Postwar Italy suffered economic collapse that its makeshift governments could not address

Evidence

It is true that there were no ruling class parties to confront the mushrooming P.S.I.; the country was governed by makeshift coalitions of parliamentary cliques and personal followings. It is true that the war was followed by a catastrophic economic crisis—the lira lost 8o per cent of its value between 1914 and 1920; the budgetary deficit rose from 214 million in 1914-15 to 23,345 millions in 1918-19, with the main tax burden falling on the petite bourgeoisie; wheat production fell from 52 million quintals in 1911-13 to 38 million in 1920, and 40 per cent of the balance of payments deficit was accounted for by food imports; production dropped after the war by 40 per cent in the engineering industries, 20 per cent in chemicals, 15 per cent in mining, etc.; coal prices were over 16 times higher in 1920 than they had been in 1913; etc., etc.—to which the various governments seemed to have no solution. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 85

Categorization

• QUESTION: Useful concrete empirical grounding for later claims about interwar instability and why ruling classes turn to fascism as the ‘blunter instrument.’ The specific deficit and production numbers could be cross-checked.
• XREF: connects to: Postwar austerity in Italy delayed universal healthcare until 1978 — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 312; The Italian government could not militarily suppress the 1920 factory occupations. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 559