Industrialization without theory: economists, social legislation and the italian 'take-off'

Post-unification industrialization in Italy took shape at the end of the nineteenth century and consolidated during Fascism. The liberal political class was found to be ‘responsible’ for a series of economic policy interventions which transformed the production structure and, in a nutshell, favoured the partial modernization of the country. This process was ‘rationalized’, not without contradictions, by economists and social scientists of the liberal period who, from theoretical perspectives that were not always consistent and, above all, through direct action in the political and administrative structures of the state, contributed to the definition of the intervention ‘model’. Starting from the 1870s, this relationship between theory and economic policy was made explicit by seeking ‘foreign’ references, especially of German origin, in order to justify an active role of the state in the shaping of the newly established nation. The period was also characterized by the profound adversity of Italian economists of the liberal faith, such as Vilfredo Pareto, Maffeo Pantaleoni and Antonio de Viti de Marco, to endorsing any form of policy that was an incentive to industrialization or, more generally, any policy that ‘distorted’ the natural functioning of the market economy. The result was that of an Italian version of Kathedersozialismus or ‘socialism of the chair’, which struggled to emerge with a homogeneous and recognizable characterization in historical analysis because it was composed of a galaxy of orientations and positions that did not always agree and which it was later judged ‘fragile’ from a theoretical point of view. At the origins of the processes of state intervention a convergence of interests was unanimously traced which led to the approval of the first forms of social legislation in Italy, especially regarding the protection of workers. This contribution, through the analysis of the debate on worker protection interventions at the end of the nineteenth century, will highlight the analysis of Italian economists on the topic and will attempt to connect these intervention measures with a rationalization of their ‘model’ of economic development.