World War I transformed the Italian state into the central planner of the economy

Evidence

Observers at the time remarked on the country’s stark transition to a “collectivist” state, a central planner of the national economy— or as the Italian economist (and later, in 1948, president of the Republic) Luigi Einaudi liked to put it, the emergence of an economia associata, or associated economy. In 1915, the economist Riccardo Bachi wrote: “Th e State as a war entrepreneur has become the center, the pivot, the engine of the entire economy” (Bachi 1916, viii). Th e Italian government had initiated mild forms of interventionism to promote industrialization through subsidies and infrastructure beginning in the late nineteenth century (Zamagni 1990, 213– 15). It was the unprecedented scale of this practice during the war that shocked contemporaries. Prior to the war the country’s real expenditures were 17 percent of nominal GDP; they shot up to 40 percent in 1918 (Ciocca 2007, 172). While private consumption grew by 6 percent from 1913 to 1918, the numbers for public consumption were unheard of: rising by almost 500 percent. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 131

Categorization

• XREF: Sets the baseline of wartime economic mobilization that Mattei’s ‘capital order’ argument — austerity as reaction to this mobilization — depends on; connects to the book’s central paradox of wartime planning coexisting with later austerity. — connects to: World War I turned British and Italian states into their economies’ chief producers — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 215; World War I compelled Britain and Italy to subordinate private profit to political need — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 107; World War One’s war economy transformed Turin’s industrial and class composition (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Italy’s war economy grew through massive state subsidies and directed industrial intervention. #corroborates (0.95) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1653
• Italian war spending expanded state economic control at an unprecedented scale #corroborates (0.92) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 131
• WWI’s state economic control revealed the economy’s inherent political nature #expands (0.88)
• World War One’s war economy transformed Turin’s industrial and class composition #corroborates (0.85)
• World War I enormously strengthened and concentrated Italian industrial capital #expands (0.84) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 86
• Italian state expropriated industrial patents and plants during wartime #exemplifies (0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 136
• Italian industry profited enormously from the First World War #corroborates (0.80)
• World War I proved production relations could be deliberately changed #expands (0.78) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 174
• World War I proved large redistributive state reforms were fiscally viable #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 225