Davide Cadeddu - Towards and Beyond the Italian Republic: Adriano Olivetti’s Vision of Politics

This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of specialists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by re-emphasizing their connection to one another.

Editorial Board

Rebecca West, University of Chicago, USA

Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York University, USA

Fred Gardaph, Queens College, CUNY, USA

Phillip V. Cannistraro, Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY, USA

Alessandro Portelli, Universit di Roma La Sapienza, Italy

William J. Connell, Seton Hall University, USA

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Cover illustration: Vito Arcomano / Alamy Stock Photo

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This work is the result of many years of study, during which I met several scholars. Among all of them, I particularly wish to thank Professor Emeritus Ettore Rotelli (Alma Mater StudiorumUniversit di Bologna), Scientific Director of the Istituto per la scienza dellamministrazione pubblica (Institute for the Science of Public Administration). He taught me the meaning of autonomy and the principles of critical method, through our almost daily dialogue from 2003 until 2019, when the institute was closed because of blind political will.

The manuscript was translated into English by Federica Tampoia Vezzi.

This study is about the historical process that led to the establishing of the Italian Republic (1946) and its Constitution (1948), through the experience and the political reflections of Adriano Olivetti (19011960), general manager and then president of the famous typewriter factory Olivetti. After the publication of the first articles by Olivetti during the two-year period of 19191920 in the weekly LAzione Riformista, his engineering studies at the Politecnico di Torino did not leave him much time to dedicate to journalism and, with the advent of fascism, his writing activities were finally shelved. From his personal experience as production organizer and head of industry, his own reflections evolved: first on the scientific organization of a modern company, then on that having to do with the surrounding territory and on the direct and indirect interests that its activities seemed to touch. An unbroken line of reasoning linked his maturing political reflections during the two post-war periods. Spanning a period of about 20 years, from his joining the Lega democratica per il rinnovamento della politica nazionale (Democratic League for the Renewal of National Politics) in 1919, formed around LUnit by Gaetano Salvemini, many historical experiences and theoretical influences followed, enriched his awareness, and yielded complex answers in face of the same problem: the crisis of representative democracy. The historical context of the 1950s did not prove to be very propitious but the guidelines dispersed throughout the Italian cultural and political world from the movement that Olivetti founded were certainly seminalgenerating a legacy of ideas that has only in part been recognized.

What makes this study distinctive is the original approach to read the history of Italy through Olivettis eyes and thoughts. There is nothing comparable in English studies about Italian history, also because Olivettis political thought is particular, far from the more common Christian democratic or Communist perspective of those years. It is simply another view of what the Italian Republic could be and was not.