Arias 1901, 1905). In the following years he focused on the analysis of economic institutions and phenomena in an historical perspective and in 1909 he got a chair of political economy at the University of Genoa, where he taught till 1924, when he moved to the University of Florence. During the 1920s, Arias adhered to fascism and wrote several essays on the theoretical foundations of corporatism (Arias 1930) and on the “Labour Charter”, a key corporatist document elaborated in 1926 by Giuseppe Bottai. In 1936 he moved to the University of Rome to become professor of political economy at the faculty of law. On October 1938, after the enforcement by the regime of the racist laws against the Jews, he was forced to emigrate to Argentina, where he died shortly after his arrival, in the 1940. Cf. Ottonelli (2012).

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to represent workers’ interests. In the following years he became a leading representative of the fascist economic and social doctrine: in this capacity he wrote regularly for Popolo d’Italia, the official newspaper of the Fascist Party and for Gerarchia, the journal founded by Mussolini and directed by Margherita Sarfatti (Ottonelli 2012, 31 sgg). Member of the Chamber of deputies since 1934, Arias took an active part to the work of the committee on finance, where he drafted several internal documents. In the general assembly, however, he took the floor only on a few occasions, during the discussion of the budget of the ministry of corporations or as a speaker of the committee on finance. In March 1935, for example, he gave a speech to exalt the “Labour Charter” which, he maintained, “transformed the unions in the most powerful instrument of order and justice” and laid the foundation of corporatism.35 Arias stressed the need for corporations to have their own research and documentation centres, in order to be able to analyse the problems of the sector they had to coordinate and to set new legislative and policy measures. The aim of the new corporative order, maintained Arias, was not to suppress the private initiative, quite the contrary. Private firms, however, should “spontaneously” conform to the new corporative “spirit”, modifying accordingly their methods of management, their relations with the labour force and becoming conscious of their social duties. Interestingly, this point was met with perplexity and criticism by a few members of the Chamber: the parliamentary proceedings report “interruptions” and somehow ironic comments.36 In a speech held on March 1936 Arias provides a very optimistic view of the role and future developments of the corporative system.37 The corporations, he maintains, would have “disciplined the entire national

35 A.P.,

Chamber, 28 March 1935, 1207–1212. his speech Arias mentioned the need to tackle the organisation of new “corporate firms”. To this point another deputy, Nazzareno Mezzetti, interrupted him: “a corporate firm? Could you explain what does it mean? Please, tell us” (A.P., 28 March 1935, 1209). Also an observation by Arias that the newly founded high schools aimed at forming the cadres of the fascist unions did not attract enough participants among workers’ representatives, was met with irony by the floor: “This is because the trade unionists have a better preparation than the teachers”, a deputy observed (Ibidem, 1935). 37 A.P., Chamber, 26 March 1936, 2521–2526. 36 In

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economy”.38 They were “public institutions” whose role was to fulfil key regulating and lawmaking functions under the coordination of the head of government. As public institutions, they should have sufficient personnel. This bureaucratic apparatus, however, should have been reduced to a minimum so as not to deprive corporations of their flexibility. A partial exception to this framework was constituted, Arias acknowledged, by the steel and mechanical industries: given their importance for the national defence, these had to be placed under the control of the state. Also in this case, however, Arias hoped for coordination with the corporations.39 As we know, however, the organisation of the Italian economy developed in a different direction from that desired by Arias and the corporatists: from the second half of the 1930s, Mussolini’s priority became the transformation of the Italian economy into an instrument aimed at achieving objectives of military expansion and aggression. In this context, a centralised control of productive activity and of foreign trade was needed: corporatism, with his complex decision-making process could even become an obstacle. Arias anyway did not take part to this last phase of the fascist parable: at the end of 1938, following the adoption by the regime of notorious anti-Semitic laws, he was stripped, as a Jew, of all his institutional positions and expelled from the Parliament and from the University. During the 1930s, as mentioned, critical debate inside the Chamber of deputies rarefied and conformism became increasingly dominant in deputies’ speeches. A symptomatic case of this tendency is that of Gaetano Zingali, professor of statistics and public economics at the University of Catania and author of several essays on demography, on the Italian taxation system, on the measurement of wealth and income in Southern Italy.40

38 Ibidem,

2521. the same speech Arias denied that the national economic independence, advocated by Mussolini, could coincide with isolation: on the contrary, he maintained, international trade should continue to perform a crucial function (Ibidem, 2523). 40 Cf. Zingali (1924, 1925, 1933). Gaetano Zingali (Francofonte, 1894−Catania, 1975) taught statistics at the University of Catania since 1925 and became full professor of public economics at the same University in 1936. 39 In

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Elected at the Chamber of deputies in 1929 and again in 1934, he gave several speeches in which he confirmed his role as an expert in applied statistics and national accounting but also his acritical support of the regime. In December 1929, for example, he intervened during the general discussion on the budget of the ministry of finance for the year 1927– 1928, a session which was attended also by Mussolini. This budget had been introduced to the general assembly by Gino Olivetti, speaker of the finance committee. In his speech Olivetti, who was secretary-general of the employers’ association (“Confindustria”) and therefore a leading representative of the industrialists’ view, pointed out to two worrying phenomena which had negatively influenced the Italian economy during the previous year: an increase in fiscal pressure and a decrease of national income. This was indeed an implicit but substantial criticism to the government’s economic policy. Commenting on Olivetti’s speech, Zingali denied that the increase in fiscal revenues, which had indeed happened, was the consequence of an heavier fiscal burden.41 On the contrary, it had to be interpreted as the result of an enlargement of the taxing basis and a severe reduction of tax evasion. The latter, he denounced quoting official data, had been widespread among the professionals, particularly in Southern Italy, till 1922–1923.42 Resolute action adopted by fascist government, however, had curbed this phenomenon. In his speech, which was commented favourably by Mussolini, Zingali quoted also data on production to deny a widespread decrease of income.43 In another lengthy speech in which he combined professional use of available statistical data with flattery and adulation towards the regime, Zingali praised the public expenditure policy pursued by fascism, denying that this had brought to an increase of aggregate public expenditure and a worsening of the budget deficit: rather fascism had promoted a 41 A.P.,

Chamber, 5 December 1929, 1387–1389. 1389–1391. 43 In December 1930 Zingali gave his support to a measure enacted by the government with the aim of reducing nominal wages of civil servants, arguing optimistically that this cut was more than compensated by a decrease of the prices of the goods consumed by the workers and by a reduction of rents decided by the government. A.P., Chamber, 11 December, 1930, 3656–3662. 42 Ibidem,

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more efficient use of public resources with the aim to improve the welfare of the Italian people, in particular the poorest part of the population.44 Strong support for the regime, deriving however in this case by sincere ideological commitment, was manifested also by Attilio da Empoli, professor of public finance and corporative economics at the Universities of Bari, Messina and Neaples,45 who became member of the Chamber of deputies in the years 1934–1939 and of the “Chamber of Fasces and Corporations” from 1939 till 1943. In Parliament da Empoli intervened mainly on topics connected with public finance, advocating a moderate redistribution of income and measures aimed at reducing inequality and promoting “social justice” (Di Napoli 2012). In March 1935, for example, commenting on the budget forecast of the ministry of education,46 he suggested that school and university fees should be charged in proportion to household’s income, rather than being fixed in amount. Fees, he observed, did not cover the entire cost of education and were integrated with resources deriving from taxation, including taxes on consumption, paid also by poor people who normally did not enrol in university. As a consequence, the education of the more affluent section of the society was subsidised, at least in part, by the less advantaged section. More radical appears his proposal for a reform of the Italian tax system he put forward in May 1935 during the discussion of the provisional budget of the ministry of finance.47 In this circumstance, he suggested a system of progressive taxation based on the principle of equal marginal

44 A.P.,

Chamber, 10 May 1932, 7034–7041. After the Second World War Zingali, in a compelling example of political opportunism, became a member of the liberal party and run for election to the democratic Parliament, this time unsuccessfully. 45 Attilio Da Empoli (Reggio Calabria, 1904−Napoli, 1948) was author of innovative essays in public finance. From 1929 till 1931, he completed his intellectual formation at the London School of Economics and then at the Universities of Columbia, Berkeley and Chicago. In 1936 he got a chair in public economics at the University of Bari; then taught at the Universities of Messina and Neaples. A committed nationalist and fascist, in 1935 he volunteered in the war in Ethiopia and, in 1941, in the campaign of Greece. In 1943, however, he distanced himself from fascism and in 1944 he enlisted in the reconstituted Italian army that fought alongside the Anglo-Americans. Cf. Faucci (1985), Fusco (2012). 46 A.P., Chamber, 6 March 1935, 856–859. 47 A.P., Chamber, 10 May 1935, 7034–7055.

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sacrifice. Tax rates, however, should not reach levels so high as to discourage savings. Da Empoli took the floor also in December 1936, at the time of the approval of the government decree of October 5 deliberating a substantial devaluation of the lira after a round of devaluations enacted by the monetary authorities of the major industrialised countries. In his speech,48 Da Empoli placed the realignment of the lira within the framework of the monetary policy pursued by the regime since the stabilisation process of 1926–1927 (“quota novanta”). This latter measure, he maintained, had placed the Italian economy on a solid and non-inflationary footing and had made it possible to mitigate the adverse effect on real economy deriving from the deflationary pressures of the 1930s. However, the devaluations of the pound and the dollar, followed by realignments of most currencies, had made the search for a new equilibrium exchange rate of the lira unavoidable. In May 1938, commenting on the floor the budget of the ministry of finance for 1938–1939, he used enthusiastic tones: “what comes to your attention is the budget for the third year of Mussolini’s empire: a Roman, fascist and corporate empire”.49 In his speech da Empoli returned to the need to strengthen the progressiveness of the tax system in order to reduce income inequalities and to increase tax deductions to large families. His overall judgement, anyway, was very positive: the budget was inspired by the principles of sound finance that “had alone allowed the means necessary for the conquest of the empire”.50 After July 1943, the disastrous conduct of the war by Mussolini, a direct consequence of his totalitarian management of power, led da Empoli, who fought during the conflict as an army officer, to radically rethink his support for the regime and to become an active anti-fascist.

48 A.P.,

Chamber, 15 December 1936, 3111–3114. Chamber, 16 May 1938, 4963. 50 Ibidem. 49 A.P.,

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Between Residual Autonomy and Increasing Regimentation: Being an Economist at the Fascist Senate

Also the Senate, as mentioned, was submitted from the late 1920s to a process of fascistisation. In this institution, however, the legacy of the pre-fascist past was stronger and the process of substituting the older, mainly liberal-oriented senators with politically more reliable new members was undoubtedly slower. Among the representatives of the liberal pre-fascist élite, one of the most outstanding was Luigi Einaudi. Appointed to the Senate in 1919, Einaudi manifested his dissent with the regime by rarely attending to the sessions and avoiding from taking part in the discussions on the floor. Furthermore, in 1928 he voted against the new electoral law promoted by Alfredo Rocco and in 1935 to a Senate agendum in favour of Ethiopia’s war (Faucci 1986, 215). Another influential economist, who came from a different approach but, as Einaudi, was alien to the fascist ideology, was Achille Loria, an eclectic thinker influenced by the German historical school (but also by Marx and Darwin) and author of original, albeit controversial, essays and monographs in which he tried to explain the economic and political evolution of the modern societies on the basis of the abundance or scarcity of land.51 Member of the “Accademia dei Lincei” since 1901, he was appointed to the Senate in October 1919. In spite of the fact that, being alien to fascist ideology, he was subjected to increasing isolation, Loria took an active part in the work of the Senate. In March 1930, in a speech delivered in the presence of Mussolini 51 Achille

Loria was born in Mantua to a Jewish family in 1857. After graduating in law at the University of Bologna, he continued his studies in Pavia, Berlin and London. In 1881 became professor political economy at the University of Siena and then moved to the Universities of Padua (1891) and Turin (1902), where he taught until his retirement in 1932. He died in November 1943 at Luserna San Giovanni, a mountain village not far from Turin. A prolific writer, Loria was acclaimed as an outstanding thinker during the 1880s and 1890s to be later subjected to harsh criticism by such authors as Benedetto Croce and Antonio Gramsci. Some of his works were translated in English and French and exerted a significant influence abroad (cf., among others, Loria 1886). He was Italian correspondent of the Royal Economic Society and honorary fellow of the American Economic Association. Cf. Benson (1950), Faucci and Perri (2003).

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during a debate on a law aimed at implementing the “National Council of Corporations”, a new constitutional body, he expressed a favourable opinion on the role played by the corporations on the economic and social system of Italy, as they could guarantee a continuous coordination between workers and employers.52 In his analysis, Loria interpreted corporatism as a manifestation of the intervention of the state in the economy: as such, he argued, this issue had been already raised by several nineteenth-century economists, in particular the German Kathedersozialisten. In the same speech, however, Loria warned against the claims, made by some supporters of the corporatism, that this would finally overcome the clash between social classes. The debate itself that had accompanied the approval of the same legislative proposal in the Chamber of deputies, observed Loria, had revealed that on crucial aspects the representatives of the entrepreneurs and those of the unions had different, even conflicting point of view.53 To some extent, he added, these conflicts were indeed unavoidable and even beneficial. In another remarkable speech, delivered in the Senate in May 1935, Loria focused on the Italian banking system, expressing a very positive evaluation of the legislative interventions that led to the establishment of the “Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale” (IRI).54 Thanks to these measures, stated Loria, it had been possible to overcome the main factors of instability affecting the major Italian banks, namely their tendency to invest short-term deposits in long-term loans. The problem was that, in many cases, orthodox short-term operations were insufficient to guarantee adequate profits to the banks, which could then be induced to engage in speculative operations. The optimal solution would have been to limit the number of banks by law, allowing the surviving banks to operate satisfactorily. In the following three years, from 1935 to 1938, “physical and moral pains”55 prevented Loria from taking part in the work of the Senate. In 52 A.P.,

Senate, 13 March 1930, 1932. 1935–1936. This statement caused an abrupt comment by Mussolini, who attended the session: “We never ruled out these [contrasts]”, he told the Senators, briefly interrupting Loria. 54 A.P., Senate, 28 May 1935, 1317–1321. 55 Senate archives, Letter of Achille Loria to the President of the Senate, 31 October 1938. 53 Ibidem,

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October 1938, then, he was struck, as a Jew, by the anti-Semitic legislation imposed by the regime. In a heartfelt letter to the President of the Senate, he recalled his profound patriotism, adding that he was confident that his family, which “had lived in Italy for centuries and had always given all its energy to the service of the country” would be exempted from persecution. As a matter of fact, Mussolini decided to “discriminate”, in other words to exempt from the most odious consequences of the anti-semitic legislation, all senators of Jewish origin (Gentile 2002, 88–89). However, this measure was not fully implemented and, anyway, the wound inflicted on him could hardly be healed: Loria retired to a small town near Turin where he died in November 1943. The other two economists in Senate, Pietro Sitta and Federico Flora, whose intellectual formation was based on economic liberalism, on the contrary, during the 1920s adhered to fascism and put their intellectual skills at the service of the regime, by playing an important role as experts. Pietro Sitta56 was an agricultural economist, author of renowned essays and monographs on land and agricultural credit and on taxation of landed property. From the first decade of the twentieth century, he accompanied this work as scholar with an intense activity in Parliament and at the government: he joined the Chamber of deputies in 1915 and was re-elected in the following two legislatures until 1924, when he was appointed senator. In 1919 he held government positions as undersecretary at the ministry of agriculture and then at the ministry of industry and trade. In the post-war period then, he approached Mussolini’s regime and in May 1925 became part of the Fascist Party. In Senate, Sitta took an active part in the discussion and was member of several committees. In May 1930 he took the floor during the discussion of the budget of the ministry of corporations to address issues relating to social security and social assistance which, he recalled, had passed under the jurisdiction of that ministry. In his speech, Sitta took 56 Pietro

Sitta (Ferrara, 1866−Ivi, 1947) graduated at the High School of Commerce “Ca’ Foscari” of Venice. In 1902 became full professor of political economy at the University of Ferrara where he taught until retirement and where he held the position of rector for several years. He wrote several essays and monographs on agricultural economics (cf. Sitta 1895, 1933). He was member of the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) and corresponding member of “Accademia dei Georgofili”. Cf. Morselli (1948).

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the opportunity to praise the results achieved by fascism in this field but wondered whether the ministry had sufficient resources to cope with the new tasks, with particular reference to the inspection and supervision of public and public institutions under its jurisdiction.57 In March 1931 he intervened on the problem of agricultural credit, a few years after the approval of a comprehensive bill58 that had benefited from “appropriate observations of the Senate”.59 According to Sitta, this law had considerably improved the conditions for granting credit to the farmers. However, there was room for further improvement, especially to avoid the danger of over-indebtedness in the agricultural sector and to control interest rates and the high costs of expertise charged by some credit institutions.60 Federico Flora, professor at the University of Bologna from 1910 till 1937,61 was an highly reputed expert of public services management, public debt and exchange rates policies. As mentioned, he had a liberal background (he drew inspiration from Francesco Ferrara and other Italian liberal thinkers). From the second half of the 1920s, however, he gradually approached Mussolini’s regime: in December 1929 he became a member of the “National association of fascist university professors” and in July 1933 he joined the Fascist Party. This undoubtedly facilitated his appointment as senator, which took place in February 1934. In Senate he carried out an intense activity, as a speaker and commentator of several legislative proposals. From 1939 till 1943 he took part in the work of the Committee on Finance.

57 A.P.,

Senate, 26 May 1930, 2598–2602. 29 July 1928, no. 2085. 59 A.P., Senate, 25 March 1931, 3523. 60 Ibidem, 3523–3525. 61 Federico Flora (Pordenone, 1867−Chiusi, 1958) was professor of public finance at the University of Catania (since 1904) and Bologna, where he taught until 1937. His academic writings include an influential handbook of public finance (Flora 1893) and several essays on public debt management, pauperism, rail transport tariffs and currency policy (Cf. Flora 1896, 1907, 1909, 1930). He was member of the Royal Academy of Science of Bologna and of the “Accademia dei Lincei” of Rome and took part as a delegate of the Italian government in the Dawes committee. Flora was also an active commentator of economic facts and policies on national based newspapers. Cf. Colonna (1987). 58 Law

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In May 1935 he delivered a speech on the budget of the state railways,62 a subject, he warned, that deserved the utmost attention not only for the size of this account but also for the serious repercussions it had on the Treasury, which by law appropriated the surpluses but also assumed the operating deficits of the sector. Now, until the end of the 1920s the railways’ administration realised a surplus. With the depression, in the early 1930s, the volume of traffic had fallen by more than a third. This had resulted in a deficit of 900 million lira in the year 1935–1936, half of the total of the public sector deficit, and had caused widespread concern among public opinion which was increasingly considering railways as a burden. This point of view however, maintained Flora, was utterly unfair: if an overall calculation would have been made of the costs and benefits stemming from the railways, the result would have been hugely positive. In December Flora intervened on the decree adopted by the government on 5th October to devalue the lira. In his speech Flora maintained that, following the recent devaluation of the French franc and of the leading international currencies, the realignment of the lira was inevitable: “monetary nationalism in a world economy like ours is not a sustainable decision: monetary problems do not allow purely national solutions”.63 It was crucial however, he added, to keep the domestic price dynamics under control, in order to avoid significant increases that would have thwarted the positive effects of the devaluation on the trade balance and would have resulted in adverse redistributive effects on fixed income earners.

7

Concluding Remarks

It is now possible to take up the main issues that emerged in this paper with the aim of outlining some interpretative lines. A first important point to bear in mind, particularly for the purpose of a comparison with the work done by the economists in the Italian Parliament during the “liberal age”, is that the fascist regime enacted a deep shift in the balance of power between the legislative and the executive. The Chamber of 62 A.P., 63 A.P.,

Senate, 17 May 1935, 1193–1200. Senate, 22 December 1936, 2555.

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deputies, in particular, lost the centrality and the representativeness it had before the rise of Mussolini’s regime: after 1929, when a new electoral law was enforced, its members were selected directly by the “Grand Council of Fascism” from a list of candidates chosen by the corporative confederations, a few national associations and academic institutions. The evolution of the Senate was different: from the 1930s, however, also this institution became increasingly “fascistised”. From the end of the 1920s, therefore, no anti-fascist opposition was tolerated in Parliament. This does not mean, however, that this institution became simply a “rubber stamp” for the bills drafted by the government. An interesting aspect which stems from a systematic analysis of the parliamentary proceedings, is that the debate on the floor still reflected different positions within the fascist regime, connected mainly to different interest groups (the representatives of the employers’ organisations and of the fascist trade unions, the landowners, the representatives of the professional associations). The internal structure of the executive power also changed substantially: a dominant role was assumed by Mussolini who enforced his personal dictatorship and entrusted the ministries on economic and financial issues mainly to experts, whose role was to implement policy decisions ultimately taken by the duce himself. In this context, it is hardly surprising that the vast majority of the economists who acted as legislators and policymakers during Mussolini’s regime supported more or less wholeheartedly the fascist ideology. At the Chamber of deputies the only exception was constituted by three professors of economics elected in 1924 among the ranks of the opposition (Angelo Mauri, Arturo Labriola and Antonio Graziadei). In October 1926, however, all members of the opposition were expelled by the Chamber and their voice was silenced. In the Senate a dissenting position was held by Luigi Einaudi, an outstanding representative of the economic and political liberalism and by Achille Loria, an eclectic thinker influenced by the German historical school and to some extent, by marxism. While Einaudi manifested his dissent by avoiding taking part in the debates on the floor, Loria held a few authoritative speeches to discuss from a purely “technical” point of view key initiatives taken by the government.

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Another point highlighted by this research is that most of the economists in Parliament or at the government during these years were professors in applied economics. In particular, it is worth to underline the role played by a substantial group of agricultural economists: six in total, three of whom, respectively Arrigo Serpieri, Giacomo Acerbo and Giuseppe Tassinari became Ministries or Under-Secretary of agriculture and, at the same time, were members of the Chamber of deputies; two, Vincenzo Ricchioni and Zeno Vignati were only members of this Chamber; one, Pietro Sitta, was a senator. This confirms the crucial role attributed to the agriculture by the regime, at an economic and, perhaps even more, political and social level. A key role was also played by scholars in public economics and finance: in primis Alberto De’ Stefani, minister of finance in the years 1922– 1925; but also Gaetano Zingali and Attilio da Empoli, members of the Chamber of deputies, and Federico Flora, member of the Senate. The role of the theorists of corporatism was significant but circumscribed: this paper analyses the activity of Agostino Lanzillo and Gino Arias. There is another aspect that, in our view, can be drawn from this research and allows us to provide new insight not only on the role of the economists in these years but also on the intrinsic shortcomings of Mussolini’s dictatorship. As mentioned before, several of the economists who played an essential role in building the fascist state were among the most valuable experts in their respective fields, besides being strongly committed to the fascist and corporatist ideology. Mussolini, however, did not hesitate to put them aside whenever his strategic priorities changed or fundamental political issues emerged. This was the case of De’ Stefani, whose measures against stock market speculation made him unpopular among influential financial circles and whose orthodox customs policy was hardly compatible with Mussolini’s aim of stabilising the lira at an high exchange rate; it is also the case of Serpieri, whose policy of “bonifica integrale” risked to alienate many landowners from the regime and, anyway, absorbed substantial public resources which Mussolini needed for his new priority, the Ethiopian war. All of this pales in the face of the tragedy of the racist laws, strongly supported by Mussolini and approved in October 1938; laws that destroyed the careers and put at risk the lives of so many intellectuals of

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Jewish descent, no matter if they had been alien to fascism (this was the case of Achille Loria) or, as in the case of Gino Arias, had actively contributed in the previous years to build the foundations of that ideology.

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Di Napoli, M. (2012). Un economista a Montecitorio nel periodo fascista. In M. Di Matteo & E. Longobardi (Eds.), Attilio da Empoli (1904–1948). Un economista partecipe del suo tempo (pp. 217–228). Milano: FrancoAngeli. Dini, M. (2010). Introduzione. In A. Serpieri (Ed.), Memorie per il futuro (pp. 1–63). Firenze: Le Monnier. Faucci, R. (1985). Da Empoli, Attilio. DBI (Vol. 31, pp. 361–365). Roma: Istituto Enciclopedia Italiana. Faucci, R. (1986). Luigi Einaudi. Torino: Utet. Faucci, R. (2014). A History of Italian Economic Thought. London: Routledge. Faucci, R., & Perri, S. (2003). Achille Loria: His Vision and Economic Analysis. In W. J. Samuels (Ed.), European Economists of the Early Twentieth Century (Vol. 2, pp. 203–238). Cheltenham: Elgar. Fimiani, E. (2001). Fascismo e regime tra meccanismi statutari e ‘Costituzione materiale’ (1922–1943). In M. Palla (Ed.), Lo Stato fascista (pp. 79–176). Milano: Nuova Italia. Flora, F. (1893). Manuale di scienza delle finanze. Livorno: Giusti. Flora, F. (1896). La questione sociale. Torino: Roux. Flora, F. (1907). La politica delle tariffe ferroviarie. Catania: Giannotti. Flora, F. (1909). Ferrovie e finanze in Italia. Torino: STEN. Flora, F. (1930). La liquidazione finanziaria della guerra: i piani Dawes e Young. Padova: Cedam. Fusco, A. M. (2012). Attilio da Empoli: spunti per una biografia. In M. Di Matteo & E. Longobardi (Eds.), Attilio da Empoli (1904–1948). Un economista partecipe del suo tempo (pp. 27–77). Milano: FrancoAngeli. Gentile, E. (2002). Il totalitarismo alla conquista della Camera alta. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. Gentile, E., & Campochiaro, E. (Eds.). (2003). Repertorio biografico dei Senatori dell’Italia fascista. Napoli: Bibliopolis. Guarneri, F. (1986). Battaglie economiche tra le due guerre. Bologna: Il Mulino. Lanzillo, A. (1918). La disfatta del socialismo: critica della guerra e del socialismo. Firenze: Libreria della Voce. Lanzillo, A. (1936). Lo Stato nel processo economico. Padova: Cedam. Lanzillo, A. (1937). Lezioni di economia corporativa. Padova: Cedam. Loria, A. (1886). La teoria economica della costituzione politica. Torino: Bocca (English transl.: The Economic Foundations of Society. London: Swan, 1899). Marchionatti, R. (Ed.). (2000). “From our Italian Correspondent”. Luigi Einaudi’s Articles in The Economist, 1908–1946, (Vol. II). Firenze: Olschki. Marcoaldi F. (1986). Vent’anni di economia e politica. Le carte di De’ Stefani (1922–1941). Milano: FrancoAngeli.

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Marcoaldi, F. (1991). De’ Stefani, Alberto. DBI (Vol. 39, pp. 429–436). Istituto Enciclopedia Italiana: Roma. Melis, G. (2018). La macchina imperfetta. Immagine e realtà dello Stato fascista. Bologna: Il Mulino. Misiani, S. (2018). Serpieri, Arrigo. DBI (Vol. 92, pp. 172–179). Istituto Enciclopedia Italiana: Roma. Morselli, E. (1948). Pietro Sitta e le sue opere economiche. Ferrara: S.A.I.G. Ottonelli, O. (2012). Gino Arias (1879–1940). Dalla storia delle istituzioni al corporativismo fascista. Firenze: Firenze University Press. Parisella, A. (1988). Acerbo, Giacomo. DBI (Vol. 34, pp. 10–14). Istituto Enciclopedia Italiana: Roma. Salvemini, G. (1936). Under the Axe of Fascism. London: Gollancz. Salvemini, G. (1937). Totalitarian ‘Elections’ in Italy Today. Social Research, 4 (1, February), 108–23. Serpieri, A. (1930). La guerra e le classi rurali italiane. Bari: Laterza; New Haven: Yale University Press. Serpieri, A. (1931). La legge sulla bonifica integrale nel primo anno di applicazione. Roma: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato. Serpieri, A. (1933). La legge sulla bonifica integrale nel terzo anno di applicazione. Roma: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato. Serpieri, A. (1935). The National Institute of Agricultural Economics in Italy. Journal of Farm Economics, 17 (4), 646–658. Serpieri, A. (1957). La bonifica nella storia e nella dottrina. Bologna: Edizioni agricole. Sitta, P. (1895). Le finanze estensi. Saggio di storia economica. Ferrara: Tipografia Sociale. Sitta, P. (1933). Credito agrario e credito fondiario in Italia. Bologna: Zanichelli. Soddu, F. (2008). Il Parlamento fascista. In G. Melis (Ed.), Lo Stato negli anni Trenta: istituzioni e regimi fascisti in Europa. Bologna: Il Mulino. Tassinari, G. (1931). La distribuzione del reddito nell’agricoltura italiana. Piacenza: Federazione Italiana Consorzi Agrari. Tassinari, G. (1933). Problemi dell’agricoltura italiana. Roma: Confederazione nazionale fascista agricoltori. Tassinari, G. (1937). Scritti di economia corporativa. Bologna: Zanichelli. Tassinari, G. (2019). Diari. Il fascista che disse di no a Hitler. Milano: Luni. Tattara, G. (1973). Cerealicoltura e politica agraria durante il fascismo. In G. Toniolo (Ed.), Lo sviluppo economico italiano, 1861–1940 (pp. 373–404). Bari: Laterza.

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Zaganella, M. (2010). Dal fascismo alla DC. Tassinari, Medici e la bonifica nell’Italia tra gli anni Trenta e Cinquanta. Siena: Cantagalli. Zaganella, M. (2015). La nascita dell’economia politica agraria e la cultura economica del Mezzogiorno. In P. Barucci, S. Misiani, & M. Mosca (Eds.), La cultura economica tra le due guerre. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Zamagni V. (1993). The Economic History of Italy. 1860–1990. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Zingali, G. (1924). Sull’ammontare della ricchezza privata in Sicilia. Città di Castello: Società tipografica Leonardo da Vinci. Zingali, G. (1925). La bilancia alimentare prebellica e postbellica di alcuni Stati di Europa. Città di Castello: Società tipografica Leonardo da Vinci. Zingali, G. (1933). Liberalismo e fascismo nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia. Milano: Treves.

Banks, Firms and Economic Culture: Economists and Research Centres in Interwar Italy Pier Francesco Asso, Fabio Lavista and Sebastiano Nerozzi

In the interwar years, Italy experimented a strong growth of applied economic research. The foundation of research centres can be read and placed in a much wider international trend that emerged during the Great War At that time the “demand” for economics steeply increased and economists were “called on duty” by banks, firms, and, most significantly, governmental departments and agencies, eager to put their expertise at work. P. F. Asso University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy e-mail: [email protected] F. Lavista University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] S. Nerozzi (B) Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Augello et al. (eds.), An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II, Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38331-2_6

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The first blossoming of research departments dates back to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The banking sector was the prime mover: Credit Lyonnaise, Deutsche Bank, Midland Bank, Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft, National City Bank of New York were the first and most notorious institutions endowed with a research department (Pino 1999). Aside from the banking sector, other research institutions, most of a private nature, were established in the United States between 1910 and 1923 such as the Russell Sage Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Social Science Research Council. In Italy, banks played a crucial role in the establishment of research centres in strong connection with the occurrence of the banking crises (1921–1923; 1929–1931), the passing of banking reforms (1926; 1936) and other major institutional transformations. Though initially confined within the banking sector, the research department gradually spread out. During the 1930s the major industrial corporations, especially those included in the new public conglomerates, developed research activities of a more or less structured nature. In this essay, we offer a historical reconstruction of the most important research centres, exploring the extensive web of relationships between the academia and the productive world. We then focus on a set of case studies, selected for their relevance. Section 2 is devoted to the banking sector, with reference to four important cases (Banca Commerciale Italiana, Banca d’Italia, Associazione Bancaria Italiana and Banco di Sicilia); Sect. 3 to the industrial sector (IRI, Finsider, Ansaldo, Edison, Montecatini and Fiat). Our intent is, first, to understand what role economists played in the establishment and growth of these research centres. A second objective is to show what functions research centres performed in relation to their general strategies and operative tasks. A third is to reconstruct their main achievements in the rise of economic culture and in the shaping of technical innovations and institutional reforms.

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Drawing the Map

Research departments were established in the climate of mounting postwar instability, when firms and banks acquired and analysed a relevant flow of information, stemming from their own activities and from a growing amount of data available both at the national and international level. Unsurprisingly, with the sole exception of the Bank of Italy, the most important research centres were born after the end of the War. Some distinguished academic economists were involved in the creation, design and development of these centres: Attilio Cabiati, Giorgio Mortara, Gino Zappa, Costantino Bresciani Turroni, Benvenuto Griziotti. Economists found in the banking sector a professional environment exceptionally open to economic research and receptive of foreign-born ideas and methodologies. In the same years a new specific professional figure, the “bank economist”, acquired standing and reputation. Prolific writers and technically minded experts of monetary and banking issues, such as Mario Mazzucchelli, Mario Alberti, Raffaele Mattioli, Giuseppe Zuccoli, Domenico Boffito, Antonello Gerbi and Gianfranco Calabresi, can be enlisted under this label. As employees (and managers) of financial institutions, trained halfway between the university and the bank itself, the new breed of bank economists was engaged in the organisation of conferences, the editorship of journals, the launching of research projects, the collection and elaboration of data. Since its foundation in 1910, Assonime (The Italian association between joint-stock companies) was endowed with a statistical staff for analysing and editing data on the major industrial firms and banks. After the war, under the direction of Felice Guarneri, Assonime joined forces with Confindustria (the Italian industrial association), refining and developing the production of studies in the attempt to preserve the political autonomy of the two associations. Particularly important was the attention Assonime’s reports devoted to the analysis of the financial system, exploring the linkages between the formation of savings, the demand for assets and stock market trends (Nardozzi and Piluso 2010, 45–49). Assonime’s research activities were considerably developed by President Alberto Pirelli, who, in 1928, prompted the acquisition of Notizie statistiche sulle società per azioni. This periodical publication was based on a wide collection of data related to Italian joint stock companies, whose

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balance sheets were reclassified and aggregated by sectors of activities (Coltorti 2010).1 Actually Notizie statistiche started its publication in 1908 on the initiative of Credito Italiano, which for over twenty years provided the huge financial and human resources required for its realization. Moreover, since the 1910s, Credito Italiano extensively supported the projects of the economist and statistician Giorgio Mortara. A former student of Rodolfo Benini, Mortara was closely connected with some of the most influential politicians and economists of the time, such as Francesco Saverio Nitti, Alberto Beneduce and Bocconi’s professor and future Dean, Ferruccio Bolchini. Mortara’s efforts produced the annual publication of Prospettive Economiche (started in 1921), which, inspired by the “British Prospects Year Book”, analysed and made forecasts of the main trends of the Italian economy. Credito Italiano, then guided by Bocconi professor Federico Balzarotti, did not directly share Mortara’s enterprise, but secured him the necessary financial resources (Borruso 1997). The early post-war years saw a prolific increase of research initiatives. In 1919, Banca Italiana di Sconto (BIS) started its own research department (which was to be short-lived, due to the liquidation of the bank). The newly established Italian Bankers Associations (ABI) entrusted to Attilio Cabiati and the jurist Giuseppe Bianchini the task of gathering a group of young economic, law and banking experts who started a new journal Rivista Bancaria: among them Raffaele Mattioli, Gianfranco Calabresi, Mario Mazzucchelli (see case study 2, Sect. 2). Cabiati also put forward the project for setting out a research office within the Banca Commerciale Italiana (Comit) which started its activities in 1920 under the guide of Achille Nardi Beltrame and, later, Domenico Boffito (1924). Within a few years, Comit was to become the most important private research department under the guide of Antonello Gerbi (1932) and with the support of the academic economist Gino Zappa, from Bocconi University, who designed a far-reaching sectorial classification of the Italian

1 Between

1931 and 1933, also Pietro Grifone, later imprisoned for his communist propaganda, was involved in the research office of Assonime (Grifone 1971, introduction).

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economy, fit for both operative and research purposes (see case study 3, Sect. 2).2 In 1925, Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde (Cariplo) set out a Development Service with the task of deepening the knowledge of the local economy and monitor the rapidly expanding network of branches after the incorporation of saving banks. Between 1929 and 1942, Cariplo published, for internal use, a “Bollettino d’informazioni”, providing its employees with information about credit conditions, savings and the real economy. In 1934, the name of the research department was turned in “Ufficio Studi and Propaganda”, widening the objectives and managing the library and press service (Mignone and Pino 2015, 165). The 1926 banking reform definitely concentrated all the issuing functions in the hands of the Bank of Italy, and transformed Bank of Naples (BdN) and Bank of Sicily (BdS) into public credit institutions mainly devoted to commercial credit. In view of these radical changes, since the early 1920s. the two Southern banks undertook important initiatives in the field of economic research. Since 1931, BdN research department, guided by Gaetano Quarta, published the journal Rassegna Economica (Caffè 1975; Coppola 2011; Della Torre and Schisani 2012). Due to the high concentration of BdS activities in Sicily, the Osservatorio economico, founded in 1922 under the guidance of Giovanni de Francisci Gerbino and Salvatore Abbadessa, devoted its activities to a quantitative reconstruction of the Sicilian economy (see case study 1, Sect. 2). Since the early 1930s, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) developed new research activities entrusting to Piero Cova with the aid of Luigi Ceriani the task of collecting data savings and sectors of activity. In 1946, with Imbriani Longo as Chairman, Luigi Ceriani was called to develop a research department and start the publications of BNL Quarterly Review (Roncaglia 1999).

2 For

studies on Comit research department see Pino (1999), Montanari (2001), Montanari and Pino (2007).

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The Bank of Italy had undertaken important research activities since its foundation in 1894, monitoring the trends of Italian and foreign markets in order to strengthen its autonomy and ability to manage liquidity and keep the external value of the currency under control.3 Put under the responsibility of the Banks’ top management, economist Tito Canovai published extensively on banks and finance.4 In 1926 the research department, already established in 1914 as “Ufficio Studi economici e finanziari”, grew in autonomy and changed its name in “Servizio studi economici e statistici”, directed by Giovanni Santoponte (Tuccimei 2005). The banking crisis and the new Banking law of 1936, offered the occasion for the development of the most influential research department in Italy. Also, in this case, Mortara was a crucial figure in shaping strategies and assisted Governor Azzolini to recruit some of the most brilliant young economists such as Paolo Baffi, Alberto Campolongo, Giuseppe Di Nardi, Giannino Parravicini, Francesco Masera, Agostino De Vita (see case study 4, Sect. 2). Though initially confined within the banking sector, research departments soon spread out to industry. The main changes and challenges associated with cyclical instability, institutional reform and war mobilisation, explain reasons and timing for the onset of original applied research. Pasquale Saraceno, Sergio Paronetto (both in IRI), Ferdinando Di Fenizio (Montecatini), Alberto Campolongo (Ansaldo), but also Giorgio Mortara, Gino Zappa, Livio Livi, Libero Lenti were the most distinguished economists and statisticians involved in research activities within the industrial sector. The crisis of universal banking and the passing of the 1936 banking reform, provoked new relevant changes: Istituto Mobiliare Italiano (IMI) became the most important institute devoted to medium and long-term industrial credit5 ; Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI) (see case 3Tuccimei

(2005, 9). was a prolific writer. From 1890 to 1907, he published 167 articles on the Giornale degli Economisti, Italy’s more prestigious academic journal. 5 In 1932, IMI executive committee proposed the establishment of a research department, though its implementation occurred only in 1954. In the meanwhile IMI, whose permanent structure was intended to be minimal, made resort to external advisory in order to solve specific issues (Mignone and Pino 2015, 171). 4 Canovai

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study 2, Sect. 3) became the main agency of government intervention, both in the management of public enterprises and as a centre of industrial policy elaboration. IRI and its subsidiaries, such as Finsider and Ansaldo, opened the most notable research centres. Agostino Rocca and Alberto Campolongo were involved in these two enterprises, which were called to provide the first plans of development for the state-owned iron and steel sector, that would have been the basis for its development after World War II (see case study 2, Sect. 3). Among the large private corporations, Fiat was one of the first to open its own research centre as a statistical service to the commercial department, with the task of monitoring demand and raw materials availability, but also providing reports on legal and social issue (see case study 4, Sect. 3). Montecatini, the monopolistic leader of the Italian chemical sector, opened in 1934 its own research centre. It was devoted to both technical and economic issues and was headed by the young economist Ferdinando Di Fenizio. A few years later Giorgio Mortara was asked to write a history of Montecatini using internal data (see case 3, Sect. 3).6 Edison, one of the major electrical companies, opened its research department in 1935, after Mortara realised a 50th anniversary history book, endowed with a rich apparatus of data. In 1935, the research department was entrusted to Ferruccio Parri (see case 3, Sect. 3). Other major enterprises did not develop new centres, but participated in research projects directed by academic economists and carried out by internal personnel endowed with both technical and economic expertise. Finally, economists had a part in founding public agencies devoted to applied research. In statistics, the Istituto Centrale di Statistica (ISTAT), chaired by the renowned statistician Corrado Gini and directed by Alessandro Molinari.7 In public finance, the Istituto di Finanza Corporativa chaired by Benvenuto Griziotti, with the participation of many young economists, such as Ezio Vanoni.

6 Mortara’s 7 See

manuscript, still unpublished, is in Bocconi’s archives. Misiani (2007).

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2

Case Studies: The Banking Sector

2.1

Banco Di Sicilia: Technical Support for an Independent Management

Banco di Sicilia (BdS) was a credit institute of very ancient origins that, until the 1926 Banking Act, remained one of Italy’s three banks of issue together with Banca d’Italia and Banco di Napoli. If measured by the total amount of assets, BdS was by far the smallest of the three and its banknotes and credit instruments had a rather limited territorial circulation and impact. However, after the drastic reduction of issuers that followed the banking scandals of the early 1890s with the foundation of Banca d’Italia, BdS abandoned a “free banking” competitive approach and followed very cooperative attitudes, providing support for the Banca d’Italia in the management of the country’s monetary base and policy. Moreover, since the unification of the country but with a growing intensity as the Italian economy was affected by the first wave of industrial revolution, BdS acquired prominence as a public development bank with a concentration of assets in Sicily and a diversification of activities from agriculture to mining, land transformation and public works (Piluso 2017; Asso 2017). The monetary and credit instability of the 1920s together with the many rescue operations on behalf of both the mixed banks and a myriad of small credit institutes, brought about the final chapter of free banking in Italy. All powers of liquidity creation were concentrated in the Banca d’Italia that maintained a large share in designing monetary strategies and implementing the country’s economic policy. The end of the ancient monetary privileges represented a hard blow to the prestige of BdS. It also represented, conversely, an opportunity for the great compensation that the institute received for the revaluation of its gold reserves that were transferred to the Bank of Italy, together with other forms of fiscal reimbursements and incentives determined by the banking reform. BdS was then legally transformed into one of the five public credit institutes of the country. With respect to its competitors (Istituto S. Paolo, Monte dei Paschi, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro and Banco di Napoli), BdS had a stronger capacity of diversification into the different types of long-term

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credit operations and a more relevant presence outside its own territory due to a wider network of relations and subsidiaries. BdS governance was then under the strong guidance of Vincenzo Mormino, an illuminated banker that had made the fortunes of the section specialised in long-term agricultural and mortgage credit. Mormino was a dominant but also a rather independent character and kept the whole Board unaware of the revolutionary changes that were affecting the nature of BdS, convincing all members to meet seldom. Independence from local powers was a looking forward strategy though, in Mormino’s view, did not mean solitude or the stubborn defence of his full powers. Quite to the contrary, as early as April 1922, in view of BdS transformation, Mormino established a research department that could provide guidance and advice on behalf of the radical changes in the managerial strategies. Hence, BdS research department was a rather unique experiment—the first in Southern Italy—for the Italian banking system of the time: not only it had powers to influence the radical transformation of an ancient credit institution from a bank of issue to a long-term development bank; it soon became a technical structure that for a long time virtually replaced the typical functions of the main administrative board (Asso and Nerozzi 2017). Under Mormino, the research department did not grow as a separate body from the bank. Among its functions, it specialised in typical research activities (collection and elaboration of data and plans) and held exclusive powers of “management control” over the peripheral subsidiaries, through the periodic examination of their accounts. BdS recruited the most renowned economics professor from the University of Palermo, Giovanni de Francisci Gerbino, who sided with an experienced “bank economist”, Salvatore Abbadessa and a qualified group of young scholars (La Francesca 2015; Asso and Nerozzi 2017). The most relevant publication was a volume of Notizie sull’economia siciliana (1925) that, in more than a thousand pages, provided for the first time extensive data on output, prices and exports for the most relevant productive sectors of the regional economy. This volume received regular updates through a “monthly bulletin” and a number of memos and monographic essays that turned out to be essential in providing advice on the structural transformation of the Sicilian economy. Important studies were devoted

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to agricultural markets and property rights and to issues related to land reclamation. In this perspective, the Department advised on behalf of the dissolution of highly concentrated landownership and the creation of new opportunities for big industrial conglomerates that could invest in heavy sectors and public utilities. In times of autarky and forced revaluation of the lira, the department provided evidence of the inevitable failure of Sicily’s export activities, particularly in mining and light industries. In an amazingly short number of years, by the end of the 1920s, the transformation of BdS from a small regional bank of issue to a big development bank involved in short- and long-term credit operations was completed. The efficient turn orchestrated by Mormino with the aid of its research department also entailed the strengthening of the bank’s financial exposure in foreign markets, mainly Wall Street, where, after the end of the War, BdS had opened two subsidiaries offering specialised services to a numerous and well-integrated community of migrants. The Bank of Sicily Trust and the BanSicilia Corporation, however, soon escaped from the influence of Mormino and his brain trust and undertook very speculative initiatives in the booming financial markets, only to accumulate heavy losses and frozen assets after the crash of October 1929. Therefore, the crisis hit Mormino’s strategies very hard, both for the need to recapitalise SicilTrust under the pressures of the new Federal Banking Department and for the consequences of deflation and the collapse of exports markets. As early as 1932 Mormino’s dreams for a renewed season of glory and independence of the bank were irremediably doomed: the new Finance Minister Guido Jung, he himself a Sicilian from Palermo, asked for support from the Milan financial community and appointed as a commissioner of BdS, Giuseppe Dell’Oro, a former manager from Credito Italiano. Dell’Oro obtained from Jung full powers for budget cleaning and downsizing. The liquidation of SicilTrust was a painful and expensive process, which only ended at the eve of the 1936 banking act. The Trust was rescued under the supervision of the Bank of Italy and with the intervention of BdS traditional competitor, Banco di Napoli. The age of Mormino was over and no signs remained—at least until post-war reconstruction—of the strategic importance that the

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research department had acquired under his leadership. With the assistance of the Banca d’Italia and under Jung’s benevolent eye, Dell’Oro managed to bring BdS back in less stormy waters, though with heavy costs in terms of activities, employees and prestige. However, the positive legacy of Mormino’s era was not completely dissolved and re-emerged in post-war reconstruction when the research department returned in full activity, being able to contribute to legislative reforms under the aegis of the new privileged status of Sicily’s regional autonomy.

2.2

Associazione Bancaria Italiana: A Professional Network for New Scientific Achievements

The Italian Bankers Association was founded in 1919 through the initiatives of the big Milan credit institutes under the benevolent eyes of the Bank of Italy’s General Manager, Bonaldo Stringher and of the Treasury Minister, Francesco Saverio Nitti. ABI had many ambitious, institutional objectives that recalled the country’s long and noble traditions of mutual cooperation and intermediate institutions. Open to all the different typologies of credit institutes, ABI refused explicit political powers of systemic representation. In fact, unlike other major sectoral associations in industry and agriculture, ABI did not receive any legal endorsement regarding contractual labour negotiations, or other systemic affairs of economic interest on behalf of its associates. On the contrary, the main purpose of the new association was to increase cohesion and networking among the different souls that characterised an extremely wide and dispersed banking system that included cooperative banks, rural banks, popular banks, saving banks, private banks, individual firms and a few big mixed banks. Therefore, a technical body with a strong professional bent open to the contribution of many and possibly sheltered from political intrusion (Calabresi 1996). However, the beginning of ABI’s activities coincided with a very turbulent period of monetary instability and banking crisis. The peculiar involvement of official monetary authorities in its creation was just a symptom of their desperate attempt to enforce an interest rate cartel over the whole banking system that could put monetary aggregates under firm

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control. Under Nitti’s supervision, the cartel had been signed by the 4 largest mixed banks. However, its effects needed to be extended to the whole country and the respectful adherence to its main clauses had to be granted and maintained by all banks. The new Association, despite its voluntary nature and firmly put under the guidance of the main private banks, could serve these purposes well. The technical and rather specific nature of its mandate induced ABI to invest in knowledge. In fact, ever since its foundation, a Financial Bullettin started its publications under the auspices of ABI. Its main purpose was to collect data and analysis on credit and banking and to create a bridge between academic and bank economists: in line with the original spirit of ABI, the Bullettin had both a practical and a cultural bent, since it was involved in discussing technical issues but also open to novelties coming from the specialised international literature. Already in 1920, the Bullettin changed its name in Rivista Bancaria, a new journal, specialised in money, credit and banking. Rivista Bancaria was jointly edited by the General Manager of ABI, Giuseppe Bianchini, a lawyer and prolific writer, member of the Financial Committee of the League of Nations, and by Attilio Cabiati, an economics professor at the University of Genoa and Bocconi. Cabiati was already involved in the Research Department of Comit and together with Antonello Gerbi was the mind behind its journal, Rassegna trimestrale. As he wrote to Einaudi, Italian economists ought to praise banks for their efforts to promote economic knowledge and spread new economic ideas and studies, defending the values of independence and autonomy: “should we neglect this opportunity, we must be blamed” (Cabiati to Einaudi, 5 April 1921, quoted in Calabresi 1996, 205). Rivista Bancaria soon acquired a strong reputation among economists and also general readers and practitioners. It filled a void in the Italian market of economics journals, none of which was entirely devoted to banking and monetary issue. The ABI journal benefitted from the collaboration of the most important Italian economists belonging to different schools and traditions, such as Einaudi, Loria, Pantaleoni, Bresciani Turroni and Griziotti. It also became a channel for the introduction in Italy of the most advanced international strands of thought on money and banking and many prestigious economists—such as Gustav Cassel,

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Ralph Hawtrey, Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes—contributed to its success. Around this Journal, Bianchini was able to organise a very heterogeneous but qualified group of “bank economists” and junior academic economists, which included Raffaele Mattioli (a former student of Cabiati at Genova), Renzo Fubini, Mario Mazzucchelli, Gianfranco Calabresi and Virgilio Fenoglio. This group formed an embryonic core of ABI’s research department, with a strong scientific bent that could provide assistance in banking legislation and operative issues (Calabresi 1996; Pino 2000). While the Journal survived the political and economic turbulences of the time, the research department did not and remained for a long time an unwritten chapter of a book of dreams. In fact, as the regime consolidated its powers, the association had a very troubled life: in 1926, it was transformed in the general banking fascist confederation and invested with specific powers in trade union negotiations; in 1931, it became the fascist confederation of credit and an organ of the corporative state. These transformations inhibited the rise of a real research department and strongly limited the activities of Rivista Bancaria “in order to avoid contrasts with the regime economic propaganda” (Calabresi 1996, 349).

2.3

Banca Commerciale Italiana: Technical Achievements in an Anti-Fascist Environment

Comit opened its own research department in 1920, under the suggestions of Attilio Cabiati and Achille Nardi Beltrame. Nardi Beltrame, Nitti’s former secretary, was hired in 1917 by Comit CEO Giuseppe Toeplitz and given responsibility for the external relationships of the bank. With strong political connections and communication abilities, Nardi Beltrame played a crucial role in defending Comit first from nationalistic attacks, spurred by its alleged filo-Germanism, and then from the two hostile takeovers attempted by the Ansaldo-Perrone group.8

8 Pino

(1999, 70–74).

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In 1919, Nardi Beltrame prompted Cabiati to elaborate a proposal for reinforcing the structure and the functioning of the Servizio Informazioni that the bank established within its general secretariat with purposes of data collection. Another office, called “Servizio Studi e Pubblicazioni” edited, since 1909, the series of Cenni statistici sul movimento economico dell’Italia—which offered a review of statistical data gathered by secondary sources mainly focusing on financial markets. Since 1910, the bank also started an “Archivio Bilanci”, collecting and classifying the annual accounts of thousands of Italian and foreign companies which entertained business relations with Comit.9 Cabiati saw the opportunity of creating a research department with the task of providing elaborations and analyses on this unique data set. While this ambitious project did not encounter Toeplitz’s favour, Cabiati’s plan produced some results. In May 1919, Comit started the publication of the Rivista Mensile, initially for internal circulation, and then gradually developed under Cabiati’s supervision.10 Only in October 1921, when Nardi Beltrame was no more part of the General Secretariat, the new “Ufficio pubblicazioni e notizie commerciali” was opened and staffed with seven employees, under the guide of Alfredo De Zerbi, assisted by Domenico Boffito. Boffito would take the lead in 1924 and run the Ufficio Studi until 1931.11 Inspired by the model of Crédit Lyonnais, Boffito enlarged the staff to 12 employees, among which Ferdinando De Fenizio, Enrico Radaeli, Raffaele Mattioli. With Cabiati’s work the Rivista Mensile widened its horizons opening new sections on finance, commodities and raw materials. Suspended in 1921, the Cenni statistici sul movimento economico dell’Italia was re-issued in 1926 with new sections and the publication of first-hand data.12 Boffito’s approach failed to attain full support by Toeplitz, who was more interested in developing a more thorough analysis of the industrial sectors where Comit held its main participations. Boffito’s move to other responsibilities and the 1931 crisis led to a radical reorganisation of 9 Pino

(1999, 76–80). (2001, 341). 11 Montanari (2001, 343). 12 Montanari (2001, 345–346). 10 Montanari

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the Ufficio Studi, elevated into a branch of the CEO office (Montanari 2001, 346–347). Within a few months Toeplitz was replaced by Mattioli, Cabiati’s former student and co-editor of ABI’s Rivista Bancaria. Mattioli gave the Ufficio Studi more resources and autonomy, entrusting it to a new director, external to the bank, the young but internationally experienced jurist and literary critic Antonello Gerbi.13 Gerbi promoted a radical reorganisation: Movimento economico, which absorbed most of the staff, was suppressed; Rivista Mensile, formerly reserved to internal circulation, was transformed in Rassegna Trimestrale, destined to publication. The library services and databases were reshaped according to the operative needs of the bank. The Ufficio Studi became an integrated part of the general direction and assisted Comit transformation into a public bank, specialised in commercial credit.14 This strategy was the development of a wide-ranging database encompassing 70 industrial vertically integrated sectors and realised under the guide of Gino Zappa, member of Comit board of auditors and a Bocconi Professor. The new classification was employed both for risk estimation and for monitoring the credit exposure of local branches. All the information were collected by the Ufficio Studi and elaborated for internal reports and economic publications like the Rassegna Mensile and the Rassegna Mercati, launched in 1933.15 The Ufficio Studi also became an important driver in developing Comit international relations and projections. By 1934 Gerbi was assisted by Ugo La Malfa in charge as Vice-Director. In times of growing economic and cultural autarky, Gerbi and La Malfa managed to permeate Italian economic culture to foreign ideas and debates: the New Deal, Keynesism, Liberal socialism, Fabianism were widely analysed and discussed within the Office. The Italian editions of Fisher’s Money illusion and Keynes’ Treatise on Money were published by the Ufficio studi,

13 Montanari

(2001, 347). (2001, 349–350). 15 Montanari (2001, 353). 14 Montanari

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following Mattioli’s advice and translated by Enrico Radaeli. Gerbi considerably expanded the network of bank economists and took part in the first international conference held in Eastbourne, in 1937.16 In 1936 La Malfa played a crucial role in allowing Comit to share the Banca d’Italia project “L’economia italiana nel sessennio 1931–1936 ”. Together with Mortara and Campolongo, La Malfa shaped the general structure of this gigantic work, coordinated the Comit group in realising two of its volumes, and attained Baffi’s favour in adopting Comit 70 sectors classification framework.17 In 1938, hit by racial laws, Gerbi was forced to flee abroad and La Malfa took office as the new director. In 1942 Ferruccio Parri (who later served as the first Prime Minister of post-war Italy), Adolfo Tino and other protagonists of Italian anti-fascism, were recruited with the help of Mattioli himself. The relevance and the influence of Comit Ufficio Studi can hardly be overestimated: both under a technical and a political point of view, it remains one of the most vivid and dynamic laboratories during the fascist regime, embedded in a wide network of relations both at the national and international level.

2.4

Banca D’Italia: A Latecomer Breeding a New Ruling Class

In this wave of institutional changes, the Banca d’Italia was a latecomer, though its research department soon became the most outstanding example of scientific achievements and of prolific, lasting networks between the practical world and the academia. At the time of the first bank act (1926), under Bonaldo Stringher, the Banca d’Italia research department acquired for the first time an autonomous status, being separated from the institute’s general secretariat to which it had belonged since the age of Canovai. However, under

16 Montanari 17 Ibid.,

355.

(2001, 355).

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the pressures coming from the exchange rate crisis and monetary instability, the new department did not have an easy start, and its activities remained significantly underdeveloped. With Stringher directly involved in the negotiations with Governors Norman and Strong for the gold stabilisation of the lira, the main activities of the department remained similar to those of a specialised centre of documentation and archival materials. Scientific memos and analytical contributions arrived on Stringher’s table from other departments and individual overseas delegates, while the research department was involved in the mere mapping and processing of documents—nothing more important than the press office, as one of its early members, Giannino Parravicini, would later recall (Tuccimei 2005). Things began to change in the early 1930s, soon after the appointment of Stringher’s successor, Vincenzo Azzolini (Roselli 2000). His first, important decision regarded the launching of the “Stringher scholarship programme” that were announced at the very beginning of Azzolini’s mandate, in January 1931, and would represent a first, important channel of investment in economics research and in the recruitment process of young economists. However, the real discontinuity occurred with the passing of the 1936 banking Act, which coincided with a significant turning point in the history of Italian central banking. The identification of the Banca d’Italia as the “bank of all banks”, with an increase of functions in supervision, credit management and control, advised Azzolini to inject fresh resources in the research department. In times of revolutionary theoretical changes, Banca d’Italia supported independent macroeconomic analysis and strengthened its knowledge of the connections between real and monetary variables at an aggregate level. Azzolini feared that the newborn “Ispettorato per la difesa del risparmio e per l’esercizio del credito” might become the dominant player in the regulation of the credit market under the detrimental influence of the Finance Minister and top fascist officials. With the Banca d’Italia being only a minority shareholder of the Ispettorato, Azzolini saw the danger that political power threatened the institute’s prestige and independence. His fears soon turned out to be reality when about 75 employees of the Banca d’Italia were “detached” to the Ispettorato. Hence, Azzolini envisioned a radical restyling of the research department, with new strategic functions and qualified entries.

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In this process, the governor also felt in need for assistance and advice and decisively turned towards academia. Giorgio Mortara, the renowned statistician at Bocconi University and an old friend of the governor, had a first-hand position in reforming “the Studies”. Mortara designed new functions of strategic and analytical support, advised on the recruiting of young economists, promoted the launching of new projects. Paolo Baffi, Alberto Campolongo, Agostino De Vita and Giuseppe di Nardi joined the Department leaving a promising academic career, while Giannino Parravicini, Frank Tamagna and Armando Pescatore came from other departments of the Banca d’Italia. The first important output of the new department was a three-volume research on the Italian economy during the economic depression (1931– 1936) which provided the first, documented history of the last eventful years. The research also served to strengthen professional relations, with the participation of research departments from Comit and Credito Italiano and the contribution of several academic economists and statisticians that included Ernesto d’Albergo, Ferdinando Di Fenizio, Libero Lenti, Carlo Pagni, Pasquale Saraceno. Moreover, in preparation of the new regulatory framework, the Department developed a major project of credit statistics from the main productive sectors that provided a quantitative background for the new policies of credit control in a planned economy. The new sectoral statistics provided the first evidence of risk control and classification for the different productive activities and Banca d’Italia acquired systematic knowledge on the functioning of real markets. Paradoxically, as Paolo Baffi would later observe, the development of new credit statistics after 1936 would turn out to be very useful in the post-war years for the new Governor, Donato Menichella, as an instrument of market discipline and “moral suasion”. Another important episode was the foundation of the Istituto per la finanza corporativa (1939), headed by public finance expert Benvenuto Griziotti with the joint participation of Banca d’Italia, banks and insurance companies. Among academic economists and financial experts, Celestino Arena and Sergio Steve were involved in the activities of the new Institute. At the outburst of the War, IFC became a channel of

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intervention that the Banca d’Italia employed in order to design an antiinflationary strategy of war finance.

3

Case Studies: The Industrial Sector

The establishment of research departments in the major industrial enterprises was the result of deep changes in the competitive environment— both at national and international level—that rapidly enhanced the need for deeper economic knowledge in order to design corporate strategies. The pressure towards a more institutionalised acquisition of knowledge initially came from the endogenous transformations of large-sized enterprises, which were increasing their organisational complexity and thus increased their need for a more accurate cost control, coordination and a finer tuning between production and sales management. In the meanwhile, thanks to the diffusion of scientific management, the solution of organisational problems slowly became a matter of empirical analysis and data collection about the inner life of the enterprise (Bigazzi 1999). These developments were favoured by the broader use of mathematics in the social sciences, which led both to the establishment of the modern business administration and to a closer dialogue between engineering and economics (Gasca 2004; Louçã 2007). Exogenous pressures also favoured the establishment of economic research departments. In many sectors, the growing oligopolistic competition fostered the need to analyse market structures. Not less important, the post-war crisis and, above all, the international financial crisis of the 1930s increased the interest for cyclical analysis and the study of sectorial and regional development and—especially after the beginning of World War II—for social studies regarding employment levels, wages and living standards. Finally, the pressure towards the creation of research departments was linked with the growing need for the establishment of sound public relations. The process started at the beginning of the century in the United States; in Italy, at least till World War II, the establishment of public relations was not a crucial problem for big private corporations, since they controlled the major national and local newspapers (Lavista 2010b); but it remained a growing concern for state-owned enterprises,

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which since the end of the 1930s had to face growing political oppositions.18 Ownership can explain the different patterns of development of the research functions among Italian manufacturing enterprises. In both private and state-owned firms, the first research departments were established during the late 1920s or at the beginning of the 1930s. Their major objectives were to increase the knowledge of relevant markets and foster managerial efficiency, understanding the internal dynamics of firms. For state-owned enterprises this need was soon supplanted by the urgency to coordinate industrial sectors, and draft some first schemes of what, few years after, would have been called an “industrial policy”. However, a common characteristic identifies the experience of private and state-owned enterprises: the tendency of research departments to increase their functions over time. To data collection, they soon added the production of studies, either for helping the top management in its decision processes or for publication, the development of juridical analysis regarding the enterprise or public policies and different forms of social studies. In fact, from the 1930s large-sized industrial corporations started to organise modern public relations functions, grounding them on economic research and information.

3.1

Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI)

When in 1933 the fascist regime decided to establish the IRI, the main goal was to alleviate the pressure of the crisis on the Italian banking system. However, the intervention marked a further development in the regulatory scheme that had been drafted since the 1907 crisis by previous liberal Italian governments. In order to reduce the systemic risks implied by the pervasive presence of universal banks, a state guaranteed bond market for industrial investment had been created by means of special credit institutions (De Cecco 1997; Piluso 2011, 2014). Differently, at 18 About

the attacks against IRI see Fondazione Einaudi, Archivio Rocca, f. 19 (76), Appunti circa l’attività dell’Istituto per la ricostruzione industriale, October 1945, pp. 8–11.

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the beginning of the 1930s, the deepening of the financial crisis led to the transfer of a huge portfolio of industrial participations to the new institution. This was considered a temporary move: IRI should have divested the enterprises that could not have been rescued and re-engineered the viable enterprises in order to put them on the market again (D’Antone 2012). It was for this reason that the new institution was provided with an economic research department: in order to assess the conditions of the industrial enterprises under its control and to analyse the market in which they operated. Two different functions were in charge of this analysis: the Ispettorato, the body that superintended the manufacturing activities, and the economic studies department. They were both established at the beginning of 1934, few months after IRI started its operations. From 1936 Pasquale Saraceno, who had entered IRI in 1934, was put in charge of the Ispettorato. Graduated at Bocconi in 1929, Saraceno was an expert of corporate finance and banking, and was previously hired by Comit and then by Compagnia Fiduciaria Italiana, an auditing firm where he had the opportunity to meet Donato Menichella, the future IRI chief executive (Persico 2013). The Ispettorato main duties were to monitor the subsidiaries of the group, audit their financial statement and draft IRI financial statements, by means of a continuous gathering of information about enterprises and sectors. In charge of the economic research department, since its establishment, was put Sergio Paronetto, who also had entered IRI in 1934, after meeting Saraceno in Rome. Paronetto was a graduate in political sciences and an active member of the movement of young Catholics who in those years called for a rethinking of the Church’s social doctrine (Torresi 2017). At IRI he worked in close contact with Saraceno and Menichella, especially after being appointed technical secretary during the second half of the 1930s. The research department helped the Ispettorato in evaluating the conditions of IRI’s main subsidiaries. The turning point in its activity was 1937, when IRI became a permanent institution. From 1937, in fact, the holding became the major instrument of industrial coordination in the hands of the Italian government. As a document drafted in 1937 by Paronetto clarified, the decision of transforming IRI in a permanent

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institution added to its tasks “an active and preventive role of discipline and re-engineering of industrial sectors”.19 According to the new coordinating role of IRI, the research department started to produce sectorial surveys, to study the trends of international trade, analyse the vital problem of raw material supply, especially after the League of Nation approval of economic sanctions on Italy in 1935—following the Italian aggression of Ethiopia—and the launch of an autarchic economic policy by the fascist regime.20 In the subsequent years, the research department coordinated the drafting of several sectorial autarchic plans which led to the 1941 establishment of the Centro studi e piani tecnico economici. This office, which was in charge of harmonising the different autarchic plans and coordinate war productions, produced after the war under Saraceno’s supervision—the long-term plans necessary to obtain the European Recovery Program aids (Saraceno 1948; Barucci 1969; Lavista 2010a). The economic research activity at IRI was primarily an instrument for increasing organisational capabilities and for grounding on a shared knowledge base its coordinating activity. It had also a role in the public relations policies of the state-owned holding. In fact, after IRI became a permanent institution it was immediately at the centre of several political controversies. The production of knowledge, in order to transparently show IRI’s activities, was an instrument to defend IRI against the

19 See Central State Archive, IRI, Archivio pratiche degli uffici (Numerazione nera), Ex Archivio Storico, Studi e memorie sull’IRI dal 1933 al 1954, 1933–1943, Note sull’attività e compiti dell’IRI nel momento attuale in rapporto alla sua struttura e alla sua organizzazione, 1937, 1–2. 20 “During the second half of the 1930s Iri’s research department progressively became an economic consultant for the Italian central administration. For sure it was a consultant for the ministries which had to coordinate the productive activities, but recent studies suggest that it was also involved in the first attempts to estimate the Italian national income by the Ministry for Finance (Della Torre 2019)”.

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attacks21 that came from private industrialists and the corporatist system established by the regime, the first favourable to a downsizing of the Institute, the latter trying to exert a deeper political control on it. It was also an instrument to mitigate the tensions and the problems created by some controversial choices made by the regime in the years of its crisis, as the attempted socialisation of the enterprises under the Italian Social Republic.

3.2

The State-Owned Iron and Steel Sector

The economic research activity among state-owned enterprises was not exclusive of their controlling holding. In fact, IRI’s research department had mainly a role of coordinator of its subsidiaries’ research activities. The case of the iron and steel sector, probably IRI’s most important sector, because of the relative weight of its total assets, but also because of its strategic relevance, is very illustrative. Since1937 the sector was controlled by a sub-holding, Finsider, and among its subsidiaries, two of the major enterprises were Dalmine and Ansaldo, the first active in the production of seamless tubes, the latter in several fields of heavy mechanics. In all the three cases a major role was played by Agostino Rocca, an engineer graduated in 1921 at the Politecnico in Milan, who started to work at Dalmine in 1922. During the 1920s Rocca was hired by Comit for working at Sofindit, a financial subsidiary which, after the 1929 crisis, took over the industrial participations of the bank and was then incorporated by IRI. After 1933, Rocca entered the board of directors of Dalmine, being appointed in 1935 chief executive of this enterprise, chief executive of Ansaldo and, after 1937, playing an active role at Finsider. Indeed, since 1937, he had been also appointed national councillor of the Corporation of Metallurgy and Mechanics and become member of the Corporatist Commission for the Iron and Steel

21The

attacks started after the decision to transform IRI in a permanent body, because of its growing influence on the Italian economy. See for example the articles published in 1940 on the newspaper “L’Italia fascista”, directed by Roberto Farinacci: L’opera dell’Iri nei confronti dell’industria, in “L’Italia fascista”, y. 26, n. 283, 26th November 1940, pp. 1–2; Le funzioni dell’Iri dopo la crisi, in “L’Italia fascista”, y. 26, n. 283, 27th November 1940, pp. 1–2.

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Autarky and other public bodies focused on the coordination of war productions.22 During the second half of the 1930s Finsider, Dalmine and Ansaldo were provided with economic research departments. In 1941 Rocca appointed as chief of Ansaldo’s research department Alberto Campolongo who, after graduating at Bocconi University in 1932, had been in London with a Stringher scholarship and was then hired by the Bank of Italy contributing to L’economia italiana nel sessennio 1931–1936 (Garavello 1991; Banca d’Italia 1938). The research departments of Finsider, Dalmine and Ansaldo were mainly focused on the development of techno-economic analysis on the iron and steel productions—especially production costs, international prices and the supply of raw materials. However, they also produced sectorial studies on both the iron and steel industry and other sectors, such as shipbuilding or the mechanical industries, which were consumers of iron and steel semi-finished goods. The boundaries of these researches were gradually enlarged in order to understand the structure of final markets, as well as to cope with the development of the regulatory framework—the establishment of the corporatist system, the autarky and then the attempts of socialisation—or, during Second World War, with the worsening of workforce’s living standards. Thus, during the end of the 1930s and the first years of the conflict they began to produce studies on industrial legislation and on wages and housing problems, as other large-sized enterprises did in the same years (Bigazzi 1992). In close coordination with IRI’s research department, the major result of the iron and steel sector was the publishing in 1937 of its autarchic plan. Drafted at Dalmine, under the supervision of Rocca, the plan was a deep quantitative analysis of the sector and its perspectives in an autarchic contest. For the first time it suggested to develop the national productive capacity orienting state-owned enterprises towards the integrated production of steel. The plan was not implemented because of the 22 See

Fondazione Einaudi, Archivio Rocca (AR), f. 19 (47), Rocca’s curriculum vitae, 1947 and f. 58 (11), Rocca to Menichella, 5 December 1939.

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beginning of Second World War, but it became the basis for the development of the state-owned iron and steel sector during the 1950s (Balconi 1991; Ranieri 2015).

3.3

The Private Sector: Montecatini and Edison

During the interwar years also private enterprises showed a growing need for a deeper accumulation of knowledge about market structures, production costs and, in general, for a quantitative approach to the management practice. Also in this case researches on relevant business issues were progressively integrated with researches on broader socio-economic topics, especially after the deepening of the international financial crisis and, subsequently, the beginning of Second World War. In 1934 two of the major Italian corporations, Edison, which was active in the field of the production and distribution of electrical power, and Montecatini, a chemical enterprise, both established in Milan an economic research department. At Edison a major role in the decision was played by Mortara, who had a strong interest in industrial economics, as testified by the titles of the thesis that is students discussed during the 1930s and that were often sectorial studies (Borruso 1997). Mortara signed with Edison a consultancy contract for the publication of a celebratory book on the occasion of Edison’s fiftieth anniversary. The book was published in four volumes in 1934 and was a very broad and documented appraisal of Edison’s business history. It also contained studies on the evolution of the electrical technologies (the first volume), on the development of the electrical sector as a whole (the second volume), on the relationships between the growth of Edison and the economic development of Milan (the third volume) and, finally, on the international growth of the electrical industry (the fourth volume) (Edison 1934). Mortara’s major contributions were in the second volume where he wrote a co-authored chapter on the mechanisation and the electrification of the Italian industry and a history of the Italian electrical sector, both grounded on a wide data collection. During his consultancy at Edison Mortara had the opportunity to work with Ferruccio Parri, whom he had met while serving the army

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during First World War and who, in those years, was already one of the leading figures of the radical opposition to the fascist regime. Mortara introduced his long-term friend to Giacinto Motta, Edison president, and Parri worked at the economic research department, established in that occasion, for about ten years (Polese Remaggi 2014). At Montecatini, an economic research department was established in 1934 too. Ferdinando Di Fenizio who, after graduating in law at Genoa, had worked at the economic research department of Comit and was starting in those years an academic carrier in economics, was put in charge of it (Lunghini and Lenti 2003). At Montecatini the economic research department was created as a staff office reporting to the chief executive’s technical secretariat. Also Montecatini, a few years later, decided to hire Mortara as a consultant in order to publish a book for its fiftieth anniversary. The book was never published though its drafts clearly demonstrate the huge effort of data collection that Mortara, together with Di Fenizio, made in order to write a comprehensive business history of Montecatini (Mortara 1938). The effort is particularly evident by comparing Mortara’s book with a previous Montecatini celebratory book, the one published on the occasion of the first twenty-five years of Guido Donegani management (Montecatini 1936). If the latter is mainly a prosopographical history of Montecatini, with some accompanying financial and productive data, the former is a modern business history, on the example of the deep analysis developed for Edison.

3.4

Doing Research in Private Enterprises: The Case of Fiat

Unfortunately, the lack of archival sources hinders further studies of the activity of Edison’s and Montecatini’s research departments. However, a picture of what happened among large-sized enterprises in the interwar years can be enriched considering the experience of the major Italian cars producer. Fiat during the 1920s and 1930s was one of the largest manufacturing enterprises in Italy and in the midst of a radical transformation towards rationalisation and mass production. The increased production

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volumes and the need to coordinate the technical management with the marketing function led Fiat to establish a statistical department reporting to the sales management. In 1928 the statistical research department started to gather information about Fiat selling performances and prices—with a specific attention to international prices—and started to produce the first analysis of national and international markets. During the 1930s, the role of the department progressively shifted from that of a statistical office towards that of a public relations office, broadening its functions, firstly in the field of international trade. Trade barriers were in fact a huge problem for the supply of raw materials and intermediate goods, and the marketing of products: not only Fiat started to produce analysis on international trade policies, but its research department drafted reports that the top management could use in its lobbying activities with senior government officials, as—for example—during the trade negotiation with Belgium at the beginning of 1935.23 Also the systematisation of legal information relative to the car industry was part of the same strategy. Other researches were oriented towards different objectives. As stateowned enterprises did in the second half of the 1930s also Fiat—worried about the consequences of the international financial crisis—began to analyse wages, housing problems, family budgets of its workforces, unemployment or more general national economic problems. As stated in a 1936 report, the research department planned to gather information in order to publish a text on the example of the book that Mortara had edited for Edison in 1934. With the aim of increasing the background knowledge, the office planned the re-engineering and the rationalisation of the flow of statistical information, as suggested in those years by the Centro di consulenza e studio per la statistica aziendale, a centre linked to Confindustria and directed by the statistician Livio Livi.24 At the end of the decade Fiat also established contacts with Istat General

23 See Fiat Historical Archive (ASF), Servizio statistica e studi economici, f. 353, Promemoria per S.E. il Capo del Governo, 7th May 1935 and ASF, Servizio statistica e studi economici, f. 354, Promemoria per S.E. il Ministro delle Finanze, 7th May 1935. 24 See ASF, Servizio statistica e studi economici, f. 533, L’ufficio statistica nel 1936, 19 November 1936.

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Director, Alessandro Molinari, in order to cooperate with the definition of statistical standards for the analysis of the car industry. At the beginning of the 1940s, Fiat research department had become a public relation office. It continued to report to the sales management, but its clients were the top management, as well as other corporate functions and the focus of its activity were both internal documentation, as well as external relationships. The process of transformation would have reached its apex only after Second World War, during the so-called “economic miracle”, when in 1963 the statistical research department became a staff function reporting to the general director.

4

Conclusions

This chapter contributes to the history of Italian economics in the interwar years by providing a first mapping of the many research departments which blossomed since the early 1920s. While scanty information are available for most of them, in 8 cases, half of which pertaining to the banking sector and the others to the industrial sector, we provide a more detailed analysis. The main rationale that led banks and firms to engage in research activities was to produce applied knowledge and enhance the capacity to cope with the instability in prices and aggregate demand that had become a rule after the end of the war. Applied research contributed more advanced tools for decision-making, collecting and processing data whose availability was growing both at the national and the international level. On the whole, research departments showed a high degree of pluralism in terms of strategies, objectives and results: some of them had the primary task of collecting and processing information only for internal use, mostly for operative purposes; others promoted the publication of new journals in order to spread economic culture and technical knowledge. Banks were, generally, more active than industrial firms in this kind of editorial undertakings, destined to their employees or customers or to the general public and the scientific community.

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A second result that emerged from our research is the existence, in interwar Italy, of a dense network of institutions, economists and statisticians which cooperated (and, sometimes, also competed) in order to enhance the level of economic research, provide a firmer foundation of economic analysis upon statistical and business data and help policy decision-making and business strategies. In this network, a pivotal role was played by Giorgio Mortara, who exerted a strong influence on many institutions and research centres, and helped select a new breed of young and statistically minded economists, who were to offer the best of their experience and ability after the Second World War. Finally, the experience of research centres in interwar Italy has some interest not only for their technical and cultural values but also for their political dimension. Some of them hosted leading exponents of the antifascist movement (Ugo La Malfa, Ferruccio Parri, Libero Lenti, among others) and preserved the autonomy and the free judgement of the private or public institutions they were part of. Several protagonists of our story—Mortara, again, but also Gerbi, Fubini and others—were victims of the racist laws and left the country or lost their life in a death camp. As economic research departed from ideology and went looking for empirical evidence and new analytical approaches, it provided those institutions with a host of tools and ideas whose true value was to come to full light when the new democratic regime was established.

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The Diaspora of Italian Economists: Intellectual Migration Between Politics and Racial Laws Daniela Giaconi

1

Introduction

Based on the definition of “diaspora” as a “dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland” (Oxford English Dictionary), this chapter aims to examine the most important elements of the intellectual migration of Italian economists during the twenty years of fascism. Partly because of the number of scientists involved, it makes events following the racial laws of 1938 the fulcrum of the narrative. The ten academics of the field of economics purged on the basis of race were: Roberto Bachi of the University of Genoa, Giorgio Mortara of Milan, Marco Fanno of Padua, Gino Luzzatto of Venice, Angelo Segré and Renzo Fubini of Trieste, Gustavo Del Vecchio of Bologna (and Bocconi of Milano), Gino Arias and Riccardo Bachi of Rome and Bruno D. Giaconi (B) University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Augello et al. (eds.), An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II, Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38331-2_7

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Foà of Bari.1 To these we add the professor of finance Mario Pugliese of Trieste.2 The cases of three retired Jewish professors—Riccardo Dalla Volta, Augusto Graziani and Achille Loria—are also examined, as is that of Attilio Cabiati, who was ousted not for ethnic reasons but for a political decision similar to those that had blocked the careers of Francesco Saverio Nitti, Antonio Graziadei and Umberto Ricci during the 1920s and drove the young Piero Sraffa into exile in Britain.3 As regards methodology, the analysis follows Santi Fedele’s study on Nitti’s exile in France (2012).4 This lays emphasis on the question of the network of personal relations interrupted and constructed after the forced banishment from Italy, as well as on attitudes and behaviour during those difficult times. Indirectly, it also highlights the importance of exploring archives both in the institutional records of the public education system and in the private papers of economists to better evaluate these knowledge networks. Another model that has been followed is that of the study carried out by Alberto Baffigi and Marco Magnani (2009) on Mortara, in which 1 In

total, 97 members of faculty (Zevi 1990). Only 28 were reintegrated after the war, and among them only the economists Riccardo Bachi, Del Vecchio, Fanno, Luzzatto and Mortara. Finzi (1998) has written of the “persecuted” becoming “usurpers” due to the conflict of interest that was created between their right to be redeployed and the preservation of the role of professors brought in after 1938. The Jews who returned were placed in oversubscribed positions. Their reintegration was only one aspect of the delicate and longstanding question of the restoration of the ancient rights of Italian Jews (e.g. Pavan and Schwarz 2001; Finzi 2003; Galimi and Procacci 2009). The most recent rule relating to this corrective legislation is of 2003 (see the full list in Yael Franzone 2012, 145–151). 2 Pugliese went into exile in Córdoba (Argentina), where he died on 19 February 1940. He founded the Rivista di scienza delle finanze e diritto finanziario with Benvenuto Griziotti and Ezio Vanoni (Cipollina 2018). 3 We have not considered other cases of economists kept under police surveillance. The most famous were: Arturo Labriola (moved to France and Belgium, staying there until 1935), Antonio Pesenti (imprisoned from 1935 to 1943), Ernesto Rossi (exiled to Ventotene with Altiero Spinelli and Eugenio Colorni). Some younger figures like Dino Jarach and Franco Modigliani could not find work in Italy. Jarach was advised to go to Argentina by Griziotti and spent his entire career there. Modigliani emigrated to the United States in 1939 and became an American citizen in 1946 (Marucco 1970; Pesenti 1972; Fiori 1997; Smolensky and Vigevani Jarach 1998, 244; Michelini 2019). 4 Nitti established himself in Zurich and then in Paris (June 1924). He escaped after a group of fascists ransacked his house. He returned in 1945 and was elected to the Constitutional Assembly as a member of the liberal group. As the only living political leader of the pre-fascist ruling class he believed that he would be given the role of provisional head of state in 1946. However, Enrico De Nicola was elected.

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the importance of the archival factor is thrown into relief. This follows the entire human, political and scientific story of the economist through his important correspondence with Alberto Beneduce and Paolo Baffi, which reveals his doubts about registering with the National Fascist Party (PNF)—later overcome to avoid appearing as a beast led to the slaughter, together with the few who had publicly refused—his substantially positive assessment of the fascist economic policy of the period and his reaction to the imposition of the racial laws. Mortara initially greeted these with incredulity and scepticism, and then with a growing anguish that persuaded him to seek shelter abroad. These two researches enable us to draw a dividing line between the decades. Apart from the case of Sraffa,5 the flights from Italy in the twenties concerned political personalities (Nitti and Graziadei) or opinion makers (Ricci) of international renown, whose academic teaching was secondary in the general context of their surveillance by the fascist police. However, during the thirties, and especially after the racial laws, the police paid far more attention to scrutinising a role—that of the university professor—conceived by the fascist authorities as a cog in the chain of transmission of fascist doctrine from the centre of the political apparatus to the young students. “I swear…to exercise the office of teacher and fulfil all academic duties with the aim of forming hard-working, honest citizens devoted to the Homeland and the Fascist Regime”: this was the formula of the 1931 oath of allegiance. Only twelve academics refused to take it, and thereby lost their positions and all existing and future financial benefits (Boatti 2001).6 There were two justifications for swearing it: to ensure continuity of teaching in the interests of freedom of thought and to block the turnover of personnel (the Croce-Einaudi line); to carry out a useful work for the anti-Fascist Party and cause (Palmiro Togliatti’s communists). In addition, Father Agostino Gemelli instructed Catholics

5 Considering

that Sraffa’s sojourn in Cambridge is well known, we will not dwell on it here. For the 1920s and the reasons for his exile see Naldi (1998a, b). See also File number 4277 of the Casellario Politico Centrale (Archivio Centrale dello Stato, ACS, Roma) which mistakenly gives his first name as Pietro. 6To these twelve should be added the others who retired in order to avoid taking the oath (Antonio De Viti de Marco, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, etc.) and those who left the country (like Sraffa).

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to swear a pro forma oath with an inner reservation that invalidated the substance of the act. There is a considerable, authoritative literature on the anti-Jewish legislation, its consequences and the difficulties faced by the Jewish scholars when they returned, to which we can refer for all the details and general context (e.g. Ventura 1997; Finzi 1998, 2003; Pavan and Schwarz 2001; Galimi and Procacci 2009). This wealth of knowledge was significantly refined on the seventieth and eightieth anniversaries of the passing of the laws (e.g. Galimi 2018). The basic issues tackled by this literature include the knowledge gap brought about by the purge of Jewish teachers, the breaking of intergenerational links, and the after-effects of the racial laws on the composition of post-war academic institutions.7 This basic documentation has been augmented by new archival research on the people in question, which gives special emphasis to the behaviour of intellectuals when faced with fascism and on the inconsistencies between their public and private conduct. The psychology of the masses tended to ensure the prevalence of accommodating behaviour, passive spectators, and justifying theses of hesitations, hypocrisies, compromises and growing humiliations, all tolerated in order to safeguard academic positions and preserve a scholarly tradition to be restored intact after the fall of the regime. The recollections available to us contain much of interest: “Almost all of us behaved, as the dictatorship demanded, with an opportunistic resignation, except for considering it an infamy in private” (Norberto Bobbio, quoted in Cianferotti 2004, 15, my italics); “Our anti-fascism […] was also and profoundly linked to the rigour of the studies” (Mario Spinella, quoted in Simoncelli 1994, 184, my italics). The explanations about the reasons for joining the PNF and then the even more delicate ones concerning the oath of allegiance of 1931 are central to this type of dynamic. See, for an example from among the economists, how Einaudi cited himself in a 1945 letter to Pesenti:

7 Enrico

Catellani has written that every “generation has the [moral] obligation to pass on in greater strength the legacy transmitted to it by those that preceded it” (1907, 24). The downward spiral of fascism broke this cycle, disrupting the lives of two generations of scientists and denying them this rightful privilege.

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From this distance of time, I do not recall if there was also any discussion about party membership; but if the conversation did turn to this, I would not have had any choice but to repeat what I said to all the brave young men who asked me for advice on aspiring to an academic career: “We elders have a duty not to join because the task of taking away our professorships must belong to our enemies and because, by not joining, we renounce only superfluous duties and honours; you youngsters have the opposite duty, because you are forced to join by those who demand that certificate together with your birth certificates and because otherwise all the positions would fall into the hands of those most ready to poison the souls of the students. True scholars, even if enrolled [in the party], will always be able to teach what in their true conscience they deem to be the truth. (26 June 1945, quoted in Pesenti 1972, 281)

The words of Bobbio, Spinella and Einaudi reveal a self-absolving rationalisation mixed with a desire not to deviate from their role as bulwarks against the penetration of the fascist doctrine. These are the arguments around which the historiography that sees fascism as a parenthesis in Italian history which did not manage to poison the deep roots of the Italian culture has consolidated, and which has seen the oath of allegiance to the new order as a mere act of duty, a ritual that was not binding on the conscience. It is an interpretative tendency not limited to Italy. Michel Ostenc, for example, has spoken of “effects of fascistisation […] virtually non-existent in the universities” (1981, 104). It is a way of thinking that has been increasingly criticised in recent years, along with the idea that anti-Semitism was adopted only in the later years of fascism in order to please Italy’s ally, Germany.8 According to Howard Zinn, “the problem is not disobedience, the problem is obedience” (quoted in Gros 2019, 3). In other words, the historiographical “crux” is not the political dissidence of the early years of fascism, but the different degree of submission during the following 8 According

to Mussolini “the racial problem did not explode unexpectedly […] It stands in relation to the conquest of the Empire. […] And for the prestige [of the Empire] we must make clear not only differences, but also very definite superiorities”. It was necessary to close any openings for “worldwide Judaism […] the irreconcilable enemy of Fascism”. 1938 followed sixteen years in which the Italian “semitic elements [had taken part in an] out-and-out onslaught” on positions of power (quoted in Sarfatti 2013, 107–108).

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decade. Nobody is exempt from blame, beginning with some of the patron saints of the 1946 Republic: this applies even to Einaudi, for whom one can cite embarrassing statements of total obtuseness regarding fascism9 ; and also to Piero Calamandrei, who contributed to the drafting of the 1942 Code of Civil Procedure, and so on. For Gennaro Sasso, the idea that a more or less private intervention in favour of this or that persecuted person could be sufficient for a total remission of guilt after the war is an illusion (1993 quoted in Capristo 2013, 76, in relation to the defence of Del Vecchio by Gentile). According to Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli “the entire Italian ruling class was guilty of Fascism” (quoted in this volume, Giaconi, chapter “The Purging of Fascist Economists in Post-war Italy”, 272–273) and nobody could stand in judgement of the actions of others. There was a grey area of collaboration and connivance whose borders are extremely difficult to discern due to the “lust for acquiescence” which drove a large part of the Italian intelligentsia (Marchese 1945) to take prominent positions when fascism was dominant only to quickly backtrack at the time of its capitulation. The first servants of this “corrupt” science were in fact the economists due to their falsely progressive myths of corporativism and autarky, along with the biologists, with their equally distorted studies on race (Colonnetti 1973 [1943–4]). Going back ten years from the time of Einaudi’s letter to Pesenti, we can see that Graziani had made the same point on the difference in position between the old and young economists, analysing it precisely for what concerned the specific characteristics of studies on corporativism. The observations you make about Foà are correct, but these young people must unfortunately p.n.f.10 pay homage to the balance, just as they must deal with corporativism, and it is to be welcomed that Foà and others do 9 “Mussolini

does not persecute Jews; he does not dismiss hundreds of professors. He has, it is true, requested an oath from them, but then leaves them free in their scientific views. […] Mussolini does not burn books in the public squares and leaves it to Hitler to pride himself on having reenacted the burning of the Library of Alexandria. He does not cleanse academies and respects science” (Letter to Mussolini, July 1933 quoted in Capristo 2013, 87). 10 Antonio Allocati solved the “p.n.f ” acronym used by Graziani: it meant “per nostra fortuna” (fortunately for us), being a pun on PNF (National Fascist Party). This supposition is plausible because Graziani was the grandfather of Allocati’s wife.

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it seriously, not denying the achievements of true science and proceeding in their investigations with methodological sincerity. (Letter to Loria, 21 February 1934 in Allocati 1990, 163)

Graziani here refers to his pupil Foà who, in turn, followed the same path. As for corporativism, Foà wrote about “a game of shadows” or “a charade” that had not created “a real disturbance” to those who had been educated directly by the masters of the liberal school. They had been able to adapt to the new wording of university courses while continuing to teach the same things. Decisive in this regard was the role played by Einaudi: the last of the liberal era to actually remain at the centre of the political–cultural scene, once his contemporaries (Graziani, Loria, Cabiati, Ricci and others) had either retired or been more or less marginalised.11 Younger academics were left to choose between a dishonourable pact with the devil and “internal exile”, in other words to opt for silence as “the only defence against the dead weight of Fascism” (Foà 1990, 490).12 Foà deduced the theoretical fragility of corporativism independently of the fact that the political transition from fascism to republican Italy had restored the historical denominations of economics courses. It had been a superficial phenomenon to which most economists had paid lip service without compromising their forma mentis. Amoroso expressed the same idea: “what I was before Fascism, such was I during Fascism, and I remain the same today” (19 February 1945).13 11 For

a view of Einaudi as the man who supplied the tools with which to “graft corporatism into the trunk of economic theory” and to “save the [flourishing] tree of classical theory”, see Amoroso, 19 February 1945 quoted in Giaconi (in this volume, chapter “The Purging of Fascist Economists in Post-war Italy”, footnote 17). “Classical” or rather “non-corporative” without any other connotation in terms of “schools”. 12 Foà also alludes to a widespread anti-Keynesianism that matured as a manifestation of antifascism without any real theoretical basis with which to oppose the pro-regime interpretation of the British economist provided above all by De’ Stefani. The economists discovered the true Keynes outside of Italy or after the war. Mortara, on the other hand, explains how behind the choice of their final destination was a question that was anagraphic and related to academic level. He states that the English-speaking countries welcomed only the young economists and those without a degree. There were no professorships left because so many spaces had been taken by the North European intellectual migration that began after the rise of Nazism. Mortara opted for Brazil, Arias chose Argentina. The location of Del Vecchio and the two Bachis in countries that were academically peripheral like Switzerland and Israel seem to support these observations, as does the fact that Segré reached the United States but joined a literary faculty. 13 See above footnote 11.

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“Flushing Out” the Jews from the Universities

The racial laws tried out a system of personal records designed to record an individual’s level of Jewish blood and to decree the expulsion of the academic staff of Jewish ethnicity, unless they enjoyed the privileges of different treatment afforded to the so-called Aryanised Jews.14 The general operational scheme and reactions of the academic world to the census are perfectly superimposable on those outlined in a study of a smaller sample, concerning members of the academies and cultural institutes (Capristo 2002).15 The erga omnes nature of the provision meant that the “voices of the others” (the non-Jews) dominated: lots of questionnaires were meticulously drawn up to corroborate the purity of the respondents’ blood, their ancestors lost in the mists of time, and their firm adherence to the dictates of Catholicism. In the field of economics, Amintore Fanfani, Livio Livi, Federico Flora, Francesco Coletti, and no less than Einaudi and Antonio De Viti de Marco, contributed to the construction of this type of discourse, albeit with different lexical strategies (ibid., 22ff.).16 Alberto De’ Stefani in fact went even further, claiming to be from the “Alpine race”, the select guard of the dominant ethnic group (ibid., 32). A similar approach was adopted by a large number of future protagonists in the institutional transition (Marchesi, Bianchi Bandinelli17 ), by eminent masters of law like Orlando, and by certain grands commis of state (IRI President Beneduce and the Governor of the Bank of Italy, Vincenzo Azzolini). 14 Art. 14, R.D.L. 17 November 1938, no. 1728 which provided the right to request a dispensation in the following cases: having been or being the descendants of war veterans or those decorated in war; those who belonged to the PNF from 1919, and those holding official merits. 15 Capristo (2002, 190–363) named all the institutions from which every single Italian and foreign member was removed. He listed the following economists: Arias, Bachi (Roberto and Riccardo), Dalla Volta, Del Vecchio, Fanno, Foà, Fubini, Graziani, Loria, Luzzatto, Mortara, Pugliese, Charles Rist, E.R.A. Seligman, Sraffa and the unknown Yakir Behar of Tel Aviv. 16 De Viti, who retired in 1931, had not given up his academic qualifications. In 1938 he took part in the census in order to keep hold of them. 17 Bianchi Bandinelli is also credited with the study of a fanciful attempt to assassinate Hitler and Mussolini during the Führer’s visit to Italy in 1938.

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There were only a handful of dissenting voices: Benedetto Croce, the only one who refused to complete the form,18 and the non-aligned who resigned (like Gaetano De Sanctis, one of the twelve who did not swear the oath). The Jews were obliged to bow this profiling in an attempt to minimise the damage. They could not disavow the fact of their ancestry and they approached it in keeping with their personal convictions on the value of the biological concept of race and the degree of religious practice. For most, like Mortara, races “do not exist statistically” (ibid., 42). Family genealogy was considered an accessory element in a line of defence based on the right to Italian citizenship acquired by jus sanguinis. Mortara called himself “only Italian” and an authentic civil servant.19 He also downplayed the religious question, declaring himself to be of Jewish origin but unconnected to Zionism: in other words, he was a non-practising Jew not registered in the Jewish community of Milan. But Arias was not satisfied even with that line of action. He challenged the definition of “Jewish”, arguing that such adjectival labelling was reductive. He considered himself a “Fascist, Catholic and Italian”, in a declination of terms that begins with his political allegiance. He repeated this claim when attempting to keep his place as a contributor to the Popolo d’Italia, the PNF’s daily newspaper. I received your letter and understood. Then I read my name on that list. My pain is atrocious […] Whatever my race is, and however it is defined, I am a Fascist, Catholic and Italian […] My work demonstrates this comprehensively. I recognise the historic reasons and the ideological goals of the purge movement, despite the fact that it threatens to engulf me. But I have unshakable faith in the supreme justice of the Duce and I invoke the Great Spirit of Arnaldo [Mussolini] so that I may once again see my name on the columns of the Popolo d’Italia. (Letter to Pini, 1 November 1938, ibid., 51)20 18 Baffigi

and Magnani (2009, 246) provides a reproduction of the form completed by Mortara for his university. 19 According to Mortara his attachment to citizenship was the most perfect exemplification of his patriotism (ibid., 240–242). 20 Original underlining. The underlining in the following quotations all conform to the original texts, except those indicated. On the subject of the collaboration of the economists with partisan

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And Arias wrote to his wife: “You will have read in today’s newspapers how the Jews have been ousted from everything in the life of the state: there remains one in a thousand! I however cannot be considered a Jew because I kicked out the Jews and I am a Catholic” (Ottonelli 2012, 38). Arias had his four children christened and wrote in the relevant box: “Paternal race. Ancient and noble family of Spanish race. […] All Catholics. My branch come from Spanish stock and my father professes the Hebrew religion, religion, not race” (Ventura 1997, 133). Before enquiring into the human affairs of the economists included in the “pariah caste” of Jews discriminated against by law (to quote Mortara 1985, 36), it must be pointed out that the removal of Jews from teaching was only the first stage in a process of complete elimination of the producers of “Jewish” culture. As 1938 gave way to 1939, progressive book censorship measures began to restrict the diffusion channels of their works, until the imposition of the total ban on the circulation of books by Jewish authors published after 1850. An accurate census of this loss of shared culture (Fabre 1988) has shown that of the economists, the list of Banned academic authors at first included only Del Vecchio, Fanno, Fubini and Luzzatto. In February and March 1939, the provisions of the Commission for the Decontamination of Books in the Ministry of Popular Culture rehabilitated all but two of them, those being political and philosophical works by Labriola.21 There was not yet a clear discrimination between the questions of mere ethnicity or religion—Labriola was not a Jew—and the exigency of political and moral control over content in general. Only in 1942 do we arrive at the formulation of a clear list of “unwanted authors”, which included Arias, the two Bachis (Riccardo and Roberto), Dalla Volta, Del Vecchio, Fanno, Fubini, Graziani, Luzzatto, Mortara and Segré.

newspapers and generalist and regime magazines during fascism, see the writings on this subject in this volume (chapter “From Nationalism to Fascism: Protagonists and Journals”). 21 Books by Labriola (Polemica antifascista. 1919. Naples: Cecchi; Voltaire e la filosofia liberale. N.d. N.p., n.p.) together with Machiavelli’s Prince and to the works of Piero Gobetti, Alberto Moravia, André Gide, Lev Trotsky, Luigi Salvatorelli, Giovanni Amendola, don Luigi Sturzo, etc.

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The decree establishing the Commission for the Decontamination of Books charged publishers with the duty of certifying the racial descent of all their employees (even occasional ones, such as translators). The majority of them complied, duly communicating the information. The exception was Carlo Angelo Formiggini: the owner of the publishing house of the same name who chose instead to throw himself off the tower of Modena Cathedral on 29 November 1938, with his pockets full of money so that it could not be said that a Jew had sought death for financial reasons.22 Even the renowned Laterza publishing house in Bari adhered to the dictates of the law: it notified the prefecture of three different categories of “sensitive” authors: writers of confirmed Jewish descent (Bachi and Mortara), the editors and translators from that ethnic group and/or of works unpopular with the government (Luzzatto), and, finally, the authors whose race had not yet been confirmed (Graziani and Giuseppe Prato).23 Although in a class by itself, the breakdown of collaboration with the Enciclopedia Italiana 24 at the end of 1938 can be considered within the same terms. The director of the economics section, Gustavo Del Vecchio, was dismissed, along with his colleagues Arias, the Bachis, Dalla Volta, Del Vecchio, Fanno, Fubini, Graziani, Luzzatto, Mortara and Segré. Leaving aside the racial topos, the same interpretative criteria applied to the study of the refinement of the formula of the oath of loyalty of university professors can be applied to this episode (Paoloni 2009). In principle, the reason for it was the remorseless struggle against the declared

22The

cruel joke by the PNF secretary, Achille Starace, is unfortunately famous: “He died like a Jew: he threw himself off a tower to save himself a bullet”. 23These were titles mostly from the 1920s, with differing levels of international penetration: Riccardo Bachi (1926). L’alimentazione e la politica annonaria in Italia; Augusto Graziani (1921). Ricardo e Mill; Giorgio Mortara (1925). La salute pubblica in Italia durante e dopo la guerra; Friedrich Naumann (1918–1919). Mitteleuropa, translated by Luzzatto; Giuseppe Prato (1919). Riflessi storici dell’economia di guerra; Id. (1925). Il Piemonte e gli effetti della guerra nella sua vita economica e sociale; Walther Rathenau (1919–1922). Economia nuova, translated by Luzzatto. The only cult work mentioned is the Freudian Totem e tabù, transposed by Edoardo Weiss (1930). 24 Rome: Istituto Giovanni Treccani, 1929–1937, 35 vols.; Appendix, 1938.

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anti-fascist of international repute: Ricci was struck off the initial list of 1926 collaborators in the field of economics, statistics and finance.25 After 1930, political control became an undercurrent: “‘small’ gestures […] difficult to ignore” (ibid., 117), unnerving the timid and all those thought to be aligned for expediency. Suspects were not explicitly pointed out in public, but rather brought to heel gradually by increasing humiliations in their daily work or by other subtle, undetectable means. The episode of the correction of the entry “Cooperation” by Giovanni Lorenzoni (1930–1931) was symptomatic of this modus operandi. The entry had obtained the imprimatur from Del Vecchio, but in spite of this two interpretative and explanatory notes that framed it normatively and historically and set certain restrictions were attached to the final text in an authoritarian way (Giaconi 2005, 75–82).

3

The “Pariah Caste” of 1938

Giovanni Battista Varnier has drawn attention to two extracts from inaugural speeches delivered at the University of Genoa in 1938 (1) and 1945 (2), revealing the clinical manner in which the academic bodies approached one of the most tragic periods of recent Italian history: 1) The ethics of race, which […] constitutes the legacy of fascism, has recently made certain measures that directly affect the organisation of universities unavoidable. Consequently in these days some colleagues, who must be thanked for services rendered up to now to the university teaching, will be leaving direct teaching; 2) The university has been glad to welcome, after the end of the war, the following professors, restored to the teaching positions from which they were removed by the racial laws of 1938: in the Faculty of Law, professors…. (Varnier 2002, 495)

25 Fondazione Giovanni Gentile, Archivio Gentile, b. 12, Elenco delle voci che furono oggetto di discussione fra i Prof. Benini, Bresciani e De’ Stefani (1926). “Agriculture”, “wealth” and “saving” were re-assigned to Enrico Fileni, Ulisse Gobbi and Carlo Draghi; “economic assets” and “savings banks” were eliminated.

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Varnier spoke of “deleted pages”, an episode to consign to oblivion without even the slightest word of apology or formal welcome.26 An epochal event was reduced to a procedure that involved professors who for the most part, like Fanno, “moved in a cultural orbit that was not hostile but was in some ways well-disposed to that of the regime; they had published […] in [journals] that were certainly not neutral […]; towards the Fascist government they had assumed an attitude of impassive but not hidden loyalism; they had paid their dues to the spirit of the times” (Lanaro 1996, 225). Edallo (2018, 469) noted Mortara’s frankness: “his work [was] dedicated above all to ‘explaining and supporting the political economy of the country’ and his studies to radically transforming ‘the comparative international conditions of production in various countries,’ providing ‘a sound technical base for the policy of national economic autarchy’”. Mortara had joined the PNF. “Mortara’s decision was not an anomaly, not even for a Jew: the ratio of Jewish adherents to Fascism was in fact similar to that of other Italians, even if the proportion of anti-Fascist Jews was higher than the overall national average” (Baffigi and Magnani 2009, 244). In the mid-1930s support for economic autarky and the Ethiopia campaign clinched the adhesion of nationalist–imperialists like Mortara to fascism (ibid., 240–244). Since it was not yet known that the racial laws would eventually tear Italian culture apart, the first and foremost reactions were of disbelief or silent consent. Mortara typified the intellectual disorientated in the face of legislation that stripped him of his place in society for a racial–religious idea that he did not believe. He accepted the precepts of Judaism only in their value as rules for living that applied to everyone (Capristo 2002). That apart, to quote Bobbio once more: “I was immersed in duplicity, because it was convenient to be so. Being a Fascist among Fascists and an anti-Fascist with the anti-Fascists […] it was an almost conscious disconnection between the everyday world […] and the cultural world” (quoted in Volpe and Simone 2018, 71). 26The

example of Agostino Lanzillo is symptomatic of this. The economist had greeted and publicly thanked Luzzatto for the commitment and seriousness he had shown throughout his career but cut this part out of the version of the speech sent for publication in the Ca’ Foscari Annuario (Casellato 2018, 71). On this subject, and the conviction of the other rectors, see Cianferotti (2004).

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From here on this section provides brief overviews of the diaspora economists, beginning with those from the University of Rome, that is, Arias and Bachi. Despite his stature, Riccardo Bachi appears only in the background of the historiography of the diaspora, being overshadowed by the public exposure of his colleague Arias and the political philosopher Giorgio Del Vecchio, so much so that he is not even mentioned in the most comprehensive work on the subject (Franceschi 2014).27 It is said that Dr Riccardo Bachi emigrated to Palestine and became a farmer like other Italians who had taken refuge in the kibbutzim to the north of Tel Aviv where they together tended their meagre crops (Pezzana 2008, 101).28 His son Roberto—a university professor in Genoa—a “worker […] omnivore […] obsessed with the idea of the declining birth rate of the Jewish in the face of the demographic growth of the Arabs” (ibid., 115, 271) studied population movements to Israel (e.g. Bachi 1950); he chose not to follow his father Riccardo when he returned to teach in Italy, ignoring all diplomatic communications about the restoration of his Italian citizenship and obliging his father to respond on his behalf.29 27 Arias, unable to prove himself a “Fascist, Catholic and Italian”, emigrated to Argentina. “He asked to be considered non-Jewish, but was unable to document this legally” (Franceschi 2014, 34n). He was replaced by the holder of the professorship of financial sciences, Guglielmo Masci. He then taught at the University of Tucumán and the University of Córdoba, founded the Revista de Economía y Estadistica and was a target of criticism from the nationalist and fascist journal Crisol precisely because of his “race”. His daughter described him as “a severe Catholic thinker of Israelite origin” (Smolensky and Vigevani Jarach 1998, 245). He died in 1940. For his part Del Vecchio was at the centre of a two-stage purge from the university that he had served as rector and dean: he was removed in 1938 and investigated by the antifascist commission, as he narrates in Una nuova persecuzione contro un perseguitato (Rome: tip. Artigiana, 1945). 28 Riccardo Bachi was the economist most closely connected to the Zionist tradition. In 1938 he was a member of the Commission of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities that organised the continuation of studies for those who had been expelled from public schools (Minerbi 1998, 716–717). On Bachi, who was rejuvenated by his stay in Israel, to the point that even his appearance and posture changed, and on his conviction that “a human ideal derived” from the Torah, see Ratti (1960, 51–68). Colloqui con me stesso (Rome: tip. del Senato, 1952) is the work that most reveals the willingness to hide the economist behind the mask of a pious man. In Tel Aviv he obtained a university lectureship and taught in high schools. He returned in 1946 due to his lack of linguistic ability. 29 Everything is in the Archivio Storico dell’Università di Genova, Fascicoli docenti, Bachi Roberto. See also Rollandi (1993, passim; 2002, 478–482). He led the Israeli Central Institute of Statistics up to 1971 and established the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After the Italian Concordat with the Catholic Church in 1929, he

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Unlike him, the Milanese Mortara strove to maintain citizenship. However, his decision to renounce reintegration in 1945 in order not to interrupt his consultancy work for the National Census Service of the Brazilian government was interpreted as automatic expiry of Italian citizenship. Mortara prof. Giorgio. Full Prof. of Statistics. From 27 February 1946, the date on which he ceased to hold Italian citizenship to acquire that of Brazil, is declared to also be resigned from the teaching ranks. (Ministerial Decree, 30 March 1948)30

In 1956 he returned to Rome where he taught in the university until his retirement. With Mortara in Brazil, Italy had lost one of the great coordinators of economic culture and—with Del Vecchio and Beneduce—the editor of the Giornale degli Economisti. Italy’s most prestigious economics journal was saved by a free transfer to Bocconi University, of which Del Vecchio was rector from 1934 to 1938 and where Mortara held a teaching position (Artoni and Romani 2016; Baffigi and Magnani 2009; Zanni 1977). Gentile created the conditions for the sale of shares in the publication and worked to persuade the other two owners (Beneduce and Marcella Pantaleoni, Maffeo’s daughter and heir). De’ Stefani also had his say about the Giornale (Rigano 2015, 475–476). Mortara and Del Vecchio were the only ones able to ensure, through third parties, the continuity of their teaching, which they did by means of placing two of their most brilliant pupils in professorships. Mortara was substituted by Libero Lenti,31 while, at Bocconi, Giovanni Demaria replaced Del Vecchio in his three roles of professor, rector and director argued in favour of a Jewish education for primary school students capable of counterbalancing the teachings of state schools (Minerbi 1998, 705). 30 Archivio Storico dell’Università di Milano, Ufficio Personale, 2151, Mortara Giorgio. This is an undated annotation, copied from the Bollettino Ufficiale [della Pubblica Istruzione]. In his Ricordi, Mortara wrote about having been naturalised as a Brazilian and that the amendment was made in 1956 (1985, 45–47). The other person to renounce his citizenship was Foà. He established himself in the United States, after a brief stay in the United Kingdom. He held prestigious positions in both countries (Foà 1990; Steve 1990). 31 Lenti was also a prolific memorialist. See his works for the Nuova Antologia, and especially “La ‘Bocconi’ negli anni del fascismo” (Nuova Antologia, December 1970).

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of the Giornale degli Economisti.32 The rectorate of Demaria opened up “a confident period of development [of the Milanese university thanks to his] spontaneous [and] pioneering personality”.33 The pupil also began to fulfil the mandate that Bocconi University’s Vice President, Giovanni Gentile, had entrusted to Del Vecchio. Gentile had fought so that the economist would be exempted from the racial laws and make the Milanese university a nationwide reference point for economics and an institute that, within Milan, was equipped to compete with Father Gemelli’s Catholic University.34 Nevertheless, Del Vecchio also lost his position as head of the economics section of the Enciclopedia Italiana. The dashed hopes of Gentile immediately bring to mind the events surrounding the Genoese professorships: Roberto Bachi, as we have said, did not wish to set foot back in the city after the war ended, whereas Cabiati had long yearned for a possible return. Dear Sir, I am Attilio Cabiati […], a professor who for political reasons was made to retire in 1939 by the Minister of Education, the Hon. Bottai, on the insistence of the Minister of Finance, the Hon. Thaon di Revel. […] Here briefly is the story of my situation. I suffered my first loss at the hands of Fascism in 1926. When an attempt on Mussolini’s life was made, his brother, Arnaldo, sent the squadristi to start a violent demonstration at Bocconi University […]. To pacify these thugs, both Bocconi University and the University of Milan, to which I was unanimously called for two years […] prevented me from entering either, thus not allowing me to teach. After only two months I managed to obtain permission, from the then Minister Fedele, to resume my chair in Genoa. I thus lost my teaching post “at Bocconi” […] and from then I was also banned from holding additional classes on my subject. Turning now to my forced retirement

32 Del Vecchio was full professor at the University of Bologna but the aforementioned events left his relationship with the university in the background. The purge is also poorly documented in the personal file in the university’s archive. Bologna was the university that took him back after the war. 33 Demaria edited the Giornale degli Economisti from 1939 to 1975. Regarding Bocconi University, see Cattini et al. (2002, XI), from which the quote has been taken, and Artoni and Romani (2016). 34 Gentile hoped that the racial laws would not apply to Mortara (ibid.).

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[…]. At the start of 1939, […] I wrote to the Hon. Thaon di Revel requesting him to ask the Minister for some cash and to grant (at the exchange rate) to my Jewish assistant [Sigmund Cohn] a sum in dollars that would allow him to travel to America to take up the professorship he had been offered there. In the letter that I wrote him to thank him for the favour granted, I added, incidentally, that, in my opinion, the law on the Jews was not applicable either legally or morally. He replied that he could not permit, neither as a Fascist nor as a Minister, a professor to judge and criticise a Fascist law, and he therefore reported me to the Minister of Education for disciplinary action. The Education Minister […] notified me that he was giving me ten days to defend myself for what I had written. Naturally I had nothing to defend myself for. According to the Rector, […] neither the Hon. Bottai […] nor Mussolini wanted to take any action, but at the insistence of Thaon di Revel they decided that I be forced to retire. This measure […] caused me great material harm, both for the loss of my salary and because the publisher who had printed my textbook stopped payment. And moreover it caused me serious moral and physical harm. (26 May 1945)35

The numerous errors of syntax and word computation in the letter testify to the miserable condition of Cabiati’s health. “In May 1945, Cabiati had already outlived himself. A series of attacks had cost him his memory, then the ability to recognise who he was with, and finally the ability to read and write: it was a slow, terrible agony” (Cajuni quoted in Marchionatti 2011, 55). We learn from other sources that Cabiati had no intention whatsoever to keep quiet about the legal content of the racial laws: “he would be ‘satisfied’ to talk about it to his students, which was considered an aggravating circumstance” (Fabre 1988, 255).36 His fellow faculty members hoped that because of his disability he could be reinstated ad libitum and without expiration by age, despite the fact that 35 Archivio

Storico dell’Università di Genova, Fascicoli docenti, Cabiati Attilio. Cabiati had discussed with Thaon di Revel the issue of the real coercive power of a law perceived by citizens as “anti-juridical” (Rollandi 1993, 287). The economist does not appear to have understood that he had raised a “scandalous” argument because this theory, if taken to extremes, leads to conscientious objection as a key that opens the door to the breakup of totalitarianisms. 36The process and the supporting documents of the case are in the series Atti (1938–1939) of the Ministry of National Education and in the Ministerial file on the economist (Marchionatti 2011, passim).

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it was clear to everyone that giving him back his professorship was only a necessary step to putting him in retirement (1947).37 Cabiati died on 13 October 1950. In Parma in 1923 Graziadei became another target of squadrismo. In this case, his status as a professor was a marginal factor, since the main interest of the fascist regime, which had not yet become totalitarian, was to silence—even at the cost of blatantly stretching the law— the critical voices that might influence public opinion. The Communist Deputy Graziadei was charged with chronic absenteeism—as well as being sickly—despite the fact that he had obtained legitimate leave. If for a few years I gave a reduced number of lectures at the University of Parma, this was due to the fact that I was also a Parliamentary Deputy. Parliamentary sessions largely coincided with the periods in which university courses were under way. There then existed a law which allowed Deputies to find a substitute when they had to fulfil their Parliamentary duties. In that period, I also suffered a great deal from a serious illness. I therefore regularly asked for leave for health reasons. The leave was granted […]. Once this came to an end, I returned to the University, in March 1923, although I had been advised that the Fascists were preparing to take action against me. I was then in fact the subject of preordained and violent aggression […]. The incident, which did not have extreme consequences only because of the generosity of some of my colleagues, showed that for purely political reasons there was a desire that I leave the university.38

37 Archivio

Storico dell’Università di Genova, Fascicoli docenti, Cabiati Attilio, which also contains his wife’s will with provisions to ensure that the home assistance would not be interrupted in the event that he outlived her (1948). He had become ill in around 1940. 38 Archivio Storico dell’Università di Parma, Fascicoli docenti, Graziadei Antonio, Letter to Solazzi (10 June 1946). From 1928 to 1945 he lived mainly in Volta Mantovana. During his absence, his replacement was Raffaele Cognetti de Martiis, the son of Salvatore.

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Graziadei was allowed back to Parma in the autumn of 1945 but by the following February had transferred to Rome for reasons of convenience: he was a Deputy in the Constituent Assembly and a leading member of the Communist Party (Andalò and Menzani 2014).39 Although it is not often mentioned in the various histories of Italian universities, the University of Trieste occupies an important position in our reconstruction. This is due to a strong Jewish component in its law faculty and to the four purges in its historical-economic and mathematical–financial disciplines alone.40 This was the faculty from which Albert O. Hirschman received his doctorate in economics in 1938 and where very different specialisations co-existed: from the papyrology and ancient numismatics of Segré41 to the cutting-edge studies and the mathematisation of economics of Bruno de Finetti. These economists were connected in two different ways. Hirschman graduated under the supervision of Fubini with a thesis on the Franc Poincaré.42 De Finetti, together with Ugo Spirito, instead gave fresh vigour to the thorniest issues of economic 39 Officially

he held the seat in agricultural economics (the other economics professorships were all taken). Graziadei was reintegrated in two ways. In 1928, he had been expelled from Gramsci and Bordiga’s Italian Communist Party for “Marxist revisionism” and intellectually sidelined. 40To the three economists named at the start of this chapter should be added Ettore Del Vecchio, professor of financial mathematics. 41The racial laws drove away from Trieste a scientific figure who personified a subject—that of economic history—that was still undeveloped and multifaceted, in which the Segré brothers and the founder Luzzatto coexisted. Angelo Segré was trained as a legal papyrologist in the Florentine school of Girolamo Vitelli and had a special interest in the study of monetary systems of the ancient world, which also made him an economic historian. Even now there has never been an essay dedicated to this aspect of his studies (Frezza 1970; Canfora 2005, passim). His brother was the winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize for Physics, Emilio Segré, one of the creators of the atomic bomb. Hereditary disputes but above all his profound abhorrence of nuclear experimentation undermined Angelo’s relationship with his brother, especially in the years of their American exile. He believed that a cauldron had been uncovered by men who he believed to be not very sapiens (Segré 1995, 213). It cannot be excluded that this contributed to his return to Florence in 1946 and to his decision to end his academic career and devote himself to painting. He had worked in the Department of Ancient History of Columbia University. 42 In a CV prepared for Harvard in 1942, Hirschman said that his tutor in Trieste was the statistician and converted Jew Pierpaolo Luzzatto Fegiz. He did not name Fubini, despite the fact that the announcement of his graduation had also been published in the local newspaper Il Piccolo (3 July 1938) (Fubini 2014, 40–48; https://mostlyeconomics.wordpress.com/2018/08/ 07/albert-hirschmanns-cv-for-job-application-at-harvard-1942/). In America, Hirschman altered his surname, removing the second ‘n.’

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debate of the time (De Felice 1999), namely the definition of pure economics and the specific characteristics of corporativism. These were the same arguments that led to the downfall of Ricci who was ousted from his Roman professorship in 1928 and left him with no option but to continue his teaching in Egypt and Turkey.43 Ricci himself told his story to Antonio Salandra. To my great surprise a little piece of mine, “Science and life” published a few months ago in a journal of fascist studies edited by prof. Spirito [i.e. Nuovi Studi di Diritto, Economia e Politica], has been mentioned in Popolo d’Italia and other newspapers, which have given it a political significance that I had not at all attributed to it. In consequence, I have received a letter from Minister Belluzzo in which he announces that I will soon be relieved of my service. The Minister’s letter invites me to present my thoughts […] The article was of a scientific nature and aimed at the close circle of scholars who read that journal. The phrases that now incriminate me are nothing more than principles of economic logic drawn from the teachings of the most orthodox economists (e.g. Pantaleoni and Pareto) and which furthermore I have supported throughout my scientific career, which goes back further than the current regime. I cannot explain such a violent reaction. (21 September 1928, my italics)44

43 One of Ricci’s fellow faculty members was Costantino Bresciani Turroni. His migration was not the result of wanting to protect himself politically. Bresciani did not leave Italy and was not the subject of police action, being skilled in exploiting situations that presented themselves to hide feelings that were not favourable towards the regime. He taught in Egypt as a delegate professor of the University of Milan and was able to return without any problem. See in relation to him his file and booklets relating to his lectures of the early 1940s preserved by the University historical archive. This reconstruction is also confirmed by the fact that Bresciani was not figured in the Rubrica di frontiera [Frontier Rubric] of the Casellario Politico Centrale [Central Political Records] in which all Italian “subversives” living even temporarily abroad were registered, their political surveillance being continued uninterrupted. Apart from Ricci (under surveillance from 1926–1942), there appear in this: Graziadei (1898–1945), Arturo Labriola (1896–1941), Enrico Leone (1896–1938), Nitti (1927–1943), Carlo Rosselli (1931–1938) and Sraffa (1931–1941). Apart from the liberals Nitti and Ricci, the other dossiers opened during the liberal period and added to by the fascist police relate to economists of the left. 44 Biblioteca comunale di Lucera (FG), Fondo Antonio Salandra. Salandra was the leader of the faction of the Liberal Party to which also Ricci belonged. After the Matteotti murder and the totalitarian turn of 1925, it fell on Ricci to take on the burden of announcing his party’s decision to leave the government. Ricci was part of the network of advisors to Minister De’ Stefani. He also worked with the Egyptian government.

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The letter to his politician friend would have been accurate in every way—including the shock at the outcry against a methodological essay— if there had not been a precedent in force for which the economist could be dismissed from the chair that had previously belonged to Pantaleoni. In 1926 Ricci had been cautioned “not to oppose the national government”, after an anonymous informant had recorded compromising declarations that he had made about a system of government that chose calculatedly to become totalitarian. Mussolini, Ricci had said, was the head of “a colossus with feet of clay” and dictatorship was the only expedient to snuff out the infighting that gripped the party and the lobbying pressures hidden behind each of its factions. Ricci died in Cairo on 3 January 1946, while preparing to return to Italy after having received formal notice of his reinstatement (Giaconi 2004). Returning to the other connecting thread, from Hirschman we come to Fubini, who taught in Trieste from 1933 to 1938. After being purged, he moved between Piedmont and Liguria, without any apparent interruption to his personal studies, despite the difficulty of finding the books he needed. He contacted Einaudi in order to obtain a position in England but this did not go to plan: he was directed towards an outsider (Rosenstein-Rodan). After a period in hiding, he was captured in Piedmont and deported (Becchio and Marchionatti 2004, passim). Dalla Volta’s story was much like Fubini’s. The two economists shared a tragic end: they were arrested in early February 1944, transferred to the Fossoli concentration camp, sent to Auschwitz in May, where only Fubini passed the initial selection of those deemed fit to work and was not gassed. Dalla Volta Riccardo […] Arrested in Florence on 8.2.1944 by Germans. Held in Florence, Fossoli Camp. Deported from Fossoli 5.4.1944 to Auschwitz. Killed on arrival in Auschwitz on 10.4.1944. Source 1b, convoy 9. (Picciotto Fargion 1991, 210)45 Fubini Renzo […]. Arrested in Ivrea (province of Turin) on 7.2.1944 by Italians. Held in Ivrea prison, Milan prison, Fossoli camp. Deported

45 Marsili

Libelli wrote that he and Jacopo Mazzei had turned to the German consulate to stop Dalla Volta’s deportation. He also mentioned that the German ambassador had taken an interest (1957, 17–18).

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from Fossoli on 16.4.1944 to Auschwitz. ID number A-5410. Died in Auschwitz after 14.9.1944. Source 1a, convoy 10. (ibid., 306)

Like Dalla Volta, Graziani and Loria also fell foul of the anti-Jewish legislation after retiring from their university professorships (in 1935 and 1932). Graziani found a way to live thanks to Marsili Libelli’s skill in circumventing rules and regulations. In the painful period in which my uncle prof. Augusto Graziani and aunt Paolina Graziani and my cousin Graziani widow of Cassola had taken refuge in Florence to escape the persecution of the Nazi-Fascists […], [Marsili Libelli] always faithful to the old friendship and veneration that had bound him to my uncle, his teacher, he maintained the most loving behaviour towards these members of my family, offering them fraternal comfort, advice, aid, and in particular working to save their personal assets from confiscation. In fact, he […] proceeded to sell two important lots of public bonds as his own, and to cash in a batch of treasury bills, signing a declaration that the assets were not owned by Jews.46

Graziani died on 31 March 1944. A few months earlier, on 6 November 1943, Loria, the most illustrious of his correspondents, had passed away (Allocati 1990). In their correspondence the word “discrimination” never occurs. Only Graziani’s letters were saved, along with some drafts of his correspondent, and it is not at all clear whether Loria had informed Graziani before requesting a certificate from the President of the Senate, Luigi Federzoni. There remains only a note in which Loria seems to give an answer to an unexpressed objection (n.d., 1938). “You’re right: our only consolation may be the inflexible mental tension, in the supreme hope that this too does not have to waver under the weight of the ineffable worries” (ibid., 250). The economist wrote a letter with seven pages of attachments under the heading Notes on the family of Senator Achille 46 Letter

to Eugenia Jona (26 October 1944) listed among the materials for his defence against being purged (in this volume, Giaconi, chapter “The Purging of Fascist Economists in Post-war Italy”). In the autumn of 1933, offensive accusations were made against the sanity of the elderly Neapolitan economist, with demands that he be removed from the professorship on the basis that he did not respond to any of the invitations to correct his teaching (he was deaf and blind towards fascism). He was saved by the compromise of changing discipline in order to take on the less politically exposed science of finance (Allocati 1990, xvl–xlvi).

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Loria (31 October 1938)47 : a paper about “a family resident for centuries in Italy and which has always used its energies in the service of the country”, and on which Federzoni did not want to take a position (“the question for which you wrote to me is so strictly individual in nature that it excludes the possibility of intervention”).48 Loria’s situation was a concentrate of that hypocrisy which had compelled even Giovanni Gentile to validate the idea that Jews were citizens of some value only if endowed with an accumulation of extraordinary qualities and honours.49 The very idea that a way of salvation could be sought through a public mortification that trampled on private lives and careers was rejected by Luzzatto and Fanno. The two Venetian economists left the public scene and continued to reside in their region.50 Fanno also resigned from the board of directors of the University of Padua to express his outrage at a press campaign that impacted on Jews without distinction and harmed those who, like him, felt themselves to be only Italian (Volpe and Simone 2018, 27).51 Luzzatto did not want to stay silent so he used the alias Giuseppe Padovan to continue collaborating with the principal journals of economic history (Rivista di Storia Economica and Nuova Rivista Storica, Fabre 1988, 387).52 The fascist police had been shadowing him since his signing of Croce’s Manifesto of the anti-fascist intellectuals in 1925. They considered him to be a calm man of republican sentiments, 47 Archivio Storico del Senato, Atti, FSR, 1291, Loria Achille. There followed a basic curriculum, including his academic qualifications and honours. On the advice of Beneduce, Mortara addressed himself directly to the Duce’s personal secretary, asking him to intercede with the authorities in charge and obtain the expatriation permit. He did not ask for “privileges” for himself but wanted only to secure his children’s future (Baffigi and Magnani, 247–250). 48 Archivio Storico del Senato, Atti, cit., Letter of the President of the Senate (5 November 1938). He had to go to the commission in charge. On 5 January 1939 he was informed of the resolution in favour of discriminating against all Jewish senators (ibid.). 49 See the correspondence with Del Vecchio and Palazzina, quoted in Cattini et al. (2002, passim) and in Artoni and Romani (2016), to prevent the death of an economist whom Gentile thought of as a paragon of virtue. 50 Luzzatto remained in the Venice area and found a safe haven in the Roman house of the historian Raffaele Ciasca after 8 September 1943. Fanno found refuge in the silence of the Paduan countryside and in the Benedictine abbey of Praglia. 51 Fanno, together with Del Vecchio, taught students from the Jewish communities of Milan and Turin who had been expelled from public institutions (Antonelli 2002, 178). His professorship was assigned to Francesco A. Repaci. 52 Fubini’s pseudonym, also for the Rivista di Storia Economica, was R.U. Ferrante (Fabre 1988, 387).

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not dangerous to the public order, but worth keeping under surveillance. In 1928 he was arrested after some of his letters were found in an office of La Giovane Italia, the democratic socialist association led by Lelio Basso (Berengo 1991, passim). According to Paola Lanaro (2018, 185), this event led to him changing his approach to economic history, making him move his research back in time to early modern history and the study of ancient documents in the Venetian archives. In 1946 Luzzatto found a new position in Ca’ Foscari University, whose organs of government had been decapitated by the anti-fascist legislation, and so he became the only one of all the purged economists to be immediately assigned positions of academic responsibility. He was the rector during the university’s reconstruction and on his return delivered a speech on twenty years of fascism in the Venetian university.53 Besides Luzzatto, only Del Vecchio had official appointments, although in his case outside of academia, as he took part in the early postwar governments. He was an advisor to the Minister for Reconstruction, Meuccio Ruini (Parri government, 1945), the Treasury Minister in De Gasperi’s fourth government interim Budget Minister, after Einaudi was appointed President of the Republic. From 1948 he was also Governor of the International Monetary Fund, a post that coincided with a move to the University of Rome, where he taught until his retirement in 1958. Nitti’s attitude during his exile in France from the middle of 1924 to the end of the war was quite different. During the past three decades, he had been at the centre of the Italian political scene and, when in Paris, had maintained a salon for Italian exiles, cultivating the image of a grand old sage. He was not wrong when he criticised the disputes that undermined the harmony of the little community, but his was more than anything the lamentation of a veteran of nineteenth-century liberalism who could not resign himself to being kept in a corner and did not understand the language of the new politics and of the modern parties.

53 I thank Antonella Sattin for allowing me to consult a transcription of this speech, which is no longer included among the materials digitised by the Luzzatto Archive (https://phaidra. cab.unipd.it/collections/ca_foscari_archivio_gino_luzzatto). The manuscript is kept in his Ca’ Foscari personnel file.

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Among the Italians who were refugees because of Fascism […], I did not want a division of parties but only the union of all the forces of freedom against Fascist reaction and violence. However, when some of the leaders considered this conception of mine, the more agitated of them thought only of future successions. They behaved and argued as if they were competing for ministerial appointments. Sometimes the refugees in Paris even reached the comedic level of preparing future ministries, nominating, from then on, ministers and undersecretaries. Everything that happened in Italy after the fall of Fascism had already existed in embryo in Paris and perhaps also elsewhere. The more obscure the individuals, the greater their ambitions and the more unrestrained their desires. (Fedele 2012, 15)

Nitti was a disillusioned man who remained faithful to the old monarchical form of the liberal state and to the government of the élites. This survey lacks only an overview of the final declination of the term “diaspora”, which concerns the so-called “insider economists” of the 1920s and 1930s. Among those high in the hierarchy who fell into disgrace, three names must be mentioned. The first was De’ Stefani: he had had an erratic relationship with Mussolini after the end of his ministership in 1925, and was sentenced to death in absentia in the Verona trial of 1944 (along with Galeazzo Ciano and the leaders who defied the Duce on 25 July 1943) (Rigano 2015). Then there was Gini: his rotation with Rodolfo Franco Savorgnan54 at the head of the Central Institute of Statistics (1932) highlights the predicament of those who were “used” by fascism to gain international accreditation, but who were then marginalised when they became too independent or not politically malleable (Cassata 2006). And finally, Serpieri. The “Serpieri affair” was a “modern” event that involved the wiretapping of his private telephone. He was confronted with embarrassing comments made by his wife that revealed his dissatisfaction with the recruitment of fascist personnel into the public administration and with Mussolini who “does not appreciate things”. He was obliged to make an act of contrition (4 February 1935) but even so was removed as under-secretary for reclamation of the 54 A teacher of statistics in Rome and signatory to the Manifesto of Race (La Difesa della Razza, I, 1, 5 August 1938, 2).

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Ministry of Agriculture because of complaints received from right-wing factions of the agrarian corporation.55

4

Conclusions

There is not so much a real conclusion to this chapter as a sort of aidememoire about the work done and the future developments of ongoing research on the Italian economists of the diaspora of the fascist years. This contribution presents only an initial overview of all the economists involved in these events, accompanied by biographical data and general notes on their network of personal and professional contacts. Around these themes there is a substantial and high-profile body of work that has offered material for framing the subject and the chronology of reference. There is also invaluable documentation relating to the economists, which straddles the history of ideas and institutional history. The work has concentrated on a survey of papers in the institutional and private archives of all the economists of the diaspora. The general idea is to assemble for each of them a sort of nexus of relationships around which to outline the web of connections that cross them, and then to catalogue, using the technique of network analysis, the great mass of new information derived from this exploration of sources. In essence, this interpretative model has been used in order to place the accent on the behaviour of people in general and on their relationship with political-academic power in particular. The next step will be to examine the political police records on all the economists of the fascist period, irrespective of their positions for or against the regime and regardless of their race.56 This material has barely been considered in the literature on the diaspora and practically 55 ACS,

Segreteria Particolare del Duce, Carteggio Riservato, W/R, Serpieri on. Arrigo. refer mainly to: Segreteria Particolare del Duce (Carteggio ordinario e riservato); Divisione Polizia Politica (1926–1945); Ufficio Confino di Polizia (1926–1943) of Ministry of the Interior; Casellario Politico Centrale all preserved in the ACS (personal files ad vocem). The last archive is the keystone. The register of persons deemed dangerous to order and public security was established by Crispi in 1894 and dissolved in 1946, thus making possible a precise reflection on the modification of the degree of political control before and during fascism. The analytical perspective would be that of a comparative nature to verify how much vigilance has changed in 56 I

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never used systematically in relation to the economists, apart from some ad hoc contributions (Berengo 1991). This expanding of the number of economists to be reviewed was prompted in part by the aspiration to link together the studies on the two purges in which I am engaged—the purge of 1938 and the purge during the institutional transition towards the republican age57 —in a framework within which it is not always easy to unearth first-hand information on the relationship between the economists, the unfolding of their careers and their political leanings. Finally, this work has paid particular attention to correspondence and memoirs, trying to read beyond their content of documentary history and economic thought to ascertain whether their intrinsic qualities as literary products permit them to be placed within the conceptual frameworks of exile literature in particular, and of life stories in general, within a consolidated historiographic current. All the economists examined were unaware that physical migration could entail a lexical transformation of their scientific production (see for example Guarini 2013). Hence they continued to write with ease of manner while using roughly the distinctive words of this literary genre to strengthen the parts where they are most revealed. Their memoirs also capture two fundamental elements of these codes: the narrative in the first person singular as a means of reestablishing truth and the shifting onto the recipient-reader the obligation to prove what was asserted. But this is above all a narrative induced by the desire to pass into the dimension wherein we see these economists as men and scientists far removed from all stereotypical images linked to their lives under the suffocating mantle of the regime (see, for example, Kuon and Rigamonti 2016).

form and substance according to the positioning of people on this or the other side of political affiliation to the regime. On fascism and the police, see Canali (2005). 57 See chapter “The Purging of Fascist Economists in Post-war Italy” in this volume.

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Volpe, P., & Simone, G. (2018). Leggi razziali e sostituzione dei docenti ebrei all’Università di Padova. Padova: Padova University Press. Yael Franzone, G. (2012). La complicata abrogazione delle leggi razziali. In S. H. Antonucci, et al. (Eds.), Le leggi razziali e la comunità ebraica di Roma: 1938–1945 (pp. 107–159). Rome: Archivio di Stato di Roma. Zanni, A. (1977). Mortara e Del Vecchio nel 1938. Note Economiche, 5–6, 70–97. Zevi, M. (1990). Dati statistici. Conseguenze culturali delle leggi razziali in Italia (pp. 67–68). Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.

The Purging of Fascist Economists in Post-war Italy Daniela Giaconi

1

Historical Notes of the Purge

The subject of this chapter is the mechanism set up in Italy, newly liberated from fascism, to “purge”—that is remove from posts in the public administration—officials, in particular university teachers, who had seriously compromised themselves during the years of fascism, collaborating in substantial ways in the promotion of the regime’s ideology and its illiberal and repressive policies (see e.g. Domenico 1996; Woller 1996; Canosa 1999; Flamigni 2019). This process of “purging” was set in motion by the Royal DecreeLaw of 28 December 1943, no. 29/B on the “Defascistification of the This contribution is a revised version of Giaconi 2017, to which I refer the reader for a fuller bibliography and explanatory tables. I thank Ricerche Storiche for permission to republish this material in English. The translation of this chapter was made by Matthew Armistead.

D. Giaconi (B) University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Augello et al. (eds.), An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II, Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38331-2_8

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administrations of the state, of local and parastatal agencies, of institutions subject to state supervision or protection and of private companies carrying out public services or of national interest”. This formal act determined that the so-called “marginalised” who had been temporarily removed from their positions on grounds of suspected collaboration with the fascist regime were to be judged by purging commissions appointed for that purpose. The ensuing legislative decree no. 159 of 27 July 1944 specified the procedure and established the High Commission for Sanctions against fascism. But a few years later the whole affair had gone up in smoke. Many of the suspected collaborators had been reintegrated, and those suspended had been acquitted by the Council of State. Numerous economists were among those summoned to the purge, and these pages are dedicated to the reconstruction of their procedural vicissitudes and their defences. In spite of a substantial and qualified literature that has brought to light the history, evolution and deficiencies of the purgative process, as well as the profiles of some famous defendants, every time these themes are discussed one has the sensation of an unfinished operation, of an unending “historiographic post-war” (Di Rienzo 2004), in which so many “trial[s] without sentence” (Dondi 1995, 113) accumulated, which allowed a substantial decanting of fascism into the nascent Republic. We have made the republic. […] Its first act has been a foolish amnesty […] The purge […] has resulted in a joke, and major fascists and signatories of the race manifesto are re-entering the universities in triumph. (Letter from Enrico Persico to Franco Rasetti, Rome, 1 July 1946, quoted in Foresta Martin and Calcara 2010, 194)

The divergence between the two driving forces behind the purge was wide: on one side were the more radical anti-fascists, oriented towards a root and branch process, without forgiveness, which would dismantle the regime, decapitate its emblems, grotesque insignia and protective deities, to then regenerate the state of law impaired by the regime. On the other side were those who expressed concerns about a judiciary potentially blind to their own shortcomings and about the possible overstatement of charges laid against the accused.

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In the short interval between 8 September 1943—the date of Mussolini’s removal as head of government and the armistice with the Allies, who by then had reached and occupied Rome—and the closure of the purge trials in the State Council in 1951, those in favour of a conciliatory approach had many different motivations. Among the most important were: the need to restrain the victors’ spirit of revenge and to avoid undermining the continuity of the state’s primary processes and services; the impracticability of procedures for the complete removal of personnel registered with the National Fascist Party (PNF); and the expediency of maintaining the political viability of monarchist sympathisers and of the moderate right in order to hold back the strongest communist party in Western Europe. On the other side, that of the accused, men like Giacomo Acerbo commented that the solution of dismantling fascism should not be imposed when it was claimed that the name covered manifold forms of public behaviour, even those without a direct bearing on the fascist political doctrine and its translation into precise choices of government. For Acerbo “fascism” was a term so all-encompassing that it lost all meaning: a mere attitude of the spirit without a real connection with the application of politics (Acerbo 1968, 44). Furthermore, in the press of the Italian Social Republic (or the Republic of Salò)—established at the behest of Hitler in the northern part of the country occupied by German troops—and in the pronouncements of Mussolini, who was its head, the idea of deconstructing the fascist state through the removal of public personnel was depicted as a game of sabre-rattling in front of a few helpless scapegoats and of clouding public opinion (Gabrielli 1986, 172–173). However, for Di Rienzo “historiographic post-war” meant something more, for there are subjects of historiography that are conditioned by imperfect memory. These are themes that, by their nature, require most careful calibration in the words and evaluations employed, without any pretence of arriving at definitive considerations. Purging is, even on the material plane, a source of imperfect memory: the files are not complete; there are papers yet to be examined in the archives of the Public Education Ministry; moreover, for events that are still relatively recent, the time intervals for declassifying these papers, set by archival regulations,

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are no guarantee that supplementary material will not be found in the future. And that is to say nothing of the need to consult the protagonists’ direct descendants and favourite students. But this is an imperfect memory chiefly for the obvious reason that it relates to a moment of disruption in shared time, in which history was turned upside down and the order of relationships was distorted. Thus the most beloved statesman can become a criminal (to paraphrase Kundera 1974) and those who were fated to find themselves at the centre of allegations are naturally inclined to see themselves as uncorrupted victims who must halt the progress of events aimed at harming their reputation. The accused want to regain centre stage, positioning their moral values and the mainstays of their professionalism in the foreground. Yet even this is an overturned perspective: from the standpoint of the defendant practically everything written in the procedural documentation of the trials is invented, and the particulars of their counterarguments are largely beyond verification and require the suspension of judgment. Not for nothing has it been written that: “these shreds of professional and political biography [put back together in the first person singular] demonstrate the intrinsic fragility of the de-fascistification process, in which people’s trustworthiness often ends up being based on appearances or on documents produced in haste [and] the pursuing of the case by legal means, where, of course, the most educated and clever—almost always those in the upper echelons, and therefore the most blameworthy—are best able to defend themselves, presenting appeals and exploiting loopholes” (Dondi 1995, 128, 134). In this fight to safeguard their public reputation—coherent and rational from their point of view—the defendants also grasp real critical issues and are the first to provide suggestions for subsequent historiographical reworking. Pavone had already shown that the magistrates, “by applying the crude positivistic logic of the ‘causal nexus’ […] failed to find even one fascist who could be shown to have provoked through his personal actions the sum of the disasters listed by law” (Cardia 2005, 140).1 This was the joint result of two different “weaknesses”: the intrinsic fragility 1 Cardia

reconstructs the tortuous route of a cumbersome procedure that did not resolve the overlap between two different normative roots: “the de-fascistification or purge intended as the removal or discrimination of public employees and elements compromised by fascism; the

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of a rushed legislation and jurisdictional ranks completed in the fascist era and not renewed during the institutional transition. And the question posed by Mussolini, among others, should not be forgotten: “Who will purge the purgers?” This paper takes up these suggestions in an attempt to reduce the imperfections which the history of the purge is apt to uncover. It presents a reasoned analysis of the results of a new investigation of the store of Epurazione records held in the Central State Archive.2 The data on economists included in the archive have not yet been evaluated with ad hoc studies, with the exception of Corrado Gini and Benvenuto Griziotti and the recent notes on Jacopo Mazzei and the mathematical economists (Cassata 2004; Signori 2007; Guerraggio and Nastasi 2018; Michelini 2018; Moretti 2019). A further document is that provided by one of the protagonists of these events, Mario Marsili Libelli, who released papers relating to his own case in 1957. To give adequate centrality to the people, rather than to the facts, in the self-defence of the accused, the interpretation set out here follows the logic of historical narrative, since this is the most suitable practice for analysing processes “developed over time […] to distinguish an expository, almost colloquial style centred on people and facts […] gathered together with a significant degree of subjectivity and not kept in check by the mediation that the specific tools of the profession can exercise over the historian” (Tiberi 2006, 335). A uniform picture emerges which, above and beyond the specific events, can be encapsulated in the heartfelt words written about Griziotti by his dean: “he is an irreproachable man, alien to any sectarian and factional spirit, absolutely impartial and dedicated only to study […] an apostle of study and teaching, much loved by his pupils […]: his removal from teaching would be seen as an unjust purge, understood as a punishment for illicit gains and crimes committed during fascism” (2005, p. 36). These two approaches had different rules and systems of sanction. 2 Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, DGIS, Div. i, Professori universitari, Epurazione (1945 –1947), bb. 34, 369 personal folders (henceforth EP ) with additions from the Consiglio di Stato: Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Consiglio di Stato, Sezione speciale per l’epurazione, Fascicoli dei ricorsi (1945 –1952), prot. 5879 (1946), Gangemi Raffaele, prot. 9169 (1946), Amoroso Luigi (henceforth CS ). Unless otherwise specified, the quotations are taken from the defence depositions made by the economists in the hearings. They are referred to using only the date and page range.

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and iniquitous thing”. Each act or thought “censurable” by law was to be considered essentially not imputable because it was the result exclusively of “questionable opinion, but professed by him with full conviction and absolute disinterest and therefore worthy of respect” (EP, b. 17, Rapporto sul prof Griziotti, 21 February 1946). To corroborate these conclusions about the virtual impossibility of impeaching those who had been subjected to purge trials, which are now recurrent in the literature on the subject, this essay focuses on the analysis of the terms and discursive strategies implemented by the economists to defend their reputation and to reaffirm their confidence in their methodology. Luigi Amoroso unhesitatingly wrote about accusations that “shatter and fall into the void”, anticipating the thesis of the trial that ended without sentence (CS, Rapporto sul prof. Amoroso, 3 January 1945, 11). The few that remained standing were sunk by the unspoken attestation of the authority and excellence of their teaching. On Amoroso again: “The Commission, noting his high scientific, moral and didactic qualities, expresses the opinion that these could allow even his deplorable standing as an “antemarcia” to be disregarded” (CS, Estratto dalla relazione riassuntiva…, 7 December 1944). In effect, the economists caught up in the purge went through situations similar to those of all other academics, they deployed defensive stratagems irrespective of their specialised knowledge and tended to portray the purge as a rite of passage to the new Republic, but without repercussions for the furtherance of their careers. They also embraced the rhetoric of fascism as a parenthesis, in the illusion that history could move on without having an effect on them. It was not they who had gone to meet fascism, but fascism that had borne down on them. Amoroso again: Let me end by stating that what I was before fascism, such was I during fascism, and I remain the same today. The profound changes in the external environment had no essential effect on my thought, which always remained logically coherent. […] When fascism declared itself in favour of these ideas I did not feel distant from it, but my innate reluctance and

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innate repugnance to the methods with which it imposed itself made me draw apart. I did not seek political office, I did not take part in meetings, I did not make propagandist speeches, and I did not write political articles. (CS, 19 February 1945)

2

The Defendants of the Purge

For the purpose of the purge, the so-called “marginalised”, that is, those who had been temporarily suspended from service for suspected collaboration, were deemed to be censurable. Potentially, these included: all those who had demonstrated their unfitness for serving the state by their active participation in the life of fascism or their repeated expressions of sympathy; those in possession of fascist titles (antemarcia,3 Marcia su Roma, sansepolcrista,4 squadrista,5 wearers of the scarf of littorio) and all those who had secured appointments or career advancement by political means; and those who, after 8 September 1943, had sworn loyalty to the Italian Social Republic. Less stringent regulations were laid down for employees with fascist qualifications who had not shown any evidence of sectarianism, intemperance or malpractice. Special dispensation was given to those who, after the armistice, had distinguished themselves in the fight against the Germans (Art. 12–14, 17 D.L.L. 27 July 1944, no. 159). As Benedetto Croce argued, the purge regulations were intended to ensure that an anti-fascist remediation operation could be conducted outside of the legislative process. In his view, the key was “temperateness of justice”, that aimed to ensure that the process of constitutional revision would not be harmed and that vindictive animal spirits detached from any moral sense would not be stirred up. Croce was one of the first who refused to consider the purge a “purification”—the Italian equivalent of the spoils system—because he believed that the purpose of the 3That is, someone who joined the Fascist Party before 28 October 1922, the date of the March on Rome that brought Mussolini to power. 4That is, a participant in the meeting held in Milan on 23 March 1919, in Piazza San Sepolcro, where Mussolini founded the Fasci di Combattimento, which later became National Fascist Party. 5That is, someone belonging to a fascist action squad.

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law was not to shape a perfect world, but only “a better world, or one a little better than the previous one”, which condemned the damage and the social menace of the protagonists of fascism and absolved the slight faults of the bit-part players (Croce 1944, 4). Croce’s work enunciates the cornerstones of the thesis, which won the day in a wide jurisprudential debate, favouring extraordinary legislation as opposed to the course of ordinary law. The affirmation of the extraordinary legislation option created, almost from the start, a series of critical issues. First of all, it meant working without precedents or reference points, and with structures foreign to the judicial magistracy and limited ability to dialogue with the rest of the public administration. It was therefore very hard for the inquisitors to collate and put together the documents and information to be used in reconstructing the various procedural positions. Further difficulties derived from the application of a set of rules that tried to amalgamate principles of administrative law (sanctions) with penal law (punishment for criminal behaviour), making their interpretation and definition of the field of implementation complicated. There were also delicate questions of regulatory legitimacy, primarily that of the violation of the non-retroactive principle of criminal law. The loudest dissenting voice was that of Piero Calamandrei who maintained that the process should not stop at “abstract principles [of a] legality detached from history” but should give “a realistic interpretation” of what the fascist regime had been”. He denied that this principle could be violated when the legal power to which it referred was a mere facade that masked a system of “‘totalitarian’ illegality” (Cardia 2005, 40). As Claudio Pavone has made clear, “it was a matter of giving legal status to a political need which in turn implied a judgment on fascism. […] but the legal form was required to present itself as objective and impartial; and paradoxically the guarantee was sought precisely in the existence of the order that had legitimised the facts which were now to be punished” (Pavone 1995, 175), starting with Alfredo Rocco’s Penal Code of 1930. This legislation was gutted from the inside: by an academic world determined not to allow an external judge the power to sanction the moral quality of its personnel and the profile of the worthy servant of the state, and by repeated appeals against sentences based primarily on the illegitimacy of judging the accused on the basis of an emergency law

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instead of ordinary rules. Thus, for example, Griziotti, one of the most explicit on this matter, wrote that the sanctions were undeserved “considering properly the spirit rather than the letter of the purge law” (EP, b. 17, 10 July 1945, 1). There were also complaints about technical errors, such as the removal of defence prerogatives and systematic defects of disclosure in the notification of the acts. Several of the accused were denied the opportunity to refute the most scandalous accusations with a direct deposition before a purge commission, or they were hindered in putting together the trial dossier due to a failure to call defence witnesses or the devaluing of defence statements. Antonio Renzi had no qualms about accusing his college of partisanship. He insinuated that during the transition the judicial system had bent over backwards in its desire to please the Allies and he presented himself as a typical example of the “fake” undesirables. People like him—head of cabinet with responsibility for managing foreign exchange and currencies—were not included in the decree of the Allied Military Government, incorporated into Italian law. Supplementary provisions justified the opening of the proceedings, but these were irreparably flawed in that, in the drafting of the acts and the determination of the procedural burden, exact normative references were systematically omitted (EP, b. 29, 20 August 1944). The commissions’ operational remit was further limited by the jurisprudence of the Council of State, which in 1946 had affirmed that “the purge concerns only the incompatibility of remaining in service and the commission of minor disciplinary sanctions is excluded” (CS, Amoroso, Camera di Consiglio, 18 July 1946). The result was the automatic extinction of almost all the judgments. Pursuing the forced removal of public employees—in our case university teachers—with an ad hoc legislation meant turning the justice system, Croce again argued, “into [a] political jurisdiction that opened up great opportunities for identifying guilty parties recognisable not by objective crimes and by ‘external signs’ but instead through ‘an individual examination, to be conducted with broadness of mind, humanity of heart and the severity of a judge’”. But in so doing the deeper meaning of the purge was changed from that of a censorship procedure for specific acts of collaboration with the

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fascist regime and for crimes of opinion into that of a kind of ad homines one, which unsurprisingly triggered reaction defences of class, that is, of social groups. Thus every time a subject was summoned to trial there emerged a “tight-knit network of personal friendships, of class solidarity, of profession, of lobbies, of membership of private associations, that cut across the divisions of political alignment, which could obstruct […] the functioning of the judicial machinery” (Di Rienzo 2005, 157). For Luigi Russo “it would have been better to have proceeded towards an examination not of ‘people’ but instead of the ‘categories’ of all those who had profited from the protection of fascism to gain entrance to the state administration and to procure illicit career advancements” (ibid.). In reality, the latter approach remained, although it was not completely erased, but ran underground within the legislation, permitting the duplication of trial procedures (for example, Amoroso was investigated both as an academic and as the managing director of Assicurazioni d’Italia, the state-owned insurance company)6 and preventing, to this day, a clear tally of the procedures. Not even the rule calling for the suspension of a minor trial pending the ruling of a higher court was always respected. In this sort of case, the most notable doubling concerned the parliamentary mandate, with a list of ‘censurables’, referring to Senators alone, not perfectly superimposable on that of academics (Cardia 2005, 187ff.).7 The inability to resolve the people-versus-functions tension also prevented the definition of unambiguous practices. The consequences of this could be seen in Florence, where a panel chaired by the rector Calamandrei did not open preliminary inquiries of merit, but simply reported the names of the “revisables” to the National Commission, so as not to interrupt lessons. The eccentricity of this approach formed the centre of the defence made by Calamandrei’s predecessor, Mario Marsili Libelli, who 6 See

also Archivio Storico INA Assitalia, Fondo dei Vertici INA, 1943–1948, s. iii, f. 15, doc. 1–9. 7 Cardia has drawn up a division of the senators into their professions, according to which there were sixty-six university teachers and sixteen names in common with the registers of the Ministry of Public Education. Brizi, Serpieri. Einaudi, Flora, Medolaghi and Sitta are included only among those judged by the senate, with only Einaudi not referred for openly anti-fascist conduct. All the others were acquitted on 8 July 1948 (the date of the abolition of the Royal Senate and their forfeiture of office).

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expressed regret that the case against him had been transferred to Rome instead of being resolved internally and had thus discredited him (Marsili Libelli 1957). There were also cases in which the first instance trials probably gave rise to a desire for personal revenge, as might have been the case with Attilio da Empoli in Naples: Professor da Empoli is one of those typical figures of the past regime who rose to a university teaching position not by distinguishing themselves in particular studies or research, but simply by having manipulated influences of a political nature. He was transferred to Naples by the authorities as he was not called by the faculty. Despite this he has always shown little commitment to teaching and has usually resided in Rome where he took care of his business and political interests. (EP, b. 10, Verbale della Commissione…, n.d.)

Da Empoli appears to have been the only economist whose stature as a scientist not only failed to help him, but in fact even worked against him. His personal reputation, the outstanding quality of his studies and the appreciation of authoritative foreign scholars were all discounted at his trial. In the end, da Empoli was absolved only because of a jurisdictional error, since the fact that his enrolment and physical location had been in a part of Italy not controlled by the Allies at the time the case against him was opened forced the Commission to order its suspension. Not even his subsequent acquittal seems to have fully restored his prestige (see Giaconi 2017, footnote 42).

3

The Investigated Economists

But who were the “economists” at the centre of this study? It has seemed preferable to avoid a clear-cut definition, in order to be able to select as broad a sample as possible, and we have therefore adopted the nineteenth-century definition of the academic economist, essentially including in this category the teachers of political economy, science of finance and statistics. To these, due to the growing specialisation within

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economic science that occurred during the twentieth century, the teachers of disciplines arising from political economy were added. The sample size was then restricted on the basis of what, from the documents analysed, appeared as the fundamental reason for subjecting a “public official economist” to a purge trial: the manner in which the oath of loyalty to fascism imposed by Article 18 of the Royal Decree of 28 August 1931, no. 1227, had been taken. Under accusation was not the oath extorted as a condition for working as a university teacher, to which many had complied with in order to avoid reprisals and, as for Catholics, with inner reservation, but instead the oath sworn voluntarily in order, as the mathematician Severi put it in a letter to Gentile of 15 February 1929, to resolve “the question of the intellectuals”: an “act of intransigence aimed at bringing about the much-desired fascistification of the universities” (Guerraggio and Nastasi 2005, 110) and which changed the profile of the offender from “fascist professor” to “professor fascist” (Montroni 2016, 121–154). Following this logic, thirty-nine procedural positions were selected. These are representative of a wide territorial and disciplinary spectrum which (i) broadly speaking reproduces the order of importance of Italian universities in relation to their proximity to the central administration of the state8 ; and (ii) offers a sufficiently balanced mix of statisticians and economists (seven), financial scientists (five), agricultural economists (five) and specialists in political economics (four) (Table 1). It should be remembered that this does not represent the entire purge, but only that which was approved in the National Commission after an initial internal evaluation by the universities. In the indictments the economists were not criticised for their theoretical production—with the sole exception of Celestino Arena9 —but rather for their active participation in the life of fascism in terms of the oath of loyalty, extra-curricular assignments and parliamentary mandates; the possession of fascist titles; the apologia (that is, their formal written 8 From

this comes the central position of the University of Rome (twelve procedures) followed by Naples and Florence (five), Bari, Catania and Turin (three), with four significant exceptions (Bologna, Milan, Padua and Pisa). 9 Indicted for defending fascism and for writing the preface to Mussolini e la sua opera (Arena 1928), in support of the writings and speeches of the Duce.

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Table 1 Breakdown by university and discipline University

Lecturers

Discipline

Lecturers

Rome (12)

Acerbo, Amoroso, Arena, D’Addario, De’ Stefani, Fantini, Gini, Mondaini, Niceforo, Papi, Renzi, Savorgnan Galli, Garoglio, Marsili Libelli, Mazzei, Serpieri

Corporative Political Economy (7)

Amoroso, da Empoli, De Francisci Gerbino, D’Eufemia, Ferri, Galli, Papi

Statistics (7)

D’Addario, De Castro, De Meo, Gini, Maroi, Niceforo, Savorgnan Acerbo, Bandini, Brizi, Ricchioni, Serpieri Arena, Griziotti, Marsili Libelli, Gangemi, Zingali De Pietri Tonelli, De’ Stefani, Fantini, Mazzei Gribaudi, Jaja

Florence (5)

Naples (5)

Bari (3)

Catania (3)

Turin (3)

Brizi, da Empoli, De Meo1 , Gangemi, Maroi2 D’Eufemia3 , Garrone, Ricchioni Floridia, Usai, Zingali

Pavia (2)

De Castro, Gribaudi, Insolera Ferri, Griziotti

Trieste (2)

Fabrizi, Trevisani

Genoa (1)

Iaia4

Palermo (1) Perugia (1)

De Francisci Gerbino Bandini

Venice (1)

De Pietri Tonelli5

1 Naval

Agricultural Economics and Policy (5) Public Economics and Financial Law (5) Economic and Financial Policy (4) Economic Geography (2) Financial Mathematics (2) Economic History (2) Industrial and Commercial Technique (2) Agricultural Industries (1) Banking and Professional Technique (1) Economics of Transport (1)

Insolera, Usai Floridia, Mondaini Fabrizi, Renzi

Garoglio Garrone

Trevisani

Institute of Naples; 2 Moved to General and Comparative Demography in 1938, having previously always held professorships in Statistics or Demographic Statistics; 3 Having trained as a lecturer in Economics and Law in the higher institutes, named full professor in Economics in 1938, before moving into Corporative Law and, finally, Constitutional Law in 1942. Included in the list by reason of his full professorship and thus placed in the breakdown by subject; 4 Spelling uncertain. Present both as Jaja, and Iaja. Spelling used in indictment chosen; 5 Venice Higher Institute of Economics and Commerce

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defence), partisanship, intemperance, sectarianism and malpractice; and, finally, the aggravating factor of their collaboration with the Italian Social Republic (Table 2). Among the subsidiary charges there was also the habit of dressing in fascist uniform in the lecture theatre (Raffaele D’Addario and Giuseppe De Meo), the maltreatment of people who had a lukewarm attitude to the fascist doctrine even when not clearly anti-fascists (Amoroso, De Meo, De Pietri Tonelli and Gini), the special dispensations and preferential treatment given to fascist students (Amoroso and De Pietri Tonelli), abusive language used against Jewish students and staff (De Meo), especially when such behaviour had helped secure career advancement. The incriminated economists opposed these accusations with meticulous and articulate counterarguments aimed at emptying any charge of Table 2 Charges Charges

Investigated economists

Active participation in the life of fascism

Acerbo, Amoroso, Bandini, Brizi, da Empoli, De Castro, De Francisci Gerbino, De Pietri Tonelli, De’ Stefani, Fantini, Fabrizi, Ferri, Gangemi, Garoglio, Insolera, Mazzei, Ricchioni, Serpieri, Usai Acerbo, Amoroso, Bandini, Brizi, D’Addario, De’ Stefani, Fabrizi, Garoglio, Garrone, Gini, Serpieri, Trevisani Acerbo, Amoroso, Bandini, D’Eufemia, De Meo, De’ Stefani, Fantini, Ferri, Gangemi, Garoglio, Garrone, Gini, Gribaudi, Usai Amoroso, Arena, da Empoli, De Francisci Gerbino, De Meo, Gangemi, Gribaudi, Mazzei Amoroso, D’Addario, De Meo, De Pietri Tonelli, Fantini, Ferri, Gangemi, Gini, Insolera Amoroso, De Pietri Tonelli, Ferri, Gribaudi, Griziotti, Jaja, Insolera, Marsili Libelli, Trevisani Floridia, Galli, Maroi, Mondaini, Niceforo, Alfredo, Pap, Giuseppe Ugo, Renzi, Savorgnan, Zingali

Extra-curricular positions (Parliament, Government, Public Administration, etc.) Possession of fascist titles

Fascist apologetics

Factionalism, intemperance, sectarianism and malpractice Aggravating factor of collaboration with the self-styled Salò regime Unknown changes

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meaning. The man best equipped to explain the Gordian knot around which the legislation had become entangled and the reasons why all the defendants were generally acquitted was certainly Griziotti: … it must be noted how the very wording of the accusation makes manifest the logical defect that impairs it at root […], one arrives at the absurdity of arguing that there is no difference between an honest and dishonest man, between the traitor and the loyal citizen, between the embezzler and the respectable person, because the one and the other, if officials, would be overcome by the same punishment, without some being able to refute the accusation by their dignified living, integrity of conscience and above all the impartiality by which they had always been guided. (EP, b. 17, 1 March 1946)

We will leave to the next section the analysis of defensive strategies so as to discuss the basic characteristics of the archival documentation studied. In the first instance, the trial records do not allow us to grasp fully the economists’ relationship with the regime and the degree to which they had been compromised. In particular, the gaps in the legal process are an obstacle. The accused found themselves trapped inside a procedure conditioned by a “personal file” comprising four preprinted folders that gave no opportunity for personal statements. But this file was also indicative of the failure of the purge, in that the commissions were obliged to fill it with limited information, precipitately, and while struggling to gather information from the other state administrations.10

10There

are various versions of these files. The most widespread was divided into thirty-nine points: generalities; membership of the National Fascist Party (before 1922, March on Rome, etc.); party positions and assignments; “Has he been involved in racial duties or commissions? […] Did he produce racial publications or take part in racial conferences? […]” (no. 16); career, advancements and honours; publications; politically sensitive works, speeches or conferences; military career; membership of the Republican Fascist Party; activities and behaviour after 8 September. Only a few had attachments, not being satisfied with the limited space and the many yes/no questions. Of the economists the only ones were Amoroso, Gribaudi and Mazzei.

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Concerning what can be found in the trial files, and mindful that the use of other archives to fill the gaps in the data has been excluded, it must be added that the list of thirty-nine names is actually considerably reduced given that many folders are either empty or half empty, including a number relating to leading scientists, some of whom were top-level fascists (Acerbo, Savorgnan and Serpieri). But the archetypal trial was that of Corrado Gini: his case files filled envelope 16 of the total of thirty-four, all the operational procedures and the trial process were carefully documented, and attachments assembled scrupulously, in a manner not always evident elsewhere. The momentous nature of the case and the stark contrast of the sentence—a year of suspension, before a complete acquittal—accentuates the sense of impunity that seemed to surround the more famous figures in the history of the Italian purge (Table 3).

4

The Economists Defend Themselves

This section concerns the defence depositions produced to rehabilitate compromised identities. An attempt is made to find common traits in the material under analysis that may be attributed to the climate of the age and the feeling of an entire generation of scientists, irrespective of their specialisations. Thus the economists shared with other academics similar observations on their adherence to the statutes of their particular disciplines, on the consonance between their interests and those which dominated the international scene, and on the continuity between their ideas and those of leading thinkers not compromised by fascism. The compositional formula is that which typifies life stories, with the serious methodological problems that characterises such, and the difference in level of two storylines, one of which overlays the other: the narrator and the mediated view of the interpreter who is unacquainted with the facts. These defensive writings—all except that by Marsili Libelli unpublished—are, first of all, symptomatic of a transformation in the public self-representation of the economists involved through a systematic substitution of verbs implying free will (si era piegato—he had complied) with others of obligation (si era dovuto piegare—he had to comply).

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Table 3 Sentences Economists

Sentence

1

Acerbo Giacomo

2

Amoroso Luigi

3

Arena Celestino

4 5

Bandini Mario Brizi Angelo

6 7 8

D’Addario Raffaele D’Eufemia Giuseppe da Empoli Attilio

9 10 11 12 13

De Castro Diego De Francisci Gerbino Giovanni De Meo Giuseppe De Pietri Tonelli Alfonso De’ Stefani Alberto

14 15 16

Fabrizi Carlo Fantini Oddone Ferri Carlo Emilio

17 18 19

Floridia Santi Galli Renato Gangemi Raffaello (Lello)

20 21 22

Garoglio Pier Giovanni Garrone Nicola Gini Corrado

23

Gribaudi Pietro

24 25

Griziotti Benvenuto Jaja Goffredo

48 years of imprisonment imposed by the High Court of Justice; rehabilitated in 1951 6 months of suspension; acquitted at the State Council in 1946 3 months of suspension; acquitted on appeal (1945) Acquitted (1945) Trial terminated due to retirement in 1945; lapsed as a Senator in 1948 Acquitted (1946) Acquitted (1945) Proceedings suspended as military active in area not subject to the jurisdiction of the Italian command (1945) No case to answer (1946) Acquitted (1945) Acquitted (1945) Acquitted (1946) Sentenced to death in absentia by the High Court of Justice in 1944, rehabilitated in 1947 No case to answer (1949) Trial closed (1945) Suspended and retired in 1946; reinstated in 1949 Data unavailable Data unavailable 6 months of suspension; acquitted at the State Council in 1946 Acquitted (1945) Acquitted (1945) 1 year of suspension; filed on appeal (1945) Trial terminated due to retirement (1946) Acquitted (1946) Acquitted (1946) (continued)

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Table 3 (continued) Economists

Sentence

26 27 28

Insolera Filadelfo Maroi Lanfranco Marsili Libelli Mario

29

Mazzei Jacopo

30 31 32 33 34

Mondaini Gennaro Niceforo Alfredo Papi Giuseppe Ugo Renzi Antonio Ricchioni Vincenzo

35 36

Savorgnan Rodoldo Franco Serpieri Arrigo

37 38 39

Trevisani Renzo Usai Giuseppe Zingali Gaetano

Acquitted (1946) No case to answer (1945) Censured; acquitted on appeal (1945) Censured for the offence fascist apologia only; acquitted of all other charges (1945) Trial closed (1945) No case to answer (1945) Data unavailable Dismissed (1944) Removed from service in 1946; reinstated in 1948 Data unavailable Trial terminated due to retirement in 1948; removed as Senator in 1948; reinstated to public service in 1949 Data unavailable Acquitted (undated) Data unavailable

Indeed, a lexical study of the files enables us to see how these scientists rigorously stuck to language that emphasised their diversity and boosted their chances of acquittal. The defendants dispensed with the phraseology of academia, choosing instead words that evoked the sensations and sounds of common speech. Linguistic artifice and humorous quips can first of all be seen in the parts connecting their arguments and introducing their defence strategies, which are well known to psychoanalytic theory: negation (sometimes in the form of dissociation or alienation); idealisation of the self or of the object of one’s knowledge; rationalisation, to make sense of events in a historical period; and rejection/regression, to blot out unpleasant after-effects and to disengage from fascist psychology. With regard to the representation of the writer, we find contrasted, on one side, the more recurrent image of the “intellectuals on a journey” who make their “defensive statement […] a sort of permit [for] a complete recantation of old convictions and positions, [and] of a full adhesion to a new public discourse” (Montroni 2008, 695), and, on the

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other, the more ingenious and refined position on which, for example, unfolds the autobiography of the literary historian Carlo Muscetta—a man who, in 1943, had sided openly with the opposition to fascism, producing with Leone Ginzburg L’italia libera, the publication of the Partito d’Azione—based on the idea of emotional and cognitive errancy about facts, which led to “sins not recognised as sins”. Muscetta speaks of “an error […] so deeply inserted in the chain of events that it will remain so forever”, and possibly be continually repeated (Muscetta 1992, 9). In like manner, the historian Giovanni Paoloni reflects on an ideology that seduces minds, which is wedged in the vital organs of the state and deactivates the mind’s defence mechanisms, inducing everyone, almost inadvertently, to carry out a series of “‘small’ gestures, which would [have] be[en] difficult to reject without running the risk of declaring oneself openly anti-fascist” (Paoloni 2008, 117). Gini was the most explicit in portraying himself as the irreproachable scientist, a silent and shrewd spectator of political events who in the main was unable to conform to their logic. When acting in this way economists exhibited two different forms of illiteracy. On the one hand, they hid behind a conventional representation of their professional demeanour, that of staying aloof from day-to-day events. On the other, and more seriously, they declared themselves convinced that they had acted in accordance with the rules of the old liberal state, whose constitution (the Albertine Statute of 1848) remained formally in force, paying no attention to the constant violations of those same rules by the fascist government. With absolute seriousness, many of the accused—not only the economists—persistently avoided taking responsibility for having actually endorsed general political decisions. Instead they sought to focus attention on the individual reasons for their collaboration. Their chorus of justifications included the following: their fraternising could be explained as having used their technical skills on specific issues, without gaining any political advantage or unfair reward; their workplaces were decentralised and not in dialogue with the centres where fascist ideology was formulated; only patriotism had drawn them into politics and the public apparatus, at a point in time when their career was at its

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peak, and yet their careers had not been manipulated by political nepotism or indulged by examining committees linked to the regime’s science; after 8 September 1943, in the part of the country occupied by the Germans and subjected to the control of Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic, they had accepted or retained public or academic appointments to ensure management continuity and to prevent their posts being taken over by incompetent minor politicians or “repubblichini” (that is, supporters of the Republic of Salò); they had been selected because of their moderation to ensure the fair treatment of all positions, and for those same qualities had been kept in service by the Allied authorities even after the liberation; they had engaged in the systematic non-application of the most odious rules, primarily the racial ones; their services had been given free of charge or had received only symbolic remuneration. When detailing the specific functions of their appointments, the “marginalised” described their work as a miracle of balance whereby they used their technical expertise for the sole purpose of ensuring the stability and solidity of the workings of the economy, while never deviating from their disciplinary statutes and the axioms of irreproachable behaviour. These were assignments that they could not refuse and, not infrequently, were the result of reasoned decisions taken in concert with others for the common good. Griziotti, Carlo Fabrizi and Marsili Libelli in particular made such assertions, doing so respectively for work relating to the establishment of the Faculty of Finance in Pavia (Griziotti), the appointment as Commissioner of the Confederation of Credit Agencies together with that of Governor of the Bank of Italy to prevent the collapse of the banking system after 1943 (Fabrizi), and an appointment as rector (Marsili). They often cited as a mitigating factor their ability to walk a tightrope while keeping the PNF at a distance. What troubled many was not so much the possibility of an adulterated judgment being passed on them, as the fact that thereafter they would be stigmatised as dishonourable. And, in such an event, there was little they could do to defend themselves. Thus Mazzei gave vent to his frustration: [to] not be able to answer, as I answer all my judges, all those people who have judged me on the basis of a press release, who without knowing and without any chance of knowing me consider me (often with heartfelt

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cordiality) a lawbreaker, and to which I have no way now, nor perhaps will have later, if not in single casual and useless conversations, to offer some clarification. (EP, b. 22, Mazzei, Commissione per l’epurazione, n.d., 1)

De Pietri Tonelli spoke bluntly when he brought into the open the meanness and malice that often lay behind the accusations: And the answer is not in doubt. There would have been no accusations if there had not been small resentments about small matters and disproportionate vendettas, if there had been no ambitions and jealousies and worse, […] and if there had not been the pleasure of causing suffering and seeing suffering […] where it seemed possible and quite easy to let off steam with impunity. […] I know I have done nothing different and worse than what other colleagues, like me non-fascists, have done, and who have supported the university leadership in the painful period of the German occupation. (EP, b. 12, April 21, 1946, 18–21)

Those subjected to the purge had, moreover, an ambiguous relationship with the timing of judgments. They apparently had faith in the notion of veritas filia temporis but, at the same time, they used every available expedient to cause postponements, to contrive appeals and to profit from any weak point in the rules. In this way they allowed the first violent phase of fake Jacobin terror to dissipate so that, once the purgative winds had changed direction, they could represent themselves as being cleansed of all guilt. To this end, they selected from their network of social and professional contacts those they could most count on to aid their cause. These ranged from the limited circle of family and personal friends to the most illustrious names of academia: Einaudi, Calamandrei, Giorgio La Pira, Guido Castelnuovo, Armando Sapori, Giuseppe Caronia, Filippo Vassalli, Federico Caffè, Marcello Boldrini, Renzo Fubini, Dino Jarach, Antonio Pesenti, Sergio Steve, Ezio Vanoni, Felice Vinci and the like.11 Not without reason, Pasquale Chessa spoke in this regard 11The

most effective papers in this regard are of course those in support of acts of private heroism, brought to light only because they were required for the defences. There are documents relating to support or direct involvement in the resistance (D’Addario, De Castro, Fantini), enrolment in the Allied forces (da Empoli, De Castro), the opening of their homes and the institutes they headed to people persecuted for political or racial reasons (Bandini,

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of the “amphibious power of science” (Chessa 2012, 10). The accused subtly played the memory game in a veritable “procedure of forgetfulness” (ibid., 16) to try to submerge their personal history and their more or less extensive complicity with fascism in a convenient “Lethe pool”, claiming, however, to somehow recapture favourable recollections about their students and all others who had benefited from their social and academic position. But reports and tip-offs that brought to light what the accused were trying to hide provided raw material that strengthened the work of the commissions in the emancipation of the universities “from the dead weight of the past regime” (CS, Amoroso, Letter signed “Un gruppo di studenti partigiani”, n.d., recto)12 through the dismissal of the many “poisoners of youth” (ibid., Spilotros Sabino al Prof. Caronia, 17 August 1944)13 and the reactivation of a system of personnel classification based on the selection of talent and no longer on the inclination to political obedience. The informants took care to identify with their real names Fantini, Griziotti, Mazzei), the selection of such people as assistants (Fantini, Griziotti, Mazzei); attributing false service or study assignments to wanted persons to help escape detection (Fantini, Griziotti, Mazzei, Marsili Libelli), the organisation of exams for persecuted or students not complying with conscription documents (Fantini); the protection of German colleagues escaping from the nazis (Griziotti for Albert Hensel), placing pupils bound for Germany into the safekeeping of sworn enemies of nazism (who then, in turn, became exiles) and of “a healthy economic school” (Cova placed under the protection of Palyi and Lederer by Griziotti), the search for safe locations abroad for those most in danger (Griziotti once more, for Dino Jarach); generosity in granting material and financial aid to the needy (Fantini, Griziotti, Mazzei, Marsili Libelli); tip-offs to those under police surveillance, warning them to go to ground and collaborating in the destruction of compromising papers (Fantini), the use of medals of honour from the Great War as a permit to confer with the military and obtain the release of political prisoners and the participation and organisation of escape plans from military prisons (also Fantini). 12 Amoroso rose to become a symbol of this hypocrisy: “Can the young like us, who have been betrayed more than any others, allow a man who once tried to deceive us by exalting and incensing a tyrant and all his system of oppression and ugliness to continue to hold the positions that he soiled and contaminated, and that with the most shameless audacity he be allowed to tell us that he played a double game” (ibid., verso). Gangemi was no less so: “The Gangemi who today throws over his shoulder the white mantle of the lamb and seeks protection and aid must certainly be eliminated from the school if we wants to give it back the dignity and the decorum that they want for it” (CS, Gangemi, Lettera di A. Tarchi , 11 August 1944, verso). 13 Due to the accusations relating to his co-editorship of the Rivista Italiana di Statistica, his Principii di economia corporativa and his participation in international scientific congresses in which he spread fascist principles with the power of his dialectics.

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the notables hiding in the shadows who had moved the gears of consensus and propaganda: those, in short, who had played a decisive role in the progress of the fascistification of the public administration and the refinement of doctrine.14 There was no lack of controversy, not to mention blatant provocation, in the defence statements, such as when Gini wrote: “for the activity I carried out […] and for my later attitude in this field I believe I am owed not criticism but praise” (Cassata 2004, 93). “I only pursued science and not politics” was the favoured exculpatory protest, combined with the claim of having written works that met all international standards and did not lend themselves to political interpretation. But when Griziotti sought to justify his appointment as president of the National Institute of Corporative Finance, he did so by pointing out the independence of the management of public finances from the affairs of politics and the need to ensure the continuity of financial flows in the transition from one regime to another. He also linked this to an interpretation of the oath of allegiance—in this case to the Republican Fascist Party after 8 September 1943—as a formality related only to the office, which left the holder of that office free to manifest his freedom and ability to act (EP, b. 17, 10 July 1945). By reason of having joined the party on 21 May 1942 Griziotti’s case is the most paradigmatic of the persistence of the time-worn illusion of softening or influencing fascism. Elisa Signori has spoken of a “patriotic trap” which has clouded the conscience of many, linked to a conception of science as patriotism, and this is an explanation that seems more effective than those based on naivety or unawareness of choices (Signori 2007, 213). In the logic of “unthinking science”—following a formula that even Einaudi used in his defence of Amoroso—there is a striking collection of testimonies about a university built with rules of organisational rationality and at the same time rich in antibodies that counteract bad thoughts, 14 De

Meo, for example, is described as: “the perfect example of a man who fornicated with fascism, enjoying its protection and privileges without ever appearing in the limelight” (EP, b. 12, Commissariato Aggiunto per l’Epurazione…, 9 February 1945). When the political patronage went beyond the limits of common decency, it was compared to a parental relationship. This is the case of the Catanese Santi Floridia, known as the “son of the illustrious Minister Acerbo” (b. 13, Floridia, Trascrizione della lettera di Rosario Pennisi , n.d.).

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thanks to the examples of morality set by opinion formers. Sapori, in defending the agricultural economist Mario Bandini, expressed unease about a poorly crafted legislation that put unblemished characters in the dock: In the school you only pursued science and not propaganda […] you were a gentleman and therefore a good citizen […] and I would like to say that in your life there were principles not dissimilar to my own […] the news of your new role pained me, not for fear that you would sully yourself, but rather for the judgment that others who did not know you would make […]. Now I fear for you because of the purge: a poorly crafted law can hurt people and also damage the school by removing teachers who wish them the best and understand their purpose. If the testimony of undoubted anti-fascists like me, by date and by constancy, could be profitably welcomed, you would remain in teaching. I have known many men and educated many youngsters: could I have been fooled only by you? Is it only in the school that I live with true passion? […] This is not a time for reprisals but for punishment inflicted with good reason for the good of the country, and for harder severity than that which up to now has been applied to the real ‘dangerous’. (EP, b. 13, 16 October 1944)

Equally powerful is the letter from Castelnuovo to Amoroso in which he recounts the tale of their relationship. He looks back on how they put aside their different political ideas and recalls his pride in defending those oppressed for crimes of opinion (Umberto Ricci) and for their race (Vito Volterra). He also outlines Amoroso’s theoretical approach, attributing to him “a conservative-liberal spirit that accepts as inevitable some of the ills that beset society and seeks to mitigate them by increasing the sense of human solidarity” (CS, 20 January 1945 now in Guerraggio and Nastasi 2018). Finally, the accused were ready to seize on any weakness in the legislation, belabouring the point that no charge could be brought that did not relate to an actual situation. Various contradictions were highlighted, such as the imputation by colleges in different districts (for instance, Perugia, the place of teaching, as opposed to Florence, that of residence, for Bandini), or the standard wording on Fascist Party membership cards that did not necessarily correspond to participation in fascist activities.

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The attribution of fascist titles, however, inevitably led to being placed under accusation and then, if membership of the PNF could not be disproved, the key question became that of the time of enrolment. But, even in that case, some of the accused highlighted anomalies associated with mass membership systems, ad honorem registrations transformed into ordinary ones and the backdating of many entries to the March on Rome. This latter practice made some appear to have been fascists from the start even if they had been underage in 1922, while some had their registration backdated on account of having belonged to “non-fascist” movements (youth sections of nationalist groups in the cases of Diego De Castro, D’Addario and De Pietri Tonelli). The accused also patiently underlined the lack of linearity and continuity in their affiliation with fascism, recording all instances of non-renewal of the card, the various interruptions, disciplinary measures and expulsions for failure to comply with internal regulations. Furthermore, those exposed to purge trials did their utmost to minimise accusations connected to crimes of opinion and to break the syllogism “active participation—economic gain and public notoriety”, which would have made them unfit to continue serving the state. Even those who confessed that their public renown had not been neutral in terms of professional advantages were quick to stress that they had used it for the good of the university and to protect the freedom of conscience of colleagues. The clarification submitted by the jurist De Francisci is a case in point: But now it is a question of seeing if this participation of mine, actually minimal, and the fact that I held political office, have exercised an influence on my university activity, and to what extent. And I recognise that there was such an influence, but in the sense that my political position allowed me to successfully protect the interests of the university and the freedom of my colleagues. […] But above all I want the Commission to be convinced that I always and in every case strove to defend the freedom of thought and of teaching of professors and students, and that I never

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allowed political and party considerations to prevail over those of justice. (EP, b. 11, 4 November 1944, 6–7)15

The defence testimonies sometimes leveraged not only on the undoubted scientific competence and solid international reputation of the defendants but also on the very severe character in the management of their offices, and on their honesty and independence, to the point of almost subjecting the staff to a regime of exploitation. See, for example, the following defence of Gini: [He went] straight for his goals […] not caring about the regime and its officials. […] Rather than considering him an exploiter of the regime, I have always considered him as being exploited since [the regime] made use of [his] international fame […] to make people believe in his adhesion to the new state of things, by putting him at the head of an institution that of necessity had to have frequent contact with foreign countries, except when it cast him aside when the manifestations of his independent character and objection to any censorship by the regime might have caused it to consider him a danger. For me prof. Gini is a scientist who thinks of nothing other than science; he sacrifices himself unreservedly to it and, unfortunately, all those who depend on him (EP, b. 16, Dichiarazione di Vincenzo Stenti , 25 March 1945, 2–3).

Lastly, as anticipated, accusations connected with the practical applications of the regime’s doctrine—corporatism especially—in the political and economic structures of the state and, more widely, with the indoctrination of students via university lectures, were never fully divulged nor deemed an aggravation to be taken into account when determining sentence. Consequently, corporatism appears, paradoxically, extinguished in the defence statements, to the point of no longer belonging to them. It was principally Arena and Amoroso who dealt with this issue. The former sought to disconnect corporatism from fascism, writing that he had tackled the subject only as a “historical form of economic and social organisation capable of accomplishing […] a profound transformation of 15 De Francisci had been chancellor of the Sapienza University of Rome (1930–1932; 1935– 1944) and, between fascism and the Republic, Minister of Grace and Justice.

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Italian society” (EP, b. 2, 12 October 1945, 1). Amoroso focused instead on the nature of the studies: I have described, it is true, the economic institutes in place […]. I know that I have carried out this duty with honesty and a spirit of independence [I approve] of the legal discipline of labour relations [and the ideals of solidarity between the classes] because it is the only point on which I accept the fascist conception without reservation. […] My “Corporative Economics” is not a simple illustration and much less an exaltation of the economic institutions of the regime. It is a carefully considered work, a theoretical reconstruction that can be discussed from a scientific point of view, but which nonetheless represents an honest attempt to frame within a rational system a fluid reality that in Italy is known as Corporative Economics, in France as the Economics of the Popular Front, and in America as the “New Deal.” Isn’t revising the institutions in place, rethinking them in light of one’s own knowledge the precise duty of the scholar and in particular of the university professor? [I have not made an apologia but] have given free expression to my thoughts, and I do not think the Commission can or wants to challenge my right to do. (CS, 20 January 1945, 1–3).

Amoroso bolstered his argument by pointing to his intellectual courage in confronting these questions and sidestepping every temptation to avoid taking a stand, like the deputies who, in 1924–1925, had withdrawn from Parliament in protest against the killing of the socialist Giacomo Matteotti by fascist squads (the so-called Aventine Secession). He reiterated that in 1922 he was already full professor and thus could no longer be blackmailed and, as such, was free to choose whether to abandon the issue or get involved. True to form, he had decided to (as he put it) accept the battle: … and to circumscribe the field while retaining as much as possible the seriousness of the studies, I pondered the distinction between physics and economic metaphysics that Einaudi (letter placed on the record) liked so much that he described it as “the clearest and most flexible instrument to put order into the obscure place where Italian scholars deal with the task of grafting corporatism into the trunk of economic theory.” In actual fact the distinction was the instrument that saved the tree: it kept it alive and

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green in the environment of Italian studies and culture; it preserved the traditional doctrines of citizenship in the political orthodoxy of the time. For better or worse, the distinction, due in part to Einaudi’s authority, was tolerated and my colleagues and I, albeit with some disquiet, could continue to illuminate our lessons with classical doctrines. (CS, 19 February 1945, 13)16

Amoroso deliberately introduced the term “pure economics” to challenge the competence of the magistrates of the purge and the arbitrariness of forms of scientific repression put together around nothing more than a random selection of passages of works detached from their context and their scientific bibliography. He also declared that he did not want to descend into the irony of the presumed innocence of the pure economist. Allow me to repeat that it does not appear that the Commission has the necessary technical capacity to judge what pure economics is. It is moreover certain that the passages quoted incorrectly—just as they were incorrectly transcribed—and detached from context may appear to be emphatic manifestations of a defence [of the regime] empty of content. But a different judgment is pronounced by those who can follow the thread of the reasoning to which they belong, and have the aptitude and education needed to draw a distinction. (ibid., 31 January 1945, 9)

He argued against a blind justice, going as far as saying he was certain that, if roles were reversed, the nazis–fascists could have extracted thoughts from his texts to censure him for defending Marxism or for high treason. Gangemi went further, writing unhesitatingly about a fault-finding selection of quotations from books, of a criminal veil of fog that shrouded the texts critical of the current system, and of a certain questionable professional habit of citing contemporary legislation and the writings of the hierarchs without bibliographic caveats and without the expertise needed to distinguish between different languages and/or 16 Such was Einaudi’s authority that the meaning of that letter is incorporated in the opinion of the Council of State: “the exposition of corporative economics contained within responded purely to educational needs, since that was the qualification of the professorship and the course.”

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sources. He also ran the risk of giving a logic even to the indefensible, admitting that a particular passage might have been badly thought out, but it could be that “the offending sentence […] I reproduced without reflecting that it was at odds with the way I usually felt” (CS, Gangemi, 18 July 1945, 6) But as regards the matter of so-called scientific purging it is extremely useful to move from academics such as Amoroso to the rank of teachers who taught in secondary schools and had contracts to write textbooks.17 In effect, the teaching activity of such people was, in general, important because it directly affected the basic cognitive formation of its recipients, being adapted to their needs and intellectual capacity. The only one who seems to have grasped its importance was Pietro Gribaudi, who had a rare percipience as regards the much broader theme of scientific self-purging, in adaptation to contexts and forms of government. Gribaudi worked on two levels, making the same arguments as Amoroso in the pars destruens—the reply to the accusations—before then providing a detailed account of the composition of his manuals for middle schools (Gribaudi 1943), denying that he had toned them down out of mere opportunism and pointing out that the updating of the indexes during the interregnum between fascism and democracy was evidence that he had by then decided which side to take. However, he also put in writing a dangerous concept, which casts a shadow over the genuineness of his conversion: “My volume on Italy being at that time in an advanced stage of the republication process, I changed it according to the instructions of Minister Severi,18 having always thought that every regime has the right to expect that school texts be written according to political directives. The new edition of this volume […] earned me violent and insulting attacks” (EP, b. 17, Promemoria allegato al quesito 40, n.d.).

17The

ratio can be deduced from the censors of De Francisci Gerbino. According to them it was necessary to beat up the “bad teachers” who pretended “to want to write ‘a school book’ to make a biased point” and the managers […] who in the transition “continue[d] to [enable] secretly the functioning [of the old system by influencing] what in the fascist language were called capillary veins” See, further, EP, b. 11, Lettera del Centro Antifascista Italiano, Sezione di Palermo (n.d.); ibid., Denunzia presentata dal Sig. Pietro Grado (n.d.). 18 Leonardo Severi was Minister of National Education after the fall of fascism, from July 1943, in the first government presided by Marshal Pietro Badoglio.

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Conclusion

This contribution has deliberately been left without a real conclusion because, like Jon Elster (2008, 12), I believe that conventional formats do not adapt well to a subject as divisive as was the purge, and, in particular, to an initial analysis of the documents mentioned in this chapter. The papers have been covered horizontally, in such a way that all the accused economists are introduced in a gradation of importance close to their significance in this affair. The narrative that we have built around them, despite our attempts to consider all the salient facts, is certainly not the most solid that can be provided and there remains much to do in the work of interpretation, in the light of ongoing research and of the supplementary documentation available in the historical archives of the various teaching establishments and in the private papers of these economists. But given the newly discovered material, I have endeavoured to make at least a partial contribution to increasing knowledge of our recent history. And the chosen method, that of author citation, enables us to spread our wings. I decided to draft the text in a way that provides notes on the character and cases of the people in question, while reserving the main text for the general picture and the analysis of commonalities, highlighting models that may be found, appropriately recalibrated, in disciplines other than that of the economists. I hope the reader approves. However, one cannot close without meditating on the words of the “great refusal” written by the acclaimed archaeologist Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, when repulsed by the dividing of the world into “us” and “them”. Fascism had tarnished everyone: I am sorry to once again be the contrarian; but being part of the Purge Commission absolutely disgusts me. If there are provisions relating to specific cases, applying them is the task of central offices; if one must enter into personal and subjective evaluations, I do not feel sufficiently ‘pure’ to purge anyone. We were all complicit in fascism, merely by our presence in the University, just as the entire Italian ruling class was guilty of fascism, and wanting to distinguish now between those who believed in fascism and professed it openly and those who got caught up in it, either by calculation or temperament, seems to me Jesuitical. Because I have a feeling

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for moral issues much more than for political ones, helping to oust those who frankly have erred or who simply tried to live their own adventure, and instead strengthen by my endorsement the clever “transformists” is repugnant to me. Because the purge will be reduced to this, and nothing more. For my part, the Italian university is so sick that we need much deeper operations if we want to plan for regeneration; discharge the professors, close all the universities, and reopen them when it will be possible to rebuild the faculties with people who are truly worthy and capable. […] It seems useless to me to want to swab our wounds, which are too large, to then immediately reconnect our veins, if the blood remains the same. But revolutionary acts of this kind will never start from within the universities themselves, nor are they acceptable to all the right-thinking national and foreign democrats who are keeping us on our feet in this moment and who, with their eyes still on the Italy of the anthologies, do not see what is the real Italy, with its real miseries, and which we will have to deal with. (Letter to Calamandrei, 20 September 1944, in Bianchi Bandinelli 2003, 199, my italics)

References Acerbo, G. (1968). Fra due plotoni di esecuzione: avvenimenti e problemi dell’epoca fascista. Bologna: Cappelli. ACS, Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, DGIS, Div. i, Professori universitari, Epurazione (1945–1947). ACS, Consiglio di Stato, Sezione speciale per l’epurazione, Fascicoli dei ricorsi (1945–1952). Arena, C. (1928). Mussolini e la sua opera. Rome: Libreria del Littorio. Bianchi Bandinelli, R. (2003). Biografia ed epistolario di un grande archeologo (M. Barbanera, Ed.). Milan: Skira. Canosa, R. (1999). Storia dell’epurazione in Italia: le sanzioni contro il fascismo (1943–1948). Milan: Baldini & Castoldi. Cardia, M. (2005). L’epurazione del Senato del Regno (1943–1948). Milan: Giuffrè. Cassata, F. (2004). Cronaca di un’epurazione mancata (luglio 1944–dicembre 1945). Popolazione e storia, 2, 89–119.

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Chessa, P. (2012). L’algoritmo del perdono. In B. Raggi (Ed.), Baroni di razza: come l’università del dopoguerra ha riabilitato gli esecutori delle leggi razziali (pp. 9–17). Rome: Editori Riuniti. Croce, B. (1944). Intorno ai criteri dell’epurazione. Naples: Movimento Liberale Italiano. Di Rienzo, E. (2004). Un dopoguerra storiografico. Storici italiani tra guerra civile e Repubblica. Florence: Le Lettere. Di Rienzo, E. (2005). L’Università italiana, l’antisemitismo e l’epurazione antifascista. Nuova Storia Contemporanea, 9 (3), 151–164. Domenico, R. P. (1996). Processo ai fascisti. Storia di una epurazione che non c’è stata. Milan: Rizzoli. Dondi, M. (1995). L’epurazione sbagliata: il caso pesarese nel caso nazionale. In A. Bianchini & G. Pedrocco (Eds.), Dal tramonto all’alba. La provincia di Pesaro e Urbino tra fascismo, guerra e ricostruzione (Vol. 2, pp. 113–143). Bologna: Clueb. Elster, J. (2008). Chiudere i conti: la giustizia nelle transizioni politiche. Bologna: Il Mulino. Flamigni, M. (2019). Professori e università di fronte all’epurazione: dalle ordinanze alleate alla pacificazione (1943–1948). Bologna: Il Mulino. Foresta Martin, F., & Calcara, G. (2010). Per una storia della geofisica italiana: la nascita dell’Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica (1936) e la figura di Antonino Lo Surdo. Milano: Springer. Gabrielli, G. (1986). La stampa di Salò e il problema dell’epurazione. Annali della Fondazione Luigi Micheletti, 2, 172–173. Giaconi, D. (2017). L’epurazione dei docenti fascisti. Il caso degli economisti. Ricerche Storiche, 17 (3), 97–128. Digital appendices: http:// www.ricerchestoriche.org/?page_id=789. Gribaudi, P. (1943). L’uomo e il suo Regno. Letture geografiche per la scuola media: in conformità dei programmi 1940-XVIII (3 Vols.). Turin: Società Editrice Geografica. Guerraggio, A., & Nastasi, P. (2005). Italian Mathematics Between the Two World Wars. Basel, Boston and Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag. Guerraggio, A., & Nastasi, P. (2018). Matematici da epurare. I matematici italiani tra fascismo e democrazia. Milan: Università Bocconi-EGEA. Kundera, M. (1974). Laughable Loves. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Marsili Libelli, M. (1957). Un processo di epurazione in Firenze 1944–45. Florence: Arti Grafiche “Il Torchio”.

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Michelini, L. (2018). L’economia cattolica alla conquista dello stato: nazionalismo, neo-mercantilismo e questione sociale in Jacopo Mazzei, 1913–1925. Il pensiero economico italiano, 26 (1), 27–66. Montroni, G. (2008). L’epurazione in Italia (1943–1949). In M. Isnenghi & G. Albanese (Eds.), Gli Italiani in guerra: conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni (Vol. 4, 1, Il ventennio fascista dall’impresa di Fiume alla seconda guerra mondiale, 1919–1940, pp. 689–696). Turin: Einaudi. Montroni, G. (2016). La continuità necessaria. Università e professori dal fascismo alla Repubblica. Florence: Le Monnier Università. Moretti, M. (2019). Su Jacopo Mazzei e l’Ateneo fiorentino. Note e documenti. In A. Moioli & L. Pagliai (Eds.), Jacopo Mazzei: il dovere della politica economica (pp. 332–383). Rome: Studium. Muscetta, C. (1992). L’erranza: memorie in forma di lettera. Catania: Il Girasole. Paoloni, G. (2008). La penetrazione del fascismo nel mondo scientifico, nell’università e nella scuola. In Le leggi antiebraiche del 1938, le società scientifiche e la scuola in Italia (pp. 103–128). Rome: Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL. Pavone, C. (1995). Alle origini della Repubblica: scritti su fascismo, antifascismo e continuità dello Stato. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri. Signori, E. (2007). Benvenuto Griziotti, l’Ateneo di Pavia e l’establishment fascista. In F. Osculati (Ed.), La figura e l’opera di Benvenuto Griziotti (pp. 187–214). Milan: Cisalpino. Tiberi, M. (2006). Gli insegnamenti economici. In R. Cagiano de Azevedo (Ed.), La Facoltà di economia: cento anni di storia (1906–2006) (pp. 335– 438). Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. Woller, H. (1996). Die Abrechnung mit dem Faschismus in Italien 1943 bis 1948. Munich: Oldenbourg.

Italian Economists of the Interwar Period: Academic, Political and Professional Biographies Massimo M. Augello

1

Introduction

The table that follows these introductory remarks (Table 1) contains the most relevant information on the academic, political and professional biography of the major Italian economists of the first half of the twentieth century—more specifically of the period between the two World Wars—which are echoed and referenced in the two volumes composing this book. About forty economists, certainly the most important, have been selected among those who were university lecturers in economic disciplines, both on the basis of the duration of their teaching in the period in question and in relation to the importance of their scientific

In collaboration with Chiara Bechelli, Elisa Cacelli, Daniela Giaconi and Raffaella Sprugnoli.

M. M. Augello (B) University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Augello et al. (eds.), An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II, Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38331-2_9

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contributions and of the political and professional roles played under fascism. In this gallery of personalities we find scholars educated in the nineteenth century, who lived in the twentieth century their descending parable while surrounded by great respect for their scientific profile and their roles in the national and international professional community. They naturally interacted with the Regime but were rarely directly and decisively involved in the elaboration and development of the corporatist doctrine. These include Giulio Alessio, Enrico Barone, Antonio De Viti de Marco, Augusto Graziani, Achille Loria, Maffeo Pantaleoni and others. But we find above all exponents of the younger and more professionalised generation, formed in the early decades of the twentieth century when the Italian economic school was living a particularly happy season. These are economists often directly involved in the Regime, who carve out scientific spaces consistent with the fascist doctrine and roles in the structures of power: among others Luigi Amoroso, Celestino Arena, Attilio da Empoli, Alberto De’ Stefani, Jacopo Mazzei, Giuseppe Ugo Papi and others. These two generations of scholars have one important feature in common; a feature that is peculiar to Italian economics throughout the period from the unification of the country (1861) to the mid-twentieth century, and even beyond: a strong and active involvement of economists in national politics and government. This was the case when the new unitary state was constructed, and the economists contributed to create, direct and administer its new institutions and supporting structures, as well as laying down the principles and directions of national economic policy. This was again the case at different stages of the modernisation and gradual industrialisation of Italy, at the turn of the twentieth century. And this happened once more—as shown in these two volumes—in the fascist period. Such characteristic is therefore independent from particular historical circumstances or the dynamics of the economics profession, as well as the evolution of economics itself. To get an idea of this phenomenon—whose size is unparalleled in other countries—suffice it to say that about half of the economists selected here have played political roles at national level or obtained government and high administration positions during their lifetime: deputy or senator, under-secretary or

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minister, President of the Chamber of deputies or Prime Minister, and in one case even President of the Italian Republic. Going back to the relationship between economists and fascism, it must be recognised that—in the variegated community of academic economists recorded in this table—people who, regardless of their ideological or scientific beliefs, were able to distance themselves from the regime are far from being absent. These economists did not give up the freedom of thought that was co-essential to their profile of social scientists and educators. Some of them refused to join the National Fascist Party or to take the required oath of allegiance to the regime, paying for these choices with blatant discrimination, as in the case of Costantino Bresciani Turroni, Luigi Einaudi, Antonio Graziadei, Angelo Mauri, Umberto Ricci, etc. Even more momentous and execrable was the persecution suffered by other scholars following the promulgation of the so-called Racial Laws in 1938, which caused the removal from universities of the professors of Jewish faith, the revocation of all their offices, and in some cases their death: among them there are Gino Arias, Riccardo Bachi, Attilio Cabiati, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Gustavo del Vecchio and others. All this confirms that, never before as in that period, the history of Italian economics is a history of institutions and men, with their academic, professional, political and human vicissitudes. The purpose of the table that follows is to provide the reader, who is not necessarily an expert in the history of Italian economics in the interwar period, with essential biographical information on its protagonists and some bibliographical indications for further study. In addition to personal data and information on professional and scientific specialisation (Economics, Public Finance, Agricultural Economics, Statistics, Economic Policy), the table indicates the duration of academic appointments—from recruitment to retirement—their main locations, and the most significant academic offices (director of schools and university institutes, faculty dean or university rector). The higher education institutions that have been taken into consideration are both the historical faculties of law, where economic teachings have traditionally been delivered since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the schools or higher institutes of commerce, social sciences and agriculture which were

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at the origins of the modern faculties of economics, political sciences and agriculture respectively. A column in the table is consecrated to the political activity at national level carried out by many economists—before, during and also after the fascist regime—with a list of their offices (deputy, senator, minister, etc.). Another column is dedicated to the relationships that our economists had with the fascist regime and the implications and consequences of such relationships, and contains an indication either of the restrictive measures to which some of them were subjected for political or racial reasons or of the disciplinary measures that, after the fall of fascism, were committed to those who were most compromised with the regime by the High Commission and the High Court of Justice for the punishment of the crimes and offences of Fascism, instituted by the Italian government since 1944. A further column contains an indication of the economists’ main affiliations to national and international academies and scientific societies and the most significant public and managerial posts they held. A column of bibliographical references closes the table. Each box contains two titles: a biographical entry (generally the one contained in the Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, when available) and a monographic work on the scientific personality and economic contributions of the economist, chosen among the most accurate and recent ones.

(continued)

Table 1 Italian academic economists of the interwar period (*) (*) Main bibliographic sources: Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1860– (henceforth DBI) M.M. Augello, Gli economisti accademici italiani dell’Ottocento: una storia documentale, Roma: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, Direzione generale per gli archivi; Pisa: Serra Editore, 2013 Ministero della pubblica istruzione, Annuari del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, Roma, 1868– Il Parlamento italiano, 1861–1988, Milano: Nuova CEI, 1988– a The teaching establishments of the economists are indicated by the name of the city, followed by the denomination of the Higher Education Institute in abbreviated form. In brackets are the offices held in the institution indicated. The following is a legend of the abbreviations: Law = Faculty of Law Economics = Faculty of Economics and Business Pol. Sci. = Faculty of Political Sciences Agriculture = Faculty of Agriculture Statistics = Faculty of Statistics “Luigi Bocconi” = Commercial University “Luigi Bocconi”, Milan “Cesare Alfieri” = Higher Institute of Social Studies “Cesare Alfieri”, Florence “Catholic” = Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan HIBS = Higher School of Commerce, Higher Institute of Business Studies HIA = Higher Institute of Agriculture and Forests Polytechnic = Polytechnic Institute, Milan b *Academics who opposed the fascist regime in various ways and were expelled from university teaching for crimes of opinion or because of the 1938 Racial Laws **Academics compromised with fascism and submitted to the High Commission for the punishment of fascist crimes and offences after 8 September 1943 c This column shows the main affiliations of the economists, to academic and scientific societies, and pubblic offices, following the order below (when applicable): Italian Academies Foreign Academies Italian scientific societies Foreign scientific societies Italian Public Offices Public offices abroad Roles in companies and organizations of an economic nature in Italy Roles in companies and organizations of an economic nature abroad

Italian Economists of the Interwar Period …

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(continued)

1928– 1963

1877– 1928

1914– 1956

Alessio, Giulio Padua 1853–Padua 1940 Public finance

Amoroso, Luigi Naples 1886–Rome 1965 Economics

Teaching period

Acerbo, Giacomo Loreto Aprutino (Pescara) 1888– Roma 1969 Agricultural economics

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Table 1

Bari HIBS Naples HIBS (Director) Rome Pol. Sci. (Dean)

Padua Law

Rome HIBS (Director) Rome Pol. Sci.; Economics (Dean)

Workplaces and academic officesa Member of Parliament Under-Secretary in the Cabinet Presidency Minister of Agriculture and Forests Finance Minister Vice President of the Chamber of deputies Member of Parliament Under-Secretary in the Finance Ministry Minister of Post and Telegraph Minister of Industry and Trade Minister of Justice Vice President of the Chamber of deputies

Political offices

**Indicted by the Purge Commission in January 1945, he is excluded from teaching. He is acquitted in July 1946

*Signatory of Benedetto Croce’s Anti-fascist Manifesto. He is among the 10 academics of Lincei who refused to swear loyalty to fascism in 1934

**Member of the Grand Council of Fascism. Indicted in 1944 by the High Court of Justice for political crimes, and by the Purge Commission. He is excluded from teaching. He is reintegrated in 1951

Relationships with fascismb

Accademia dei Lincei Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze Società Italiana degli Economisti Econometric Society High Council of Statistics High Council of Mines High Council of National Education

Accademia dei Lincei Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti Accademia delle Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze British Economic Association

Accademia dei Georgofili Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze High Council of Public Education High Council of National Education International Institute of Agriculture (President)

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc Essential references

Giva, D. (1988). In DBI, Vol. 34 Keppler, J.H. (1994). Luigi Amoroso (1886–1965): Mathematical Economist, Italian Corporatist. History of Political Economy, 26 (4), pp. 589–611

Piscitelli, E. (1960). In DBI, Vol. 2 Cisotto, G.A. (2018). Giulio Alessio: un radicale tra XIX e XX secolo. Milano: Biblion

Parisella, A. (1988). In DBI, Vol. 34 Di Tizio, F. (2017). Giacomo Acerbo e i suoi rapporti con d’Annunzio e Mussolini. Pescara: Ianieri

282 M. M. Augello

1929– 1964

1910– 1938

1916– 1946

Arias, Gino Florence 1879– Cordoba (Argentina) 1940 Economics

Bachi, Riccardo Turin 1875–Rome 1951 Statistics

Teaching period

Arena, Celestino Pizzoni (Catanzaro) 1890–Rome 1967 Public finance

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Macerata (Rector) Law (Dean) Rome HIBS

Genoa Law, HIBS Florence Law (Dean); “Cesare Alfieri” Rome Law

Pisa Law Naples Law Rome Pol. Sci.; Economics

Workplaces and academic officesa

Member of Parliament

Political offices

Affiliated to the National Fascist Party. He is excluded from teaching in 1938 because of the Racial Laws. He emigrates to Argentina, where he teaches at the Universities of Tucumán and Córdoba *Signatory of Benedetto Croce’s Anti-fascist Manifesto. He is excluded from teaching in 1938 because of the Racial Laws. He emigrates in 1939 to Israel, where he teaches at the University of Tel Aviv. He is reintegrated into the University of Rome in 1946

**Indicted by the Purge Commission in 1945, he is excluded from teaching for three months. He is acquitted by the Court of appeal

Relationships with fascismb

Accademia dei Lincei Accademia dei Georgofili Accademia delle Scienze di Torino Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze

Accademia dei Lincei Società Italiana degli Economisti (Founder) Fiscal International Association National Council of Economy and Labour Ferrovie dello Stato—Italian Rail Company (Board of Directors) Accademia dei Georgofili (Vice President) Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere Société d’Économie Politique High Council of Mercantile Navy National Council of Corporations

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc Essential references

(continued)

Bonelli, F. (1963). In DBI, Vol. 5 Ratti, A.M. (1960). Vita e opere di Riccardo Bachi. Milano: Giuffrè

Cafagna, L. (1962). In DBI, Vol. 4 Ottonelli, O. (2012). Gino Arias (1879–1940): dalla storia delle istituzioni al corporativismo fascista. Firenze: FUP

Melis, G. (1988). In DBI, Vol. 34 Zanni, A. (2011). La ‘Nuova collana di economisti’ di Bottai ed Arena. Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 45, pp. 99–112

Italian Economists of the Interwar Period …

283

(continued)

Turin HIBS Pisa Law Milan Law Milan “Luigi Bocconi”

Palermo Law Genoa Law, HIBS Bologna Law Milan Law

1916– 1949

1909– 1957

Borgatta, Gino Donnaz (Aosta) 1888– Valmadonna (Alessandria) 1949 Economics Bresciani-Turroni, Costantino Verona 1882–Milan 1963 Economics

Bari HIBS Pavia Law Milan “Luigi Bocconi” Rome Law

1889– 1935

Benini, Rodolfo Cremona 1862– Rome 1956 Statistics

Rome HIBS

Workplaces and academic officesa

1909– 1922

Teaching period

Barone, Enrico Naples 1859–Rome 1924 Economics

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Table 1

Minister of Trade

Political offices

*Signatory of Benedetto Croce’s Anti-fascist Manifesto. From 1927 to 1940 he teaches in Cairo (Egypt) as delegate of the University of Milan

Relationships with fascismb

Accademia dei Lincei Institut de France Econometric Society International Institute of Statistics Banco di Roma (President) World Bank (Director) International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Director)

Accademia dei Lincei Accademia d’Italia Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere American Statistical Association High Council of Statistics (President) Institut International de Statistique Accademia dei Lincei Accademia dei Georgofili Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere Econometric Society Cobden Club

Officer of the Italian Army Middle School of Commerce, Rome (President) Historical Office of the Ministry of Defence (Director)

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc Essential references

Gambino, A. (1972). In DBI, Vol. 14 Bini, P. (1992). Costantino Bresciani Turroni: ciclo, moneta e sviluppo. Civitanova Marche: Otium

anon. (1971). In DBI, Vol. 12 Tedesco, L. (2016). Dal libero scambio all’autarchia: Gino Borgatta e gli interessi dell’economia nazionale. Ariccia: Aracne

Nuccio, O. (1964). In DBI, Vol. 6 Gentilucci, C.E. (2006). L’agitarsi del mondo in cui viviamo: l’economia politica di Enrico Barone. Torino: Giappichelli Dall’Aglio, G. (1966). In DBI, Vol. 8 Cocchi, D. and De Rose, A. (eds) (2008). Rodolfo Benini tra statistica ed economia politica. Il pensiero economico italiano, 16 (1), pp. 11–130

284 M. M. Augello

1914– 1947

1933– 1972

1931– 1948

D’Albergo, Ernesto Noto (Siracusa) 1902–Rome 1974 Public finance

Da Empoli, Attilio Reggio Calabria, 1904–Naples, 1948 Public finance

Teaching period

Cabiati, Attilio Rome 1872–Turin 1950 Economic policy

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Bari HIBS, Economics Messina Law Naples Economics

Venice HIBS Ferrara Law Siena Law Trieste Law; Economics Bologna Law; Economics (Dean) Rome Pol. Sci.

Turin HIBS Genoa HIBS Milan “Luigi Bocconi”

Workplaces and academic officesa

Member of Parliament

Political offices

**Indicted by the Purge Commission in 1944, he is excluded from teaching. He is acquitted in February 1945, and reintegrated into the University

*He is excluded from teaching in 1939 for attacking Racial Laws. He is reintegrated in 1947 and retired for age limits

Relationships with fascismb

City Library of Reggio Calabria (Director) Rockefeller Foundation

Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze Società Umanitaria, Milan (Director) General Directorate of Statistics Vice-Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade Banca Commerciale Italiana—Research Department ABI—Italian Banking Association Società Italiana degli Economisti Istituto di Cultura Bancaria (President) Associazione Nazionale Tributaristi Italiani (President) Confederazione della Proprietà Edilizia (President)

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc Essential references

(continued)

Gola G. (1980). L’opera scientifica di Ernesto D’Albergo. In E. D’Albergo. Scritti scelti. Roma: Università di Roma, pp. 11–23 Da Empoli, D. (ed) (2003). Ernesto D’Albergo e l’evoluzione della scienza delle finanze italiana. Roma: Gangemi Faucci, R. (1985). In DBI, Vol. 31 Di Matteo, M. and Longobardi, E. (eds) (2012). Attilio da Empoli (1904–1948): un economista partecipe del suo tempo. Milano: FrancoAngeli

Galli della Loggia, E. (1972). In DBI, Vol. 15 Marchionatti, R. (2011). Attilio Cabiati. Profilo di un economista liberale. Torino: Aragno

Italian Economists of the Interwar Period …

285

(continued)

Venice HIBS Rome Pol. Sci. (Dean)

1920– 1949

1883– 1931

De’ Stefani, Alberto Verona 1879–Rome 1969 Economics

De Viti de Marco, Antonio Lecce 1858–Rome 1943 Public finance

Rome Law

Florence “Cesare Alfieri” (Director) Florence HIBS (Director)

Workplaces and academic officesa

1884– 1936

Teaching period

Dalla Volta, Riccardo Mantova 1862– Auschwitz (Poland) 1944 Public finance

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Table 1

Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament Finance and Treasury Minister

Political offices

*He voluntarily retired in 1931 in order not to submit to the oath of loyalty to the Fascist regime

**Member of the Grand Council of Fascism. Indicted in 1944 by the High Court of Justice for political crimes, and by the Purge Commission, he is excluded from teaching. He is acquitted and reintegrated in 1948

*Affected by the Racial Laws in 1938, when he was already retired, he is deportated to Auschwitz, where he dies

Relationships with fascismb

Accademia dei Lincei Accademia d’Italia (Vice President) Accademia dei Georgofili Società Italiana degli Economisti (Founder) Société d’Économie Politique High Council of Public Instruction High Council of Statistics International Institute of Statistics Accademia dei Lincei Accademia dei Georgofili Associazione Radicale Romana (President) Associazione Economica Liberale (Founder, Director)

Accademia dei Georgofili (President) Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze Cobden Club Société d’Économie Politique IRI–Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (Board of Directors)

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc Essential references

Cardini, A. and Faucci, R. (1991). In DBI, Vol. 39 Mosca, M. (ed) (2016). Antonio De Viti de Marco: a Story Worth Remembering. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Giva, D. (1986). In DBI, Vol. 32 Augello, M.M. and Guidi, M.E.L. (eds) (2009). Riccardo Dalla Volta: crisi della concorrenza, concentrazioni industriali e imperialismo all’alba del Novecento. Firenze: Le Monnier Marcoaldi F. (1991). In DBI, Vol. 39 Marcoaldi, F. (1986). Vent’anni di economia politica: le carte De’ Stefani 1922–1941. Milano: FrancoAngeli

286 M. M. Augello

1914– 1958

1930– 1975

1903– 1947

Demaria, Giovanni Turin 1899–Milan 1998 Economics

Einaudi, Luigi Carrù (Cuneo) 1874–Rome 1961 Public finance

Teaching period

Del Vecchio, Gustavo Lugo di Romagna (Ravenna) 1883– Rome 1972 Economics

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Turin (Rector) Law (Dean) Milan “Luigi Bocconi”

Bari HIBS Milan “Luigi Bocconi” (Rector) Milan Law

Trieste HIBS Bologna Law Milan “Luigi Bocconi” (Rector) Rome Law

Workplaces and academic officesa

Senator Finance and Treasury Minister Budget Minister Deputy Prime Minister President of the Italian Republic

Economic Commission of the Constituent Assembly (President)

Minister of Treasury Budget Minister

Political offices

*Signatory of Benedetto Croce’s Anti-fascist Manifesto

*He is excluded from teaching in 1938 because of the Racial Laws. He is reintegrated into the University of Bologna in 1945

Relationships with fascismb

Accademia dei Lincei (Vice President) Accademia dei Georgofili Società Italiana degli Economisti (Honorary President) International Economic Association (President) Economic History Society (Vice President) Econometric Society Bank of Italy (Governor)

Accademia dei Lincei Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze Società Italiana degli Economisti (Founder, Vice President) Econometric Society National Council of Corporations National Council of Economy and Labour International Monetary Fund (Governor) Accademia dei Lincei Società Italiana degli Economisti (Founder, President) Institut de France Royal Statistical Society Econometric Society Social Science Research Council, New York American Economic Society

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc Essential references

(continued)

Montesano, A. (2012). Demaria, Giovanni. In Il Contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero Economia. Istituto Treccani [online] Montesano, A. (ed) (2009). Convegno in ricordo di Giovanni Demaria a dieci anni dalla scomparsa. Roma: Scienze e Lettere Faucci, R. (1993). In DBI, Vol. 42 Faucci, R. (1986). Luigi Einaudi. Torino: Utet

Giva, D. (1990). In DBI, Vol. 38 Artoni, R. and Romani, M.A. (eds) (2016). Gustavo Del Vecchio. Milano: Università Bocconi

Italian Economists of the Interwar Period …

287

(continued)

1907– 1953

1901– 1937

1909– 1955

Flora, Federico Pordenone 1867–Chiusi (Siena) 1958 Public finance

Gini, Corrado Motta di Livenza (Treviso) 1884– Rome 1965 Statistics

Teaching period

Fanno, Marco Conegliano Veneto (Treviso) 1878– Padua 1965 Economics

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Table 1

Padua Law Rome Pol. Sci. (Dean); Statistics (Dean)

Catania Law Genoa HIBS Bologna Law

Cagliari Law Messina Law (Dean) Padua Law; Pol. Sci.

Workplaces and academic officesa

Senator

Political offices

**Affiliated to the National Fascist Party. Indicted by the Purge Commission in 1944, he is excluded from teaching. He is reintegrated in December 1945

**Affiliated to the National Fascist Party

*He is excluded from teaching in 1938 because of the Racial Laws. He is reintegrated in 1945

Relationships with fascismb

Accademia dei Lincei Accademia dei Georgofili Società Italiana degli Economisti (Vice President) Società Italiana di Statistica (President) Società italiana di Sociologia (President) Econometric Society High Council of Statistics (President) Institut International de Sociologie (President)

Accademia dei Lincei Accademia delle Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze Società Italiana degli Economisti (Founder, Vice President) Accademia dei Lincei Accademia dei Georgofili Banca Popolare del Credito di Bologna (President) Ferrovie dello Stato—Italian Rail Company (Board of Directors)

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc Essential references

Colonna, M. (1997). In DBI, Vol. 48 Travagliante, P. (2016). La finanza “armata” di Federico Flora. In M.M. Augello, M.E.L. Guidi and G. Pavanelli (eds). Economia e opinione pubblica nell’Italia liberale: gli economisti e la stampa quotidiana. Milano: FrancoAngeli, Vol. 1, pp. 347–382 Federici, N. (2001). In DBI, Vol. 55 Cassata, F. (2006). Il fascismo razionale: Corrado Gini fra scienza e politica. Roma: Carocci

Manfredini Gasparetto, M. (1994). In DBI, Vol. 44 Magliulo, A. (1998). Marco Fanno e la cultura economica italiana del Novecento. Firenze: Polistampa

288 M. M. Augello

1896– 1934

1904– 1946

1888– 1935

Graziadei, Antonio Imola (Bologna) 1873–Nervi (Genoa) 1953 Economics

Graziani, Augusto Modena 1865– Florence 1944 Economics

Teaching period

Gobbi, Ulisse Milan 1859–Genoa 1940 Economics

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Siena Law (Dean) Naples Law (Dean)

Cagliari Law Parma Law

Milan “Luigi Bocconi” (Rector) Milan Polytechnic

Workplaces and academic officesa

Member of Parliament Member of the National Council (1945–46)

Political offices

*He is among the founders of the Communist Party of Italy in 1921. He is excluded from teaching in October 1923, and is de-barred from the status of deputy in 1926. He is reintegrated into the University of Parma in 1945 *Victim of the Racial Laws of 1938, when he was already retired

**Affiliated to the National Fascist Party

Relationships with fascismb

Accademia dei Lincei Accademia dei Georgofili Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze Accademia delle Scienze Morali e Politiche di Napoli (Secretary) Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere Società di Cultura Politica (President)

Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere (President) Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze Associazione per la Libertà Economica (Founder) High Council of Social Security

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc Essential references

(continued)

Da Empoli, D. (2002). In DBI, Vol. 58 Vita, C. (2007). Il marginalismo nei manuali e nei trattati di Augusto Graziani (1865–1944). In M.M. Augello and M.E.L. Guidi (eds). L’economia divulgata: stili e percorsi italiani (1840–1922). Milano: FrancoAngeli, Vol. 1, pp. 253–275

Nisticò, S. (2001). In DBI, Vol. 57 Barucci, P. (2007). I “Manuali” di Ulisse Gobbi. In M.M. Augello and M.E.L. Guidi (eds). L’economia divulgata: stili e percorsi italiani (1840–1922). Milano: FrancoAngeli, Vol. 1, pp. 439–450 Maurandi, P. (2002). In DBI, Vol. 58 Andalò, L. and Menzani, T. (eds) (2014). Antonio Graziadei economista e politico (1873–1953). Bologna: BraDypUS

Italian Economists of the Interwar Period …

289

(continued)

Cagliari Law Siena Law Padua Law Turin Law

1901– 1943

1927– 1952

Jannaccone, Pasquale Naples 1872–Turin 1959 Economics

Lanzillo, Agostino Reggio Calabria 1886–Milan 1952 Economics

Milan Law Cagliari Law Venice (Rector) HIBS (Director); Economics

Catania Law Pavia Law

Workplaces and academic officesa

1915– 1954

Teaching period

Griziotti, Benvenuto Pavia 1884–Pavia 1956 Public finance

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Table 1

Member of Parliament

Senator

Political offices

**He is among the founders of the Fascio Rivoluzionario d’Azione. Member of the “Commission of the 15” for Constitutional Reform of the National Fascist Party

Signatory of Benedetto Croce’s Anti-fascist Manifesto. He adheres to the Italian Social Republic of Salò (RSI)

Relationships with fascismb Accademia dei Lincei Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere Società Italiana degli Economisti (Founder) Istituto Nazionale di Finanza Corporativa (Founder) International Institute of Agriculture Accademia dei Lincei Accademia d’Italia Accademia dei Georgofili Accademia delle Scienze di Torino (President) Società Italiana degli Economisti (Founder, President) Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana (Vice President) International Institute of Agriculture (Secretary-General) Società Italiana degli Economisti (Founder) Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti National Council of Corporations

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc Essential references

D’Alterio, D. (2004). In DBI, Vol. 63 Bernardi, R. (2001). Agostino Lanzillo tra sindacalismo, fascismo e liberismo (1907–1952). Milano: Libreria Universitaria CUESP

Misiani, S. (2004). In DBI, Vol. 62 Einaudi, L. (1961). Pasquale Jannaccone (1872–1959). Torino: Tipografia Artigianelli

Da Empoli, D. (2002). In DBI, Vol. 59 Osculati, F. (ed) (2007). La figura e l’opera di Benvenuto Griziotti. Milano: Cisalpino

290 M. M. Augello

1881– 1932

1924– 1933

1923– 1947

Mauri, Angelo Milan 1873–Candia Lomellina (Pavia) 1936 Economics

Mazzei, Jacopo Florence 1892– Florence 1947 Economic policy

Teaching period

Loria, Achille Mantova 1857– Luserna San Giovanni (Turin) 1943 Economics

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Milan “Catholic” Law Florence (Rector) HIBS (Director) Economics (Dean) Florence “Cesare Alfieri”

Milan “Catholic” Law; Pol. Sci.

Siena Law (Dean) Padua Law Turin Law (Dean)

Workplaces and academic officesa

Member of Parliament Minister of Agriculture Vice President of the Chamber of deputies

Senator

Political offices

**Prosecuted for apologia of fascism by the Purge Commission in 1944, he was acquitted in September 1945

*In 1933 he resigns from the Catholic University of Milan in order not to submit to the obligation to adhere to the National Fascist Party

*Affected by the Racial Laws in 1938, when he was already retired. He obtains to remain Senator

Relationships with fascismb

Accademia dei Georgofili Royal Economic Society Société Scientifique de Bruxelles

Accademia dei Lincei Accademia dei Georgofili Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze American Economic Association Institut International de Sociologie Federazione degli Universitari Cattolici Italiani (President) Opera dei Congressi

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc Essential references

(continued)

Formigoni, G. (2008). In DBI, Vol. 72 Canavero, A. et al. (1988). Angelo Mauri, 1873–1936: contributi per una biografia. Bollettino dell’Archivio per la storia del movimento sociale cattolico in Italia, 23 (1), pp. 6–178 Da Empoli, D. (2008). In DBI, Vol. 72 Moioli, A. and Pagliai, L. (eds) (2019). Jacopo Mazzei: il dovere della politica economica. Roma: Studium

Faucci, R. and Perri, S. (2006). In DBI, Vol. 66 D’Orsi, A. (ed) (2000). Achille Loria. Torino: Il Segnalibro

Italian Economists of the Interwar Period …

291

(continued)

1898– 1924

1882– 1924

1924– 1967

Pantaleoni, Maffeo Frascati (Rome) 1857–Milan 1924 Economics

Papi, Giuseppe Ugo Capua (Caserta) 1893–Rome 1989 Economics

Teaching period

Nitti, Francesco Saverio Melfi (Potenza) 1868–Rome 1953 Public finance

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Table 1

Messina Law (Dean) Pavia Law Milan “Catholic” Pol. Sci. Rome (Rector) Law; Economics

Bari HIBS (Director) Naples Law Rome Law

Naples Law (Dean)

Workplaces and academic officesa Member of Parliament Senator Home Secretary Minister of Agriculture, Industry and Trade Treasury Minister Prime Minister Member of the Constituent Assembly Member of Parliament Senator Finance Minister (Fiume Republic) Treasury and Finance Minister

Political offices

**Indicted by the Purge Commission in 1944, he was excluded from teaching. He was subsequently reintegrated

Accademia dei Lincei Accademia delle Scienze di Torino Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche di Napoli High Council of Statistics High Council of Public Education

*Voluntarily exiled to Zurich and Paris since 1924, he went back to Italy in 1946

Accademia dei Lincei Società Italiana degli Economisti (Founder, President) International Economic Association (President) Royal Economic Society American Statistical Association National Council of Economy and Labour International Institute of Agriculture (Secretary-General) FAO—Food and Agricultural Organization (Secretary-General for Italy)

Accademia dei Lincei Accademia dei Georgofili Società per il Progresso delle Scienze (Founder)

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc

Relationships with fascismb Essential references

Bianco, A. (2014). In DBI, Vol. 81 Michelini L. (1998). Marginalismo e socialismo: Maffeo Pantaleoni (1882–1904). Milano: FrancoAngeli Gioli, G. (2014). In DBI, Vol. 81 Caravale G. (1972). Giuseppe Ugo Papi, economista. In Studi in onore di Giuseppe Ugo Papi. Padova: Cedam, Vol. 1, pp. 135–171

Barone, G. (2013). In DBI, Vol. 78 Barbagallo, F. (1984). Francesco S. Nitti. Torino: Utet

292 M. M. Augello

1913– 1928

1902– 1947

1892– 1937

Serpieri, Arrigo Bologna 1877– Florence 1960 Agricultural economics

Sitta, Pietro Quacchio (Ferrara) 1866–Ferrara 1947 Economics

Teaching period

Ricci, Umberto Chieti 1879–Il Cairo (Egypt) 1946 Economics

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Ferrara (Rector) Law (Dean) Padua Law

Florence HIA (Director) Florence (Rector) Economics; Agriculture Milan “Luigi Bocconi”

Pisa Law Bologna Law Rome Law

Workplaces and academic officesa

Member of Parliament Senator Under-Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture Under-Secretary in the Ministry of Mercantile Navy

Member of Parliament Senator Under-Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture Under-Secretary for the Integral Reclamation

Political offices

**He was investigated by the High Court when he was already retired, and acquitted in July 1948

*Excluded from teaching in 1928, he went to teach in Egypt (1929–1940) and Turkey (1942–1945). He was reintegrated into the University of Rome in the autumn of 1945, but did not resume service **He retired in January 1945 in order not to submit to the judgment of the Purge Commission. He was reinstated in 1947

Relationships with fascismb Accademia dei Lincei Accademia dei Georgofili Institut d’Egypte Econometric Society Advisor of the Government of Egypt International Institute of Agriculture Institut International de Statistique Accademia dei Georgofili (President) Istituto Nazionale di Economia Agraria (President) National Council of Corporations Central Censual Commission (Land Registry) (Vice President) Accademia dei Georgofili Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze Institut International de Sociologie High Council of Statistics High Council of National Education High Council of Credit

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc Essential references

(continued)

Fortunati P. (1948). Pietro Sitta (Quacchio, 1866—Ferrara, 1947). Statistica, 8 (1), pp. 93–96 Morselli E. (1948). Pietro Sitta e le sue opere economiche. Ferrara: Tip. SAIG

Misiani, S. (2018). In DBI, Vol. 92 Di Sandro, G. (2015). Arrigo Serpieri: tra scienza e praticità di risultati. Dall’economia agraria alla bonifica integrale per lo sviluppo del paese. Milano: FrancoAngeli

Ciocca, P. (2016). In DBI, Vol. 87 Bini, P. and Fusco, A.M. (eds) (2004). Umberto Ricci (1879–1946): economista militante e uomo combattivo. Firenze: Polistampa

Italian Economists of the Interwar Period …

293

(continued)

1887– 1931

1925– 1944

1934– 1968

Tassinari, Giuseppe Perugia 1891– Desenzano del Garda (Brescia) 1944 Agricultural economics

Vito, Francesco Maria Gerardo Pignataro Maggiore (Caserta) 1902–Milan 1968 Economics

Teaching period

Supino, Camillo Pisa 1860–Milan 1931 Economics

Surname, name Place and date of birth and death Field of studies

Table 1

Milan “Catholic” (Rector) Pol. Sci.; Law Milan Polytechnic

Bologna HIA (Director) Bologna Law; Economics; Agriculture (Dean)

Genoa HIBS Siena Law Milan “Luigi Bocconi” Pavia Law (Dean)

Workplaces and academic officesa

Member of Parliament Under-Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture Under-Secretary for the Integral Reclamation Minister of Agriculture and Forests

Political offices

**Affiliated to the National Fascist Party

**Member of the Grand Council of Fascism. He adheres to the Italian Social Republic of Salò (RSI)

Relationships with fascismb

Accademia dei Lincei Società Italiana degli Economisti (Founder) Associazione Italiana di Scienze Politiche (President) International Political Science Association (Vice President) National Council of Economy and Labour

Accademia dei Georgofili Accademia delle Scienze di Bologna Istituto Nazionale di Economia Agraria (President) Confederazione Nazionale degli Agricoltori (President)

Accademia dei Lincei Accademia dei Georgofili Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere (Vice President) High Council of Mercantile Navy (President)

Main affiliations to scientific societies and public officesc Essential references

Perri, S. (2019). In DBI, Vol. 94 Perri, S. (2007). Un fortunato manuale non “ortodosso”: i Principi di Economia politica di Camillo Supino. In M.M Augello and M.E.L. Guidi (eds), L’economia divulgata: stili e percorsi italiani (1840–1922). Milano: FrancoAngeli, Vol. 1, pp. 277–304 Franchi M. (2010). Le “Carte Politiche” del Fondo Giuseppe Tassinari. In Pubblica Adunanza dedicata a: Giuseppe Tassinari, Firenze: Accademia Nazionale dei Georgofili, pp. 821–843 Di Sandro, G. (2017). La scuola bolognese degli economisti agrari (1925–1981): da Giuseppe Tassinari e Luigi Perdisa a Enzo Di Cocco. Milano: FrancoAngeli Parisi, D. (2012). Vito, Francesco Maria Gerardo. In Il Contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero Economia. Istituto Treccani [online] Parisi, D. and Rotondi, C. (eds) (2003). Francesco Vito: attualità di un economista politico. Milano: V&P Università

294 M. M. Augello

Name Index

A

Abbadessa, Salvatore 183, 187 Acerbo, Giacomo 13, 144, 145, 148, 152–156, 158, 173, 176, 245, 255, 256, 258, 259, 265, 273, 282 Alatri, Paolo 238 Albanese, Giulia 275 Alberti, Mario 181 Albertini, Luigi 111, 138 Alessio, Giulio 32, 52, 102, 112, 122, 278, 282 Allocati, Antonio 139, 216, 217, 232 Amatori, Franco 208 Amendola, Giovanni 32, 220 Amore Bianco, Fabrizio 66, 73, 91 Amoroso, Luigi 19, 23, 28, 31, 112, 217, 248, 252, 255–257, 259, 264–266, 268–271, 278, 282

Ancona, Ugo 147 Andalò, Learco 229 Antonelli, Gilberto 233, 238 Antonucci, Silvia H. 242 Aquarone, Alberto 64, 91, 111, 137, 159, 174 Arena, Celestino 6, 11, 27, 52, 65, 72, 83, 196, 254–256, 259, 268, 273, 278, 283 Arias, Gino 10, 13, 15, 24, 26, 31, 35, 36, 39, 41–44, 47, 51–53, 63–68, 91, 92, 95, 102, 122, 140, 148, 161–163, 173, 174, 176, 211, 217–221, 224, 241, 279, 283 Arieti, Stefano 238 Armistead, Matthew 21, 99, 243 Arouet, François-Maire (Voltaire) 220

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. M. Augello et al. (eds.), An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II, Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38331-2

295

296

Name Index

Artoni, Roberto 225, 226, 233, 238, 287 Asquini, Alberto 44, 53 Asso, Pier Francesco 13, 186, 187, 207, 210 Augello, Massimo M. 2, 3, 7, 16, 18, 19, 103–106, 137, 143, 144, 174, 281, 286, 288, 289, 294 Azzolini, Vincenzo 184, 195, 210, 218

B

Bachi, Riccardo 15, 112, 114, 122, 137, 211, 212, 217, 218, 220, 221, 224, 238, 241, 279, 283 Bachi, Roberto 15, 211, 217, 218, 220, 221, 224, 226 Badoglio, Pietro 271 Baffigi, Alberto 212, 219, 223, 225, 233, 238 Baffi, Paolo 184, 194, 196, 210, 213 Bagiotti, Tullio 138 Balconi, Margherita 202, 207 Balzarotti, Federico 182 Bandini, Mario 255, 256, 259, 263, 266 Barbagallo, Corrado 238 Barbagallo, Francesco 292 Barbanera, Marcello 273 Barbieri, Gino 72 Barca, Fabrizio 208 Barone, Enrico 10, 21, 25–27, 29–31, 33, 34, 47, 53, 278, 284 Barone, Giuseppe 292

Barucci, Piero 4–7, 19, 84, 92, 112, 137, 141, 148, 174, 177, 200, 207, 209, 241, 289 Basso, Lelio 234 Becchio, Giandomenica 231 Bechelli, Chiara 99, 277 Behar, Yakir 218 Belluzzo, Giuseppe 230 Beneduce, Alberto 182, 208, 209, 213, 218, 225, 233 Benini, Rodolfo 105, 106, 110–112, 122, 137, 139, 182, 222, 284 Benson, Lee 167, 174 Berengo, Marino 234, 237, 238 Bernardi, Roberto 290 Biagi, Bruno 42, 53 Bianchi Bandinelli, Ranuccio 216, 218, 272, 273 Bianchini, Andrea 274 Bianchini, Giuseppe 182, 190, 191 Bianchini, Marco 3, 18, 19 Bianco, Antonio 292 Bientinesi, Fabrizio 2, 3, 7, 8, 11, 18, 19, 59, 79, 92, 116, 137, 141 Bigatti, Giorgio 209 Bigazzi, Duccio 197, 202, 208 Biggini, Carlo Alberto 82 Billio, Monica 240 Binello, Giuseppe 48, 53 Bini, Piero 86, 92, 284, 293 Boatti, Giorgio 213, 238 Bobbio, Norberto 108, 137, 214, 215, 223 Bodio, Luigi 105 Boffito, Domenico 181, 182, 192 Bognetti, Giuseppe 210 Bolchini, Ferruccio 182 Boldrini, Marcello 263

Name Index

Bolis, Luciano 19 Bonelli, Franco 283 Bonin, Hubert 210 Bordiga, Amadeo 229 Borgatta, Gino 43, 45, 53, 123, 284 Borruso, Edoardo 182, 203, 208 Bottai, Giuseppe 6, 38–41, 53, 63–66, 69, 91, 161, 226, 227, 283 Brambilla, Carlo 210 Breschi, Danilo 84, 90–92 Bresciani Turroni, Costantino 6, 9, 102, 112, 123, 181, 190, 230, 279, 284 Brizi, Alessandro 252, 255, 256 Brocard, Lucien 76 Broglio D’Ajano, Romolo 33, 53 Bronstein, Lev Davidovich (Trotsky) 220 Bruguier Pacini, Giuseppe 60, 83, 92, 112, 137

C

Cabiati, Attilio 15, 181, 182, 190–193, 212, 217, 226–228, 240, 279, 285 Cacelli, Elisa 99, 277 Cadorna, Luigi 33 Cafagna, Luciano 283 Caffè, Federico 183, 208, 263 Cagiano de Azevedo, Raimondo 275 Cajuni, Arrigo 227 Calabresi, Gianfranco 181, 182, 189–191, 208 Calamandrei, Piero 216, 250, 252, 263 Calcara, Geppi 244, 274 Campochiaro, Emilia 146, 175

297

Campolongo, Alberto 184, 185, 194, 196, 202, 208 Canali, Mauro 237, 238 Canavero, Alfredo 291 Canelli, Gabriele 156, 157 Canfora, Luciano 229, 238 Cannistraro, Philip V. 100, 137 Canosa, Romano 273 Canovai, Tito 184, 194, 210 Cantimori, Delio 241 Capristo, Annalisa 113, 138, 216, 218, 223, 238 Caravale, Giovanni 292 Cardia, Mariarosa 246, 250, 252, 273 Cardini, Antonio 286 Carini, Carlo 238 Carli, Filippo 10, 24, 34, 35, 47, 53, 65, 66 Carli, Guido 83, 88 Caronia, Giuseppe 263 Carpi, Elena 3, 19 Casellato, Alessandro 223, 238 Cassata, Francesco 76, 92, 235, 238, 247, 273, 288 Cassel, Gustav 190 Castellini, Gualtiero 53 Castelnuovo, Guido 263, 266 Castronovo, Valerio 5, 19, 49, 54, 61, 92 Catellani, Enrico 214, 238 Cattini, Marco 226, 233, 239 Cavalieri, Duccio 112, 138 Cerasi, Laura 62, 92 Ceriani, Luigi 183, 210 Chessa, Pasquale 263, 264, 274 Cianetti, Tullio 63 Cianferotti, Giulio 214, 223, 239 Ciano, Galeazzo 235

298

Name Index

Cini, Marco 8, 11, 59 Ciocca, Pierluigi 293 Cipollina, Silvia 212, 239 Cisotto, Gianni A. 282 Clough, Shepard B. 150, 174 Coats, Alfred W. [Bob] 104, 138 Cocchi, Daniela 284 Cognetti de Martiis, Raffaele 228 Cognetti de Martiis, Salvatore 228 Cohn, Sigmund 227 Coletti, Francesco 113, 123, 218 Collotti, Enzo 73, 92 Colonna, Marina 170, 174, 288 Colonnetti, Gustavo 216, 239 Colorni, Eugenio 15, 19, 212 Coppola D’Anna, Francesco 80, 81, 92 Coppola, Francesco Saverio 183, 208 Corradini, Enrico 30, 34 Costamagna, Carlo 27, 38, 44–48, 50, 51, 54 Cova, Piero 183, 264 Crispi, Francesco 236 Croce, Benedetto 32, 102, 107, 167, 213, 219, 249–251, 274, 282–284, 287, 290 Cutelli, Stefano Maria 65

D

D’Addario, Raffaele 255, 256, 259, 263, 267 Da Empoli, Attilio 13, 86, 92, 148, 165, 166, 173, 175, 253, 255, 256, 259, 263, 278, 285 Da Empoli, Domenico 285, 289, 290 D’Albergo, Ernesto 43, 44, 54, 79, 80, 92, 196, 285

Dal Degan, Francesca 8, 105 Dall’Aglio, Giorgio 284 Dalla Volta, Riccardo 15, 103, 106, 123, 138, 212, 218, 220, 221, 231, 232, 279, 286 D’Alterio, Daniele 290 D’Ambrosio, Manlio 71, 72 Dami, Cesare 28, 84, 85, 93 Daneo, Camillo 151, 156, 174 D’Antone, Leandra 198, 208 Darwin, Charles R. 167 De Ambris, Alceste 24 De Castro, Diego 255, 256, 259, 263, 267 De Cecco, Marcello 198, 208 De Felice, Massimo 230, 239 De Felice, Renzo 24, 54, 101, 138, 145, 159, 161, 174 De Finetti, Bruno 111, 112, 229, 239 De Francisci Gerbino, Giovanni 83, 123, 183, 187, 255, 256, 259, 271 De Francisci, Pietro 267, 268 De Gasperi, Alcide 234 De Grazia, Victoria 142 Dell’Oro, Giuseppe 188 De Luca, Giuseppe 208 Del Vecchio, Ettore 229 Del Vecchio, Giorgio 224 Del Vecchio, Gustavo 6, 15, 23, 26, 46, 51, 54, 105, 112, 124, 211, 212, 216–218, 220–222, 224–226, 233, 234, 238, 242, 279, 287 Demaria, Giovanni 71, 74, 81–83, 85, 93, 95, 96, 101, 138, 225, 226, 287

Name Index

De Meo, Giuseppe 255, 256, 259, 265 De Nicola, Enrico 212 De Pietri Tonelli, Alfonso 124, 255, 256, 259, 263, 267 De Rose, Alessandra 284 De Sanctis, Gaetano 219 De’ Stefani, Alberto 13, 21, 22, 28, 34, 40, 41, 54, 56, 72, 82, 110, 111, 124, 141, 144, 148–151, 158, 173, 174–176, 217, 218, 222, 225, 230, 235, 241, 255, 256, 259, 278, 286 D’Eufemia, Giuseppe 255, 256, 259 De Vecchi, Cesare Maria 70 De Vita, Agostino 184, 196 De Viti de Marco, Antonio 6, 15, 22, 23, 28, 57, 106, 112, 124, 213, 218, 278, 286 De Zerbi, Alfredo 192 Di Fenizio, Ferdinando 184, 185, 196, 204, 209 Di Matteo, Massimo 9, 92, 175, 285 Di Napoli, Mario 165, 175 Di Nardi, Giuseppe 85, 86, 89, 93, 96, 184, 196 Dini, Mario 152, 175 Di Rienzo, Eugenio 244, 245, 252, 274 Di Sandro, Giancarlo 293, 294 Domenico, Roy Palmer 274 Dondi, Mirco 244, 246, 274 Donegani, Guido 204, 209 D’Orsi, Angelo 291 Draghi, Carlo 222 Duchini, Francesca 112, 138 D’Urso, Francesco 88, 93

299

E

Edallo, Emanuele 223, 239 Einaudi, Luigi 6, 9, 15, 22, 24, 25, 28, 54, 102, 103, 105–107, 111, 113–115, 124, 138, 139, 146–148, 167, 172, 175, 190, 213–218, 231, 234, 252, 263, 265, 269, 270, 275, 279, 287 Eisenberg, Jaci 95 Elster, Jon 272, 274 Ercole, Francesco 114 Evola, Julius 31, 50

F

Fabre, Giorgio 220, 227, 233, 239 Fabrizi, Carlo 255, 256, 259, 262 Fanfani, Amintore 36, 50, 218 Fani Ciotti, Vincenzo (Volt) 39, 40, 57, 108, 142 Fanno, Marco 15, 49, 51, 112, 125, 211, 212, 218, 220, 221, 223, 233, 288 Fantini, Oddone 255, 256, 259, 263, 264 Faucci, Riccardo 6, 7, 19, 59, 61, 93, 101, 111, 112, 138, 139, 148, 165, 167, 175, 285–287, 291 Fausto, Domenicantonio 93 Fedele, Pietro 226 Fedele, Santi 212, 235, 239 Federici, Nora 288 Federzoni, Luigi 232, 233 Fenoglio, Virgilio 191 Ferrante, R.U. See Fubini, Renzo (alias R.U. Ferrante) Ferrara, Francesco 149, 170 Ferrarotto, Marinella 100, 139

300

Name Index

Ferri, Carlo Emilio 44, 45, 47, 49, 55, 65, 71, 255, 256, 259 Fiaccadori, Aldo 79, 93 Fileni, Enrico 222 Fimiani, Enzo 144, 146, 175 Finzi, Roberto 212, 214, 239 Fiori, Giuseppe 212, 239 Firpo, Luigi 105, 139 Fisher, Irving 81, 191, 193 Flamigni, Mattia 274 Flora, Federico 113, 125, 148, 169–171, 173, 174, 175, 218, 252, 288 Floridia, Santi 255, 256, 259, 265 Foà, Bruno 15, 212, 216–218, 225, 239 Fonzi, Paolo 74, 93 Foresta Martin, Franco 244, 274 Formiggini, Carlo Angelo 221 Formigoni, Guido 291 Fortunati, Paolo 83–91, 93, 95, 293 Fossati, Antonio 72 Franceschi, Fabio 224, 239 Franchi, Monica 294 Franchini, Vittorio 103, 125 Freud, Sigmund 221 Frezza, Paolo 229, 239 Fubini, Federico 229, 239 Fubini, Renzo 15, 191, 207, 211, 218, 220, 221, 229, 231, 233, 239, 240, 263 Funk, Walther 74–76 Fusco, Antonio M. 62, 93, 165, 175, 240, 293

G

Gabrielli, Gloria 245, 274

Galimi, Valeria 113, 139, 212, 214, 239 Galli Della Loggia, Ernesto 285 Galli, Renato 255, 256, 259 Gambino, Antonio 79, 81, 93 Gambino, Amedeo 284 Gangemi, Raffaello (Lello) 37, 55, 65, 67, 93, 247, 255, 256, 259, 264, 270 Garavello, Oscar 202, 208 Gardini, Dino 76, 93 Garin, Eugenio 114 Garino-Canina, Attilio 126 Garoglio, Pier Giovanni 255, 256, 259 Garrone, Nicola 255, 256, 259 Gasca, Ana Millán 197, 209 Gasparini, Innocenzo 74, 75, 94 Gemelli, Agostino (Father) 213, 226 Gentile, Emilio 108, 139, 144, 146, 169, 175 Gentile, Giovanni 9, 12, 38, 45, 51, 100, 102, 105, 107, 216, 222, 225, 226, 233, 241, 254 Gentilucci, Catia Eliana 284 Gerbi, Antonello 181, 182, 190, 193, 194, 207, 209 Giacoma, Giuseppe 85, 94 Giaconi, Daniela 14–16, 99, 216, 217, 222, 231, 232, 240, 243, 253, 274, 277 Giani, Nicolò 39, 49 Giannetti, Renato 208 Gide, André 220 Gini, Corrado 10, 24, 35, 36, 55, 76–78, 92, 94, 126, 185, 235, 238, 247, 258, 259, 288 Ginzburg, Leone 261 Gioia, Vitantonio 240

Name Index

Gioli, Gabriella 18, 292 Giolitti, Giovanni 31, 32 Giva, Denis D. 282, 286, 287 Gobbi, Ulisse 105, 126, 222, 289 Gobetti, Piero 220 Goetz, Helmut 112, 139 Gola, Guglielmo 285 Golzio, Silvio 75, 94 Grado, Pietro 271 Gramsci, Antonio 15, 38, 107, 120, 121, 139, 167, 229 Graziadei, Antonio 13, 15, 148, 158, 172, 212, 213, 228–230, 238, 279, 289 Graziani, Augusto 15, 102, 103, 106, 107, 110, 112–114, 127, 139, 212, 216, 217, 220, 221, 232, 238, 239, 278, 289 Graziani, Luisa (ved. Cassola) 232 Graziani, Paolina 232 Gribaudi, Pietro 128, 255–257, 259, 271, 274 Griziotti, Benvenuto 181, 185, 190, 196, 212, 247, 248, 251, 255–257, 259, 262, 264, 265, 275, 290 Gros, Frédéric 215, 240 Guarini, Serena 237, 240 Guarneri, Felice 65, 150, 175, 181 Guerraggio, Angelo 247, 254, 266, 274 Guidi, Marco E.L. 2, 3, 7, 12, 18, 19, 61, 94, 103, 104, 104, 112, 137, 139, 143, 144, 174, 286, 288, 289, 294

H

Hawtrey, Ralph 191

301

Hensel, Albert 264 Hirschman, Albert O. 82, 94, 229, 231 Hitler, Adolf 176, 216, 218, 245

I

Imbriani Longo, Giuseppe 183 Insolera, Filadelfo 128, 255, 256, 260 Isnenghi, Mario 101

J

Jaja, Goffredo 255 Jannaccone, Pasquale 76, 94, 110, 111, 114, 120, 128, 139, 290 Jarach, Dino 15, 212, 263, 264 Jona, Eugenia 232

K

Keppler, Jan Horst 282 Keynes, John Maynard 6, 15, 19, 27, 28, 37, 48, 49, 74, 115, 191, 193, 209, 217, 239 Kundera, Milan 246, 274 Kuon, Peter 237, 240

L

Labriola, Antonio 84 Labriola, Arturo 13, 15, 22, 28, 33, 55, 102, 148, 158, 172, 212, 220, 230, 240 La Francesca, Salvatore 187, 209 La Malfa, Ugo 193, 194, 207 Lampertico, Fedele 149 Lanaro, Paola 234, 240

302

Name Index

Lanaro, Silvio 223, 240 Lantini, Ferruccio 63 Lanzillo, Agostino 13, 23, 26, 31, 55, 102, 148, 159–161, 173, 175, 223, 290 La Pira, Giorgio 263 Lavista, Fabio 13, 197, 200, 209 Lederer, Emil 264 Leicht, Pier Silverio 103, 129 Lenti, Libero 71, 72, 117, 139, 184, 196, 204, 207, 209, 225 Leone, Enrico 22, 230 Lescure, Jean 70, 94 Linguerri, Sandra 105, 139 List, Friedrich 32, 37, 47 Livi, Livio 184, 205, 218 Longo, Gisella 84, 90–92 Longobardi, Ernesto 92, 175, 285 Lorenzoni, Giovanni 130, 222, 240 Loria, Achille 15, 107, 110, 112– 114, 131, 139, 146, 148, 167–169, 172, 174, 175, 190, 212, 217, 218, 232, 233, 238, 278, 291 Louçã, Francisco 197, 209 Lunghini, Giorgio 204, 209 Lusignani, Luigi 105 Luzzatti, Luigi 104, 131 Luzzatto Fegiz, Pierpaolo 229 Luzzatto, Gino (alias G. Padovan) 15, 37, 55, 103, 132, 211, 212, 218, 221, 223, 229, 233, 234, 238, 240 Luzzatto, Sergio 142

M

Maccabelli, Terenzio 112, 139 Machiavelli, Niccolò 220

Magliulo, Antonio 8, 288 Magnani, Marco 212, 219, 223, 225, 233, 238 Maier, Charles S. 61, 94 Majorana, Giuseppe 105, 140 Mancini, Orietta 19, 112, 140 Manfredini Gasparetto, Marialuisa 288 Marchesi, Concetto 216, 218, 240 Marchionatti, Roberto 147, 175, 227, 231, 240, 285 Marcoaldi, Franco 149, 175, 176, 286 Maroi, Lanfranco 255, 256, 260 Marsili Libelli, Mario 132, 231, 232, 240, 247, 252, 256, 258, 260, 262, 264, 274 Martone, Michel 88, 95 Marucco, Dora 212, 240 Marx, Karl 28, 167 Masci, Guglielmo 67, 72, 113–116, 132, 140, 224 Masè Dari, Eugenio 132 Masera, Francesco 184 Matteotti, Giacomo 21–23, 111, 158, 230, 269 Mattioli, Raffaele 181, 182, 191–194, 210 Maurandi, Pietro 289 Mauri, Angelo 13, 148, 158, 172, 279, 291 Mayer, Teodoro 147 Mazzei, Jacopo 36, 55, 71, 72, 75, 76, 83, 88, 95, 133, 231, 247, 256, 257, 260, 262, 264, 278, 291 Mazzini, Giuseppe 147 Mazzucchelli, Mario 181, 182, 191 Medolaghi, Paolo 252

Name Index

Melis, Guido 60, 61, 76, 84, 94, 95, 144, 146, 176, 283 Melograni, Piero 238 Menegazzi, Guido 82 Mengarini, Publio 133 Menichella, Donato 196, 199, 202 Menzani, Tito 229, 238, 289 Merlino, Francesco Saverio 41 Merlino, Libero 42, 53, 55 Mezzetti, Nazzareno 162 Michelini, Luca 10, 22, 31, 47, 51, 55, 212, 240, 247, 275, 292 Michels, Roberto 47, 55, 133 Mignone, Alessandro 183, 184, 209 Mill, John S. 221 Minerbi, Alessandra 224, 225, 240 Mirri, Domenico 238 Misiani, Simone 7, 112, 137, 141, 148, 152, 174, 176, 177, 185, 209, 241, 290, 293 Modigliani, Franco 15, 29, 47, 48, 50, 51, 55, 56, 212, 240 Moioli, Angelo 291 Mondaini, Gennaro 255, 256, 260 Montanari, Guido 183, 193, 194, 209 Montesano, Aldo 287 Montroni, Giovanni 254, 260, 275 Moravia, Alberto 220 Moretti, Mauro 247, 275 Mormino, Vincenzo 187–189 Morselli, Emanuele 169, 176, 293 Mortara, Giorgio 14, 15, 112, 117, 133, 140, 181, 182, 184, 185, 194, 196, 203–205, 207–209, 211, 221, 240 Mosca, Manuela 7, 112, 137, 141, 148, 174, 177, 209, 241, 286 Motta, Giacinto 204

303

Muscetta, Carlo 261, 275 Mussolini, Arnaldo 39, 49, 219, 226 Mussolini, Benito 1, 4, 5, 9, 12, 21–23, 33, 34, 36, 38–40, 42, 45, 46, 49, 50, 56, 63, 69, 82, 90, 91, 100, 103, 105, 108–111, 114, 138, 140, 145–147, 149, 151, 152, 154, 156–159, 161–164, 166–170, 172–174, 215, 216, 218, 226, 227, 231, 235, 238, 240, 241, 245, 247, 249, 254, 262, 273, 282 Mussolini, Vito 39 Myres, John L. 105, 140

N

Naldi, Nerio 213, 240 Nardi Beltrame, Achille 182, 191, 192 Nardozzi, Giangiacomo 181, 209 Nastasi, Pietro 247, 254, 266, 274 Naumann, Friedrich 221 Nerozzi, Sebastiano 13, 187, 207 Niceforo, Alfredo 133, 255, 260 Nicolò, Fernando 209 Nisticò, Sergio 289 Nitti, Francesco Saverio 15, 31, 32, 133, 182, 189–191, 212, 213, 230, 234, 235, 239, 292 Nuccio, Oscar 284 Nyboe Andersen, Poul 75, 95

O

Olivetti, Gino 164 Onida, Pietro 83

304

Name Index

Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele 213, 218 Osculati, Franco 275, 290 Ostenc, Michel 215, 241 Ottonelli, Omar 51, 56, 64, 65, 95, 102, 140, 161, 162, 176, 220, 241, 283

P

Pacces, Federico M. 76, 83, 88 Padovan, G. See Luzzatto, Gino (alias G. Padovan) Pagliai, Letizia 291 Pagni, Carlo 72, 79, 95, 196 Palazzina, Girolamo 233 Palla, Marco 175 Palyi, Melchior 264 Pantaleoni, M. 10, 21–34, 37, 38, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51–57, 105, 106, 111, 134, 140, 141, 149, 190, 225, 230, 231, 278, 292 Pantaleoni, Marcella 225 Paoloni, Giovanni 221, 241, 261, 275 Papi, Giuseppe Ugo 49, 56, 85, 86, 95, 96, 113–115, 117–119, 134, 141, 255, 256, 260, 278, 292 Pareto, Vilfredo 10, 21, 23, 25–31, 33, 39, 40, 43, 46, 47, 50, 54, 56, 57, 149, 230 Parisella, Antonio 154, 176, 282 Parisi, Daniela 294 Parlato, Giuseppe 25, 56, 63, 70, 95 Paronetto, Sergio 184, 199, 210 Parravicini, Giannino 184, 195, 196

Parri, Ferruccio 185, 194, 203, 204, 207, 210, 234 Parrillo, Francesco 72 Pasini, Ferdinando 83 Passardi, Vitaliano 74, 95 Patalano, Rosario 12, 115, 141 Pavanelli, Giovanni 3, 12, 19, 82, 95, 143, 288 Pavan, Ilaria 212, 214, 241 Pavese, Roberto 74, 95 Pavesi, Mazzini 54 Pavone, Claudio 246, 250, 275 Pedrocco, Giorgio 274 Pellizzi, Camillo 83, 84, 90–92 Pennisi, Rosario 265 Perfetti, Francesco 69, 95 Perillo, Francesco 19, 140 Perri, Stefano 167, 175, 291, 294 Persico, Alessandro Angelo 199, 209 Persico, Enrico 244 Pescatore, Armando 196 Pesenti, Antonio 15, 212, 214–216, 241, 263 Pezzana, Angelo 224, 241 Picciotto Fargion, Liliana 231, 241 Pigou, Arthur Cecil 49 Piluso, Giandomenico 181, 186, 198, 209 Pini, Giorgio 219 Pino, Francesca 180, 183, 184, 191, 192, 209, 210 Pirou, Gaëtan 70, 95 Piscitelli, Enzo 282 Poincaré, Jules Henry 229 Polese Remaggi, Luca 204, 210 Porri, Vincenzo 47, 57 Porta, Pier Luigi 82, 95 Possony, Stephan Th. 115, 141

Name Index

Prato, Giuseppe 26, 31, 40, 47, 48, 57, 134, 221 Prévost, Jean-Guy 84, 95 Preziosi, Giovanni 30, 31, 33, 38, 50, 56, 57 Procacci, Giovanna 113, 139, 212, 214, 240 Pugliese, Mario 212, 218, 239

Q

Quadrio Curzio, Alberto 104, 141 Quazza, Guido 137

R

Radaeli, Enrico 192, 194 Ranieri, Ruggero 203, 210 Rathenau, Walther 221 Ratti, Anna Maria 224, 241, 283 Renzi, Antonio 251, 255, 256, 260 Resta, Manlio 77, 78, 96 Ricchioni, Vincenzo 13, 148, 173, 255, 256, 260 Ricci, Renato 63 Ricci, Umberto 15, 25, 28, 31, 57, 111, 112, 134, 212, 213, 217, 222, 230, 231, 240, 266, 279, 293 Rigamonti, Enrica 237, 240 Rigano, Annarita 111, 141, 225, 235, 241 Rist, Charles 218 Rocca, Agostino 185, 198, 201, 202 Rocco, Alfredo 22, 24, 26, 33–35, 38, 40, 57, 145, 160, 167, 250 Rodogno, Davide 95 Rollandi, Maria Stella 224, 227, 241

305

Romani, Marzio A. 225, 226, 233, 238, 287 Roncaglia, Alessandro 183, 210 Roosevelt, Franklyn Delano 43, 49 Rosboch, Ettore 44, 48, 49, 57 Roselli, Alessandro 195, 210 Rosenstein-Rodan, Paul N. 231 Rosselli, Carlo 230 Rossi, Ernesto 15, 19, 22, 57, 212, 239 Rossoni, Edmondo 69, 156 Rota, Francesco 153 Rotondi, Claudia 294 Ruini, Meuccio 234 Russo, Antonio 239 Russolillo, Franco 210 Russo, Luigi 252

S

Sabatini, Gaetano 96 Salandra, Antonio 230 Salvatorelli, Luigi 220 Salvemini, Gaetano 145, 147, 176 Samuels, Warren J. 175 Santomassimo, Gianpasquale 59, 96, 112, 141 Santoponte, Giovanni 184 Sapori, Armando 103, 134, 263, 266 Saraceno, Pasquale 184, 196, 199, 200, 207–210 Sarfatti, Margherita 39, 162 Sarfatti, Michele 215, 239 Sasso, Gennaro 216 Sattin, Antonella 234 Savorgnan, Rodolfo Franco 235, 255, 256, 258, 260 Schmitt, Carl 45 Schwarz, Guri 212, 214, 241

306

Name Index

Segré, Angelo 15, 135, 211, 217, 220, 221, 229, 239 Segré, Arturo 229 Segré, Emilio 229 Segreto, Luciano 208 Seligman, Edwin Robert Anderson 218 Sella, Emanuele 103, 135 Sensini, Guido 31, 46, 57 Serpieri, Arrigo 13, 66, 103, 135, 144, 148, 152–157, 173, 175, 235, 236, 252, 255, 256, 258, 260, 293 Severi, Francesco 254 Severi, Leonardo 271 Signori, Elisa 247, 265, 275 Simoncelli, Paolo 214, 241 Simone, Giulia 223, 233, 242 Simon, Fabrizio 8, 105 Sinigaglia, Oscar 210 Sitta, Pietro 135, 148, 169, 170, 173, 176, 252, 293 Smolensky, Eleonora Maria 212, 224, 241 Soddu, Francesco 144, 146, 176 Solaro, Giuseppe 73–75, 96 Solazzi, Gino 228 Sonnino, Sidney 32 Sorel, Georges 23, 159 Spalletti, Stefano 240 Spencer, Herbert 50 Spilotros, S. (nome di fantasia) 264 Spinella, Mario 214, 215 Spinelli, Altiero 15, 19, 212 Spirito, Ugo 9, 39, 42, 45, 64, 66, 68, 69, 83, 88, 89, 93, 95, 96, 102, 111, 112, 229, 230, 239 Sprugnoli, Raffaella 99, 277

Sraffa, Piero 6, 15, 212, 213, 218, 230, 240, 241 Starace, Achille 221 Stenti, Vincenzo 268 Steve, Sergio 196, 225, 241, 263 Stringher, Bonaldo 105, 110, 135, 189, 194, 195, 202 Sturzo, Luigi (don) 220 Supino, Camillo 135, 294

T

Tamagna, Frank 196 Tangorra, Vincenzo 136 Tarchi, Angelo 264 Tassinari, Giuseppe 13, 144, 148, 156, 157, 173, 176, 177, 294 Tattara, Giuseppe 151, 176 Tedesco, Luca 284 Thaon di Revel, Paolo Ignazio 136, 147, 226, 227 Tiberi, Mario 247, 275 Tiengo, Carlo 63 Togliatti, Palmiro 213 Toniolo, Gianni 176 Toniolo, Giuseppe 36 Toeplitz, Jósef L. 191–193 Torresi, Tiziano 199, 210 Travagliante, Pina 288 Travaglini, Volrico 79, 96 Trevisani, Renato 42, 57, 65, 255, 256 Tribe, Keith 75, 96 Trotsky, Lev See Bronstein, Lev Davidovich Tuccimei, Ercole 184, 195, 210 Turi, Gabriele 100, 101, 107, 108, 113, 141, 142

Name Index

U

W

Usai, Giuseppe 255, 256, 260

Weiss, Edoardo 221 Woller, Hans 275

307

V

Vanoni, Ezio 185, 208, 212, 263 Varnier, Giovanni Battista 222, 223, 241 Vassalli, Filippo 263 Ventura, Angelo 214, 220, 240, 241 Vigevani Jarach, Vera 212, 224, 241 Vignati, Zeno 13, 148, 173 Vinci, Felice 112, 136, 263 Vinti, Carlo 209 Virgilii, Filippo 136 Vita, Carmen 289 Vitelli, Girolamo 229 Vito, Francesco Maria Gerardo 39, 69–71, 76, 80, 81, 83, 88, 96, 294 Volpe, Pompeo 223, 233, 242 Volpicelli, Arnaldo 39, 45, 66 Volt See Fani Ciotti, Vittorio (Volt) Volterra, Vito 107, 109, 266 Voltaire. See Arouet, François-Marie

Y

Yael Franzone, Gabriella 212, 242

Z

Zaccagnini, Sauro 75, 96 Zaganella, Marco 85, 96, 152, 157, 177 Zagari, Eugenio 6, 11, 19, 140 Zamagni, Vera 150, 177 Zanni, Alberto 225, 242, 283 Zanobini, Guido 66 Zanzucchi, Ferdinando 105 Zappa, Gino 181, 182, 184, 193 Zevi, Maria 212, 242 Zingali, Gaetano 13, 148, 163–165, 173, 177, 255, 256, 260 Zinn, Howard 215 Zorli, Alberto 106, 136 Zuccoli, Giuseppe 80, 81, 97, 181

Subject Index

A

C

Autarky 9, 71, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 82, 119, 157, 188, 201

Carta del Lavoro [Labour Charter] 26, 39–42, 48, 49, 60, 64, 65 Catholic economic thought 36 Commission of Solons 36 Corporatism (corporatist/corporative economics) 4, 5, 9, 11, 26, 45, 46, 60, 61, 63, 64, 66–71, 79, 102, 111–113, 115, 116, 120, 159, 163, 165, 173, 201, 202, 269, 270, 278, 282 Corporatism (corporative organization of the economy) 5, 72 Credito Italiano (bank) 182, 188, 196 1907 crisis 198 1929 crisis. See Great crisis Croce’s 1925 Manifesto 32, 102, 107

B

Banca Commerciale Italiana (bank) 14, 80, 180, 182, 191 Banca d’Italia (bank) 14, 180, 186, 189, 194–197, 202 Banca Italiana di Sconto (bank) 182 Banco di Roma (bank) 150 Banking law of 1936 184 1936 banking reform 184 Banking reform of 1926 180, 183 Battle for Grain (1925) 151 Bolshevism. See Socialism

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. M. Augello et al. (eds.), An Institutional History of Italian Economics in the Interwar Period — Volume II, Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38331-2

309

310

Subject Index

E

Economic planning 27, 41, 61, 76, 82, 83, 85 Economic sanctions 200 Economics, Institutionalization of 2, 3 Embargo of 1936. See Economic sanctions F

Fascist 1925 Manifesto 102 Fascist propaganda 117

180, 184, 189, 194, 212, 236, 237, 247 IRI. See Institute for Industrial Reconstruction

L

Labour-backed currency 74, 75, 80, 81 Laissez-faire 11, 17, 60 Leggi fascistissime (very Fascist laws) 4

M G

Government (economists members of government) 12, 32, 110, 144, 148, 149, 154, 173 Great crisis 17 Great Depression. See Great crisis

March on Rome 1, 21, 32, 111, 249, 257, 267 Marxism 172, 270

N

National Socialism 45 H

Homo œconomicus 25, 60 Homo corporativus 7, 10

O

Oath of Loyalty to Fascism (1931) 15, 254

I

IMI. See Industrial Finance Institute Industrial Finance Institute (Istituto Mobiliare Italiano, IMI) 184 Industrial organization 121 Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale, IRI) 43, 44, 168, 180, 184, 185, 198–201, 286 Institutionalism 2–4, 7, 11, 18, 23, 36, 38, 42, 144, 161, 163,

P

Parliament (economists members of parliament) 12, 13, 144, 171, 173 Planned economy. See Economic planning Protectionism 22, 25, 29, 35, 36, 47

Q

Quota 90 5

Subject Index

311

R

S

Racial Laws (1938) 10, 13, 15, 112, 122, 124, 125, 127, 131, 133, 194, 211, 222 Reform of Public Education (Bottai, 1940) 63 Reform of Public Education (Gentile, 1923) 107 Reform of University (De Vecchi, 1935) 70 Revaluation of the Lira. See Quota 90

Scientific management. See Industrial organization Socialism 17, 22, 24, 30, 33, 35, 41–43, 60, 159

U

University reform of 1935 70