Foreword: The “Original Sin”

Abstract

At the moment of its unification, Italy was one of Europe’s most backward countries, in both economic and financial terms. Agriculture, which accounted for 56.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), employed 70 percent of active workers, while industry, which contributed 20.3 percent to GDP, employed only 18 percent, with most of those working at home and in sectors using low-level technologies (notably textiles). The state, indebted to the tune of 500 million lira (about 2 billion euros at the 2002 equivalent), had neither the capital nor, as we will see, the political will to foster a shift from a largely traditional phase, involving modest forms of manufacturing, to an industrial phase.

All’Italia indifferente fu imposta la rivoluzione da motivi esterni e da contingenze di politica europea

[External causes and European political situation imposed the revolution to an indifferent Italy.]

—Piero Gobetti (1923)¹