Week 104

 

Financial matters represented, as they very often do, a theme of absolute importance in the debate following the reopening of the Italian Chamber in July 1919. The exposition on the state of the Treasury had been the first, and one of the longest, of the various ministerial relations, coming on the 10^th of July, the day after the reopening with Prime Minister F.S. Nitti's inauguration speech, which had already focused in large part on the difficult economical situation.

It would be fair to say that the financial situation commanded indeed extreme attention. But the acknowledgment of this fact – and the general consciousness of a situation of economical disarray – appeared at times to undermine the focus and initiative of the Italian Chamber and to limit its ability to address the many problems which not only demanded an urgent solution but had, by then, entered the public mind, albeit very often in a rather symbolic or “mythical” form.

While the Ministry of F.S. Nitti pursued a consolidation of the Italian financial situation as a necessary first step on the way of a general, and tentative, “democratization” program – its ability to achieve the much needed result hampered by the difficult diplomatic situation, by the general state of international finance and by the persistent climate of social unrest – therefore subordinating, often out of necessity and to a degree inevitably so, any organic reform to an (unlikely in the short term) improvement of Italy's finances; the Italian Parliament enjoyed at least the opportunity of debating the proposed reforms without being constrained by the material and time limitations afflicting the Government. The Parliament itself was past its expiration date, since the legislature had opened in November 1913 and was expected to end (at best) by November 1918. Long as they had been, the almost six years between the elections of November 1913 and those of November 1919, had also seen a major transformation of the Italian political and social landscape (the latter, perhaps, a bit less than contemporaries appeared to believe, if we consider the persistence of certain social formations as well as the stability of major socioeconomic indexes, such as the distribution of occupation) – there was nonetheless a widespread consciousness that the Great War had represented a great moment of transformation, of “revolution” to use V.E. Orlando's own choice of words and that the Italian institutions were called to keep up with history at a decisive change of pace. Much less clear, and in fact far from any form of universal consensus, appeared the substance of this revolutionary transformation, and how the Italian political forces could actually contribute to this substance, by assisting, facilitating, controlling and regulating this movement.

[…] the rhythm of national life – summarized representative V. Amici on July 12^th – has experienced an unnatural increase of pace under the influence of the historical events. This transformation of national life has not been met with the natural and necessary adjustments by the organisms of the State. A perturbation of the balance between the life of the nation and the life of the State has therefore occurred, which must be rapidly and fully removed. […]

There was, of course, a much more objective problem that the political world – that is the representatives, administrators and broadly speaking the Italian establishment – had to account for. That in times of social and political transformation, the institutions have to transform as well and that this, outside of the more or less straightforward projects of reform (which were in fact introduced, such as the electoral reform, the revision of electoral districts, the reform of commissions and parliamentary groups; or at least discussed, such as the project for a partially elective senate), often translates, matter of fact, into a call for the replacement of the men occupying these institutions themselves.

With this in mind, it's easy to see a structural element of friction even between those more genuine aspirations for a social and political renovation and the need to maintain a political presence, if only to be a part of this renovation. Of course, there were those who choose to step aside (even if, quite often, this only occurred after it became clear that their candidature was receiving insufficient support – one prominent example, that of former Foreign Minister S. Sonnino) and let history move on without them, but even in these circumstances, the expected major political turnaround and the concurrent dissolution of elements of political stability – albeit often carrying a negative impact on the relations between society and politics – such as the old electoral districts, with their clientele-based arrangements, could legitimately represent a major concern for the liberal establishment.

It's not surprising that a somewhat consistent – if certainly outdated – line of criticism against Nitti was his excessively “democratic” approach to the electoral problems, both in the excessive liberality used towards the instances of the “popular” parties (Socialists and Catholics) and in his restraint in applying the Government's influence on the electoral contests (even if such measures of liberalization had been largely invoked, in public, from almost all sides before the elections).

The reluctance – or, according to some, its inability (but we know that Nitti left quite precise instructions, on these matters at least) – of the new Ministry to make use of Giolitti's old “ministerial” methods, might have played a role in the affirmation of the Socialist and Catholic forces in 1919. It is also apparent, given the (unprecedented and unexpected) scale of such affirmation, that even a full return to the less appealing political traditions of late XIX and early XX Century could have only limited the extent of the debacle of the liberal forces. This without taking into account that various portions of the establishment shared a genuine sentiment of discomfort with those practices – and held a fairly critical view of their impact on the participation of the masses to the political life of the nation – and that Nitti himself appeared to dislike, overlook or mismanage certain practices of direct control of the local administration, which Giolitti had instead mastered, for both better and worse.

Conversely, a concern that the continuation of such methods could further antagonize the masses – and with them push away those portions of the popular parties which would be otherwise open to collaboration with the Government (and which were expected, within the general economical and political context, to assume a position of “responsibility”, if not of cooperation, and exert an overall moderating influence on the popular masses, continuing the line adopted by the socialist cooperatives and by the General Confederation of Labor during the price riots of early July) – was certainly present for the Italian leadership. Much less clear, again, was how to actually appeal to the masses, and how to develop a positive action such as to integrate the negative one, which amounted – in short – to an acknowledgment that it was no longer possible to control and dominate the advancement of the mass parties with the ordinary methods available to the liberal state. This point may come to represent a more legitimate form of criticism for the action of Nitti's and of all the Italian post war governments – that, while they opened more or less convincingly the way for a process of political democratization, their were ill-suited, incapable or nonetheless constrained by the objective difficulties of post-war society and finance, to translate these initiatives into an actual impulse for societal democratization, by connecting political reforms to their objective counterparts within the social tissue.