Italian capital organized itself into a unified national class to fight labor.

Evidence

In March 1920 the Confi ndustria had situated itself as a national organization, complete with its own general political line and tactics. Industrialists could now think of themselves as a national political power— an “industrialist class” (Il corriere della sera, March 9, 1920) with a centralized membership. Seventytwo associations were federated, with 11,000 members. All large industries, and threequarters of the mediumand smallscale industries, adhered to this association. Th at August the agriculturalists had done the same: they founded La Confederazione Generale dell’Agricoltura, which united large and small agricultural property and industry. It was a new “political body of battle and resistance to coordinate all the forces of property and agriculture industry” (Bachi 1921, 302). — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 574

Categorization

• XREF: The explicit forging of an ‘industrialist class’ identity as a political weapon is a precursor to the coordinated business lobbying and class-consciousness Mattei traces through the century; connects to Lindblom’s ‘privileged position of business’ literature. — connects to: Italian capital consolidated into national class organizations in 1920 — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 574