I cattolici e la politica fra le due guerre. Dalla lotta fra popolarismo e clerico-fascismo alla nascita della Democrazia cristiana

In 1870 Rome was conquered without military resistance by the young Italian State, causing the Pope to react by organizing “the Catholic opposition” to the State (which lasted until 1929); it was modified in 1919 when Don Luigi Sturzo founded the “Italian Popular Party”, which was independent from the Church and immediately antifascist. The Pope exiled Don Sturzo, and the Catholic world split into the anti-fascist Popular Party and a prevailing party of clerical-fascist leaning. With the rise of the fascist dictatorship in 1926 the popular experience came to an end. In the fight for liberation, De Gasperi stands out as a figure who would lead, together with the Christian Democracy, the birth of the new republican democracy.

Una montagna di debiti. L'Italia e la gestione del debito pubblico tra le due guerre

The surge in public debt during the recent pandemic crisis has made high debt a prominent policy issue. Italy is an interesting case study since it has experienced high levels of debt for a significant part of its history. This article revisits the history of Italian public debts in the inter-war period. Italy emerged from WWI with public debt that peaked around 160 percent of GDP. In the mid-1920s a significant reduction of public debt occurred, in concomitance with a regime of fiscal austerity and two restructuring agreements that wiped more than 80 percent of Italian foreign debts. By the early 1930s, the US reaction to the Great Depression that opposed any form of international cooperation, led to an Italian default on war debts in 1934 and a move toward autarky.

I fattori soggettivi nel «moderno capitalismo». La complicata ricezione italiana e le questioni insolute nel pensiero di W. Sombart

W. Sombart has always represented "a significant intellectual puzzle", but, beyond the contradictory (often overemphasised) aspects of his thought, he continues to be an interesting object of study, because of the innovative capacities that he showed in the analysis of the many original phenomena characterising the historical evolution of "modern capitalism". His innovative approach emerges in his interpretation, not always linear and univocal, of thinkers such as Marx and Schmoller, in his analysis of the relationship between religion and capitalism (and in his comparison with M. Weber on this specific aspect), and, finally, in his reconstruction of the distinctive features of the phases of development of capitalism analysed in his Der moderne Kapitalismus.

La cesura dottrinale di fine anni Trenta. Itinerari della giuspubblicistica italiana tra fascismo e Repubblica

The essay aims to answer a simple but very relevant question: how could be possible that the constitutionalists who gave the most important contribution in the theoretical building of Italian constitutional democracy were the same who, only a few years before, wrote about the fascist constitutional order with sincere interest (and sometimes with real appreciation)? Political opportunism? No. The answer lies in the paths of their constitutional interpretations that reveal the existence of a real doctrinal fracture in the Italian constitutionalist culture of late Thirties, created by a new generation of jurists.

«Al privato onesto un'arma legittima». Per una genealogia della legittima difesa tra il moderamen inculpatae tutelae e la difesa legittima del diritto penale fascista

The contribution is meant to reconstruct the crucial passage from the ‘liberal’ conception of self defence (e.g.: Carrara) to that of the Positive School (for all: Fioretti), which was further articulated by Fascist criminal legal doctrine (Manzini, the Rocco brothers) and imposed with the Italian penal code of 1930. The former conception, in the wake of Beccaria and his thematisation of crime as a political and social problem, does not fundamentally allow the deadly self-defence in the protection of property. For the latter, the ‘subjects’ have a ‘right’ to defend their property, and with it society, even by deadly force. The contribution highlights the partially dissonant voice of the Court of Cassation, which in one opinion reminded the Fascist state the intrinsic weakness of such a conception

Jung, Beneduce e i primi anni dell'Iri (1932-1936)

This essay examines the figures of Jung and Beneduce. From the very beginning of their careers, until the crucial 30's, when the first one was appointed Ministry of Finance and the second one, confidential trustee of Mussolini. For both, the testbed was their work experience at IRI, where they helped create the Italian model of the government intervention in the economy and the nationalisation of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, Credito Italiano e Banco di Roma.

Nazionalismo economico e problemi della guerra e del dopoguerra

The text investigates nationalist thought during the Italian interwar years, tracing the rising of significant issues of economic policy, such as the Labour Chart, the founding of IRI, corporativism and colonial politics. Three economists were especially relevant: Vilfredo Pareto, Maffeo Pantaleoni and Enrico Barone. Anyway, in the field of political economy and law, two other personalities were even more crucial: Alfredo Rocco and Alberto Beneduce, who Mussolini trusted in terms of loyalty and competence. The topic is complex and requires further investigation. The alternate influence of the two during the long government of Mussolini, Rocco first and then Beneduce, is to be carefully considered as one of the main events of the Italian history under the Fascist regime

Giuristi ed economisti nella massoneria italiana fra le due guerre

The article focuses its attention on a list of jurists and economists, all university professors, who were active in Italy in the period between the two world wars and were affiliated with Freemasonry. The survey is based on a sample of 27 individuals belonging to the Grand Orient of Italy (16 jurists and 11 economists or statisticians) and using a prosopographic approach reconstructs their scientific and professional activity. The article highlights that many of them had important positions in universities or held political and institutional roles of national importance. The author carries out some reflections on the reasons that led such a large number of teachers to join the Freemasonry and on the influence that through them it could exercise on the political and cultural life of Italy.