In a way, the Italian political system at the beginning of the XX century was the middle ground. It's perhaps easy to overlook, since we are familiar with systems where all political groups participate to the shared institutions of government (if not to the government per se) - but this degree of participation was not a feature of Italian politics.

The first attempts at a participation of socialist elements to the national government had taken place around the time of the Libyan War of 1912 and had resulted in the expulsions of the "reformers", Bissolati, Cabrini and Podrecca - the 1913 elections, the first with male universal suffrage, had been influenced by a pact of mutual assistance (the so called Gentiloni pact) between the liberal "governative" candidates of Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti and the Catholics, but the first Catholic Minister, Filippo Meda only took service in 1916 in the “national unity” Government of Paolo Boselli.

It was absolutely clear to the political establishment that had controlled the Italian state since the unification – that one collectively refers to as the “liberal state”, and I'll always use the word in this fashion - that the growth of the new mass movements and the expansion of the electoral basin were going to lead to a major change. That a transformation of the liberal state was not only in the order of things, but actually a desirable outcome, was – with a few exceptions – a rather common point of view.

Most distinctions came as to the manner of such transformation.

A portion of the political leadership – most notably led by long tenured Prime Minister Giolitti – sought for an adaptation of the political system to the new movements, with the purpose of bringing either the Catholics or the Socialists, or rather their most moderate elements, into the government and thus introducing the larger masses to a more active participation to the life of the state, which would at last prevent their radicalization and opposition to the institutions. This operation, for its character – a mixture of political realism and extra-parliamentary agreements (that Giolitti himself explained by observing that “it was always possible to find an agreement with gentlemen” even if they were socialists) – was subject to a persistent criticism by those forces that were looking for a more transformative kind of adaptation.

Those who sought for the formation of a completely new State. Either a true liberal, democratic system, standing tall above both Giolitti's compromises with the lower instances of politics (see for instance the contemporary works of Gaetano Salvemini for the more modern-democratic) and his concessions to the demands and the dangerous petitions of right coming from the lower strata of the population and especially the workers movement (see the different positions of S. Sonnino, A. Salandra and L. Albertini for a more liberal-conservative).

Or advocated a more radical, extreme transformation, prompted by the realization that the old liberal system was already on its death bed and the concessions made to particular, individual and divisive instances symptoms of this terminal illness. Wrote in 1914 Alfredo Rocco – jurist, Nationalist leader and future member of the Fascist Government:

The parliamentary system is dead and the Giolitti system which has followed is proof enough that it is gone for good. And gone with it an entire minute, arcadic world of sensitivities, that can't be looked back at without nostalgia, for it had its beauty and its poetry: the cult of reason, love of freedom, faith in justice [...] The parliamentary system, which is to say the political predominance of assemblies of delegates elected by the people, of intermediaries non governing and irresponsible, born, for specific reasons, in England, spread in Europe during the primacy of the rationalistic philosophy and of idealism […] has absolved its purpose; what is to come next? No one can say. The Giolitti system has been only a moment of the great evolution, that will result in the new political regime of tomorrow.

According to Rocco, the main problem of the new century was how to secure the unity and protect the authority of the state against the many fragmenting instances rising from the various bodies formed by the spontaneous organization of the individuals in social formations (that is, trade unions, parties, etc.) - in his mind, the economical and political concessions made to these centrifugal forces proved that the old system was no longer a viable one. By the end of 1920 this dissolution had become dramatic and the body of the state was “day by day dissolving in a plethora of minor aggregations, parties, associations, leagues, unions”. But “those individuals, amorphous masses, despite dominating the political life of the time, were nothing” unless returned to their role of parts, “organs” of the state body. Organization of society was the quid of the State.

But unity was not a key element of the State for the Nationalists and conservative alone – in a way the thought of establishing and safeguarding a sentiment of national unity remained a central point for the Italian political and intellectual establishment until at least 1922-25; when the problem, far from being abandoned, became to be addressed in a somewhat different way. As gerarca Giuseppe Bottai himself explained from the pages of Critica Fascista in 1930,

within the State one saw the realization of the highest moral values of their life and thus moved beyond everything within them that was partial: personal gain, interest, life itself if needed. Within the State one could see displayed in act the highest spiritual values: continuity beyond [the limitations of] time, moral greatness, enlightening mission for oneself and for others: therefore […] the State was the ideal synthesis of material and immaterial values of one's ancestry and was the concrete form of the past and present generations.

Thus the State, the Fascist State that is, was everything: the organism that served as summary and collection of all individualities. Nothing meaningful existed outside of Fascism:

nothing outside of the Regime, everything within the Regime and for the Regime […] within boundaries, within Fascism, not against Fascism, within the Party, not against the Party, within the Fascist State, not against the Fascist State.

But, again, well before that, the problem of the Italian state was perceived as that of polarization, since the Italian state for its inherent nature of “warden of national unity” had to constitute by itself the middle ground of the political world. And this aversion to the extremes – which was fairly natural in itself, and perfectly consistent with reasons of education, interests and practical considerations – was rather widespread even before the most extreme revendications came to be with the aftermath of the Great War and the Russian Revolution. In 1910 future Prime Minister V.E. Orlando opened the academical year explaining how

Never before, like now, has the state found in its citizens so many creditors, and so insistent, so overbearing, so unrelenting […] Individuals and groups alike press, shove, beset: demand with threatening attitude, take with contempt. Individuals who harbour or openly declare intents of mad rebellion among the indifference, if not the indulgence, of the universal: groups that, for the sake of their own interest, do not hesitate to mortally wound those essential conditions necessary to the life of the state.

 

Continues...