http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2074-0765
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Abstract
Neoliberalism was a powerful ideology and ‘thought collective’ between the two World Wars and after WWII. The paper aims to enquire into the channels through which neoliberalism dwelled in Italian intellectual, economic and political history, from the early 1920s to the mid-1970s, unveiling the role of public intellectuals like Einaudi, and hardly unknown think-tanks like Ceses.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Costantino Bresciani Turroni, Carlo Antoni, Panfilo Gentile, Pasquale Jannaccone, Giovanni Demaria, Giuseppe Ugo Papi, Bruno Leoni, and Luigi Einaudi.
2 Einaudi was Governor of the Bank of Italy, Ministry of Budget, Treasury, and Finance in the Italian Government, President of the Italian Republic; Jannaccone was a member of the Italian Senate.
3 It is approximately the distinction they have in the US between conservatism and liberalism (Plehwe 2009, 2). On this quarrel, there was a substantial division between economists, on Einaudi’s side, and other intellectuals. Nevertheless, two very diverse figures as Wilhelm Röpke (outside Italy) and Luigi Sturzo (definitely not an economist) strongly supported Einaudi (Felice Citation2011).
4 Mussolini claimed, as early as May 1923, that there were “different liberalisms” (De Felice Citation1966, 510), and that it was therefore necessary to understand which was the main feature of Italian liberalism. I would say that, in Italy, there was a whole galaxy of different shades of liberalism, each of them enlarging and shrinking according to different time, social, political and institutional coordinates.
5 Journalist, politician and philosopher, founder of the newspaper Il Mondo, which was published from January 1922 to October 1926, a few months after Amendola’s death - in April 1926 – caused by a violent attack by fascists.
6 In the Sixties, on similar and more refined layers, Friedman’s (1962, 21–22) argued: “Economic power can be widely dispersed. There is no law of conservation, which forces the growth of new centers of economic strength to be at the expense of existing centers. Political power, on the other hand, is more difficult to decentralize. There can be numerous small independent governments. But it is far more difficult to maintain numerous equipotent small centers of political power in a single large government than it is to have numerous centers of economic strength in a single large economy. […] If the central government gains power, it is likely to be at the expense of local governments. There seems to be something like a fixed total of political power to be distributed. Consequently, if economic power is joined to political power, concentration seems almost inevitable. On the other hand, if economic power is kept in separate hands from political power, it can serve as a check and a counter to political power.”
7 The “theory of incidence” illustrates the impact of the tax structure on single individuals, with regard to the alternative use of the resources levied by the State compared to the private sector.
8 Among them we find heterogeneous intellectuals like Pannunzio himself, the more conservative Bruno Villabruna (Minister of Industry ad Trade between 1954 and 1955), Adriano Olivetti (the famous entrepreneur), Nicolò Carandini (Minister for a very short time in 1944, Ambassador in the UK and President of Alitalia), Franco Libonati, Arrigo Benedetti (journalist, who founded several magazines, among which L’Espresso), and Eugenio Scalfari (renowned journalist who founded the newspaper la Repubblica), until more progressive figures like Riccardo Bauer (a leading figure of Italian Resistance), Aldo Garosci, Ernesto Rossi, Giorgio Agosti, and Manlio Rossi Doria.
10 In the Thirties he was the vice of Raffaele Mattioli in the secretariat of the CEO of Comit (Italian Commercial Bank) Giuseppe Toeplitz (later substituted by Mattioli as Director General - in 1931 - and Managing Director - in 1933). Mattioli had a friendly relationship with his master Croce (but also with Sraffa, Gramsci, Togliatti). In agreement with Malagodi, Ugo La Malfa, Guido Carli and Enrico Cuccia, Matteoli took the initiative to found IRI (Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale) in 1936 (which was meant to provide financial resources to Italian capitalism putting public authorities in a central place to control the whole industrial and banking system), and Mediobanca in 1946. In 1936, after the racial laws, Malagodi (his mother was Jewish) was sent by Mattioli to Paris as General Director of Sudameris, a bank controlled by Comit and Paribas, and in 1940 to Buenos Aires. In 1947 he was lent to the government for the Italian delegation to OECD (at those times OECE). In 1953 he was elected in the Parliament. He became Secretary of the Liberal Party in April 1954. His father, early socialist, became a liberal, influencing the intellectual training of Giovanni.
11 Journalist, Director of Risorgimento liberale and Il Mondo, and politician, founder of the Liberal Party and the Radical Party.
12 Most governments in Italy from 1980 to the early Nineties were led by a coalition of five parties: Christian Democrats, Socialists, Social Democrats, Republicans and the Liberal Party.
13 Born in Egypt in December 1912, Jewish, father of Paolo Mieli, who would become Director of La Stampa and Il Corriere della Sera. He studied nuclear physics at the University of Padua; after the racial laws in 1938 he went to Paris and in 1944 came back to Italy as staff of the intelligence services of Pwb (Psychological Warfare Branch) of the Anglo-American army to control media and communication in Italy in the last months of WWII. First Director of Ansa (the Italian National Agency for Associated Press), founded in 1945, he joined the Pci and in 1947 Togliatti called him as director of L’Unità in Milan; he was later appointed responsible for foreign relations of Pci. After the Pcus XX Congress and the events in Hungary in 1956, he abandoned the Pci and started an autonomous path as founder of Ceses, before collaborating in the last decades with Il Giornale and Il Corriere della Sera. On Mieli see his autobiography (Mieli Citation1996) and Corbi (Citation1996); on Ceses see Bockman (Citation2011, 133–156).
14 The research centre was placed within Interdoc, a foundation born in 1963 and aiming at networking Nato intelligence services against the communist block.
15 In 1976 (when Carli succeeds Agnelli at the Presidency) Confindustria stops financing Ceses, which survives thanks to other connections with American foundations and enterprises, until in 1988 it ceases to exist. In 2014 a new journal, Cahiers di Scienze Sociali, claims to be the continuation of the experience of Ceses and of its journal Controcorrente.
16 With a support to its activities from the Rockefeller Foundation and other American foundations, via Spinelli and the connection of Fabio Luca Cavazza (Il Mulino) with Dean Rusk, ex-President of the Rockefeller Foundation.
17 On the history of IAI, we suggest to read the draft by Marzia Maccaferri, From Intellectual Project to Think-Tank: The Origins of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, its Continuity and Discontinuity, http://www.academia.edu/24867362/From_Intellectual_Project_to_Think-Tank_ The_Origins_of_the_Istituto_Affari_Internazionali_its_Continuity_and_Discontinuity; and Graglia, P. 2008, Altiero Spinelli, Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 408–419.
18 It is enlightening that his book, Piano economico e moneta nell’URSS (1973), can only be found at the Universities of Catania, Bocconi in Milan (where he taught), Trento, Kiel and in the USA: Harvard College Library and Princeton University Library.
19 Professor of Public Finance, he was in close contact with both Harvard and Virginia, in particular with Buchanan, who helped him with his professional career. He would take the chair held by Einaudi in Turin after his death in 1961. He would later become Minister of Finance (1982–83), European Communities (1983–86) and Foreign Affairs (1986–87) for the Socialist Party.
20 Bockman’s interviews to former Ceses members collected in May and June 2004 (Bockman Citation2011, 142).