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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2023
In the 1930s, Alberto Beneduce was considered ‘the dictator of the Italian economy’. He was the main financial advisor of the Duce; he founded many public entities, corporations and state-owned companies; and he mastered Italian banking and industrial policy between 1925 and 1940. Beneduce's career is particularly important for his position within the regime: he was very close to Mussolini but he never had any political role. He represented the spearhead of that bureaucratic and managerial class that neither joined the Fascist Party nor opposed it, yet chose to cooperate with the regime once it was established. In political terms, the figure of Beneduce has remained in a twilight zone. This article takes into account the vision of Alberto Beneduce throughout his career, focusing particularly on the fascist period when he played a major role as gatekeeper between financial, industrial and political power.
1 Stefani, Alberto De, Baraonda bancaria (Milan: Edizioni del Borghese, 1960), 518Google Scholar; Amatori, Franco, ‘IRI: Financial Intermediary or Entrepreneurial State?’, Financial History Review, 27, 3 (2020), 436–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Franzinelli, Mimmo and Magnani, Marco, Beneduce. Il finanziere di Mussolini (Milan: Mondadori, 2009)Google Scholar.
2 Dialogue between Senator Giovanni Silvestri and the wife of the important industrialist Ettore Conti, 14 Mar. 1934, ACS, spd, cr B 94, first reported by Cianci, Ernesto, Nascita dello Stato imprenditore in Italia (Turin: Mursia, 1977), 116Google Scholar.
3 In terms of literature on economic history, see Barca, Fabrizio, ed., Storia del capitalismo italiano (Florence:Donzelli, 2010)Google Scholar; AA.VV, L'insegnamento di Alberto Beneduce (Soveria Manelli: Rubbettino Editore, 2014); Bonelli, Franco, ‘Alberto Beneduce’, in Mortara, Alberto, ed., Protagonisti dell'intervento pubblico (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1984), 329–53Google Scholar; Castronovo, Valerio, Storia dell'IRI. Dalle origini al dopoguerra: 1933–1948 (Rome: Laterza, 2012)Google Scholar vol. I; Ciocca, Pierluigi, Storia dell'IRI. L'IRI nell'economia italiana (Rome: Editori Laterza, 2015) 6Google Scholar. Concerning administrative history, see Melis, Guido, La macchina imperfetta. Immagine e realtà dello Stato fascista (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2018)Google Scholar; Ferretti, Roberto, L'IRI come amministrazione (Rome: Quaderni ISAP, 2014)Google Scholar. In terms of political history, the only two works on Beneduce are Serena Potito, Il primo Beneduce, 1912–1922 (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2004); Mimmo Franzinelli and Marco Magnani, Beneduce. Il finanziere di Mussolini (Milan: Mondadori, 2009); while a more comprehensive description of the figure of Beneduce is provided in AA.VV., Alberto Beneduce e i problemi dell'economia italiana del suo tempo (Rome: Edindustria, 1985). However, Beneduce was treated as a marginal figure by the major Italian political historians of fascism such as De Felice, Aquarone, Vivarelli and Gentile.
4 His figure is barely considered, for example, by Adrian Lyttleton, Denis Mack-Smith, Stanley Paine or Robert Paxton. In addition, the role of the technocrat is not taken into account by R. J. B. Bosworth, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Fascism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). There are some hints on Beneduce in Jean-Yves Dormagen, Logiques du fascisme: L’état totalitaire en Italie (Paris: Fayard, 2007).
5 Claudio Pavone, Alle origini delle Repubblica (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995).
6 On the institutional continuity of the Beneduce entities in the Republican era, see Leonida Tedoldi, Storia dello Stato Italiano (Rome: Laterza, 2018); Guido Melis, Storia della pubblica amministrazione italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996); Giuseppe Astuto, Dal centralismo napoleonico al federalismo amministrativo (Rome: Carrocci, 2017); Marcello De Cecco, ‘Splendore e crisi del sistema Beneduce’, in Fabrizio Barca, ed., Storia del capitalismo italiano (Florence: Donzelli, 2010), 389–405.
7 De Cecco, ‘Splendore e crisi del sistema Beneduce’, 389–405.
8 On managerialism and technocracy, see Roy G. Olson, Scientism and Technocracy in the Twentieth Century (New York, NY: Lexington Books, 2016); Lorenzo Castellani, L'ingranaggio del potere (Macerata: Liberilibri, 2020); On the influence of the US debate in Europe on these concepts see C. S. Maier, In Search of Stability: Explorations in Historical Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Lorenzo Castellani, The History of the US Civil Service. From the Post-War Years to the Twenty-First Century (New York, NY: Routledge, 2021).
9 S. Romano, L'Ordinamento giuridico (1918 first edn) (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2019).
10 In the same vein, the pluralist conception of the state was shaped by contemporary scholars Leon Duguit and Maurice Hauriou. See Jean Michel Blanquer and Marc Milet, L’ Invention de l’Etat: Léon Duguit, Maurice Hauriou et la naissance du droit public moderne (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2015).
11 Santi Romano, like Alberto Beneduce, was an ‘a-fascist’ who cooperated with the regime, becoming the President of the Council of State in the 1930s. See Sabino Cassese, Lo stato fascista (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007).
12 In the realm of industrial policy – those policies designed to shape firms, industries and markets – governments likewise tried to reverse the economic downturn by changing their traditional strategy. The United States abandoned market regulation in favour of state-led cartelisation; the United Kingdom supplanted policies designed to sustain small firms with policies designed to create huge monopolies; France replaced liberalism with étatisme; and Italy started massive public intervention in the financial and economic sector through state-owned holdings. On the United States, see Hawley, Ellis W., New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study on Economic Ambivalence (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; On France, Kuisel, Roland F., Capitalism and the State in Modern France: Renovation and Economic Management in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; on the United Kingdom, see Ritschel, Daniel, The Politics of Planning: The Debate on Economic Planning in Britain in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1997CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Italy, Barca, Storia del capitalismo italiano, 2010.
13 See Cassese, Lo Stato fascista, 25.
14 John M. Keynes, ‘The End of Laissez-faire’ (1926) in Essays in Persuasion (London, 1963), 313.
15 Technocracy expressed a preference for a working method which separates technical issues from politics. According to the advocates of technocratic thought, a common separation strategy was to ‘technify’ the discussion, in other words, to define certain issues as technical and non-political. For a broad overview, see L. Castellani, L'ingranaggio del potere (Macerata: Liberilibri, 2020); on the 1930s technocracy, see Johan Schot and Vincent Lagendijk, ‘Technocratic Internationalism in the Interwar Years: Building Europe on Motorways and Electricity Networks’, Journal of Modern European History’, 6, 2 (2008), 196–217.
16 Charles S. Maier, ‘Between Taylorism and Technocracy: European Ideologies and the Vision of Industrial Productivity in the 1920s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 5, 2 (1970), 27–61. On North American technocracy, see William H. Smyth, Technocracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1920); William Akin, Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocracy Movement 1900–1941 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Brian H. Burris, Technocracy at Work (New York, NY: State University of New York Press 1993), 25.
17 Lucio Villari, Introduzione a Rathenau (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), XVIII.
18 Roland F. Kuisel, Ernest Mercier French Technocrat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); Jean Meynaud, La Technocratie, mythe ou réalité (Paris: Payot, 1964); Olivier Dard, ‘Voyage à l’intérieur d’X-Crise’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, XLVII (47), (1995), 132–47.
19 Alfredo Salsano, L'altro corporativismo. Tecnocrazia e managerialismo tra le due guerre (Turin: Il Segnalibro, 2003); Camillo Pellizzi, Una rivoluzione mancata (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009).
20 His father was a concierge who then became a small businessman in the printing sector.
21 In just a few years, he reached the highest ranks of freemasonry and in 1912 he was appointed as a member of the Central Committee of the Grande Oriente.
22 In the same year Beneduce won a post as ‘Ispettore dei demani comunali e degli usi civici’ and he started to cooperate as well with the Commissioner for Emigration at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he studied the statistics on the repatriation of emigrants from the United States.
23 Beneduce was introduced to Nitti in 1909 by the jurist Lodovico Mortara, whose son Giorgio was a friend of Beneduce and who was a colleague of Nitti's at the University of Naples. The interest in collaboration emerges in a letter from Nitti to Beneduce in April 1909: ‘This year, on the occasion of the budget, I will deal at length with the problems of the Ministry of Agriculture. I would be grateful if you could gather all the elements that are relevant’, see Serena Potito, L’insegnamento di Alberto Beneduce (Soveria Manelli: Rubbettino Editore), 2014, 28.
24 Giovanni Orsina, Senza chiesa né classe (Rome: Carocci, 1998), 1. As Orsina points out, reformism, intended as the capacity to organise a new industrialised and democratic state, and trust in scientific competence as a prerequisite for political activity, were shared by all the radicals and also by Nitti’s assistants.
25 In this context, there was the influence of modern ideological conceptions relating to the relationship between the state and the insurance sector, which were spreading in Europe. In particular, the theories of the ‘socialists of the chair’ in Germany envisaged insurance as a necessary public service and therefore detached from market trends. See Alfredo Jorio, ‘Impresa di assicurazione e controllo pubblico’, Quaderni di Giurisprudenza commerciale, 29, (1980) 24–6.
26 The INA was the forerunner of a new class of specialised financial bodies that sought to limit risk and uncertainty in economic life. See Nicola De Ianni, ‘Il viaggio breve. Beneduce dal socialismo al fascismo’, Rivista di Storia Finanziaria (2005), 48.
27 Ascd, Atti Parlamentari, Relazione al disegno di legge presentato da Nitti sui Provvedimenti per l'esercizio delle assicurazioni sulla durata della vita umana da parte di un Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni (3 Jun. 1911), 23.
28 Daniela Felisini, ‘Between State and Market: Managerial Capitalism Italian Style: IRI, 1933–1970’, Revista de Historia Industrial, XXIII, 54 (2014), 1.
29 In the conflict, Beneduce probably saw a chance for the redistribution of political and economic power. He argued: ‘it will be necessary to respond to the need for growing intervention by the state in the economy and this can be achieved by organizing this intervention in specialized offices, outside of the public administration, with the necessary autonomy to operate in a market economy.’ As reported by Pasquale Saraceno, ‘Keynes e la politica italiana di piena occupazione’, Studi Svimez, 36, 7–8 (1983), 279–98.
30 Guido Melis, La macchina imperfetta. Immagine e realtà dello Stato fascista (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2018).
31 Crediop, together with the ICIPU founded in 1924, can be considered the forerunner of the IRI and the banking law of 1936 with its intention of decoupling medium-term credit for industries from universal banks. The idea of creating specialised institutions to manage different financial risks was the basis of Beneduce's strategy. Indeed, for the riskier loans to industries, different tools were needed than those of traditional banking. See Paolo Baratta, Alberto Beneduce e la costituzione e gestione del CREDIOP e dell'ICIPU (Rome: Edindustria, 1985); Marcello De Cecco and Pier Francesco Asso, Storia del CREDIOP (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1994).
32 On the Red Biennium see Piero Melograni, ‘Lenin, Italy and Fairy-Tales 1919–20’, in Challenges of Labour (London: Routledge, 2002), 241–50; Pietro Di Paola, ‘Biennio Rosso (1919–1920)’, The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest (2009), 1–3; Charles L. Bertrand, ‘The Biennio Rosso: Anarchists and Revolutionary Syndicalists in Italy, 1919–1920’, Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques (1982), 383–402; Vera Zamagni, ‘Industrial Wages and Workers’ Protest in Italy during the “Biennio Rosso” (1919–1920)’, Journal of European Economic History, 20, 1 (1991), 137–49.
33 In this context, his technocratic vision was taking shape; he wrote in 1920:
Our war . . . has definitively placed two great values at the forefront of all people's lives: the popular mass and technology . . . It is necessary to understand these new world forces and channel them toward the broad path that leads to the independence of the subject peoples, to new superstate bonds, to new relations between all the factors of the productive life of each nation. . . . We believe in the values exalted by war: mass and technology. (Reported by Potito [2014], 119).
And on another occasion:
It is necessary to integrate the workers’ organisation with the technicians’ organisation. We must form the unity of the enterprise in its organisation. We will thus have separated the fate and interests of financial capital from the needs of human capital. Why reject the collaboration of the productive middle classes? The working masses have neither the spiritual preparation nor the technical qualification to take over the direction of the economy and politics on their own. (letter from Alberto Beneduce to his socialist compatriot Ernesto Cesare Longobardi, 11 Sep. 1920, AsBI, CB, c.67, f.96–97)
34 He was appointed member of the Commissione di vigilanza sugli istituti di emissione (1919) and of the Commissione per la difesa della valuta italiana (1919) and of the Comitato per i trattati commerciali (1919); Chairman of the Cassa nazionale di previdenza per l'invalidità e la vecchiaia (1919); member of the board of the Consiglio Superiore del Credito (1920) and of the Consiglio superiore della previdenza e assicurazioni sociali; member of the Committee of the Red Cross (1920); member of the board of Cassa Nazionale delle Assicurazioni Sociali (1921) and of the Consiglio Superiore per l'istruzione commericiale (1921); member of the Consiglio permanente della previdenza e delle assicurazioni sociali (1921); member of the Consiglio Superiore di Statistica (1921); member of the board of the Cassa nazionale per gli infortuni sul lavoro (1922); and President of the Istituto nazionale di previdenza degli impiegati subalterni e dei loro orfani (1922).
35 AsBI, Carte Beneduce, cart. 109, ‘Azioni necessarie per ridurre gli squilibri internazionali’, Beneduce speech at Brussels Conference, 29 Sep. 1920.
36 AsBI, CB, n.300 f.12, Beneduce was exchanging letters concerning the economic scenario with Giuseppe Toepliz, CEO of Banca Commerciale Italiana; with Commendatore Carlo Orsi, Director-General of CREDIT. And AsBI, CB, n.109, f.1 with industrialists Alberto Pirelli, Pio Perrone and Ettore Conti; with the Vice-Secretary of the League of Nations, the diplomat Bernardo Attolico. Beneduce also met with Jean Monnet in 1920 as reported in a letter to Nitti, AsBI, CB, n.110 f.2, Beneduce to President Nitti, 21 Mar. 1920.
37 He was appointed a member of the board of the Istituto Nazionale dei cambi con l'estero (1919); then Chairman of the Cassa Nazionale di previdenza per l'invalidità e la vecchiaia degli operai (1919); Member of the Board of the Consiglio superiore del credito and the Consiglio superiore della previdenza e assicurazioni sociali (1920).
38 See Potito (2014), 28.
39 AsBI, CB, c. 237 f. 33 Beneduce's letter to Bonomi, Jan. 1924, 14.
40 While Nitti, after the consolidation of the fascist regime, opted for exile, Beneduce initially kept himself out of the fray but, by 1925, he slowly reached out to Mussolini, ultimately becoming his most influential advisor. Indeed, 1925, according to the historian Potito, ‘marked a precise turning-point in Beneduce’s approach to politics’, 2004, 16.
41 M. Franzinelli and M. Magnani, Beneduce, 135.
42 There is no other archival evidence of Beneduce's interpretation of Matteotti's murder. He probably just chose the strategy of silence.
43 This attitude emerged as from 1923. See AsBI, Relazione al fondo n.1, correspondence with the family, 1919–1939, 8. Beneduce placed many relatives within the ranks of banks and the public administration.
44 Benito Mussolini, ‘Il nuovo governo’, Il Popolo d'Italia, 5 Jul. 1921.
45 See Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Christopher Duggan, Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini's Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Christopher Duggan, ‘The Internalisation of the Cult of the Duce: The Evidence of Diaries and Letters’, in The Cult of the Duce (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 129–43.
46 Emilio Gentile, Storia del partito fascista 1919–1922. Movimento e mila (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1989). See also Mario Isnenghi, L'Italia del Fascio (Turin: Giunti, 1998).
47 On the centralisation of decision-making in the fascist state, see Paul Corner, The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini's Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) and Paul Corner, ‘Everyday Fascism in the 1930s: Centre and Periphery in the Decline of Mussolini's Dictatorship’, Contemporary European History, 15, 2 (2006), 195–222.
48 As pointed out by Daniel Musiedlak, Lo stato fascista e la sua classe politica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003) and Jean-Yves Dormagen, Logiques du fascisme, 237.
49 He continued:
Indeed, Fascism never made an intrusion into the life of private companies in order to impose its men or its methods. With regard to IRI companies, the intervention of the Government or the party was limited to suggesting a few names to be included on the boards of directors, in general: former ambassadors, senior state officials, exceptionally some quiet off-duty hierarchs. (Felice Guarneri, Battaglie economiche fra le due guerre [Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988], 421–2)
50 Jean Yves Dormagen, Logiques du fascisme, 237–41.
51 Roberto Ferretti, ‘L'IRI nel sistema politico-amministrativo fascista’, Amministrare, 1 (2013), 121.
52 Ibid., 109.
53 AsBI, CB, n.313, f.1 Beneduce to Osvaldo Sebastiani, 20 Dec. 1934.
54 As Iri, Sn, Au, Copial. (1927–51), Pres. e Vicepr., Riservati (1933–1951), Segreteria. Beneduce to Benito Mussolini – Head of Government, 31 Jul. 1934; AsBI, CB, n.310, f.1 Beneduce to Mussolini, 8 Mar. 1935 where Beneduce informed Mussolini about the sale of Breda's stocks and the ILVA shareholders’ assembly; AsBI, CB, n.310, f.4 Beneduce to Mussolini, where the banker informed the Duce on IRI's shareholdings.
55 AsBI, CB, n.310, f.1 Beneduce to Mussolini, 23 Jan. 1932.
56 Ibid. (via Sebastiani), 8 Mar. 1935.
57 See AsBI, CB, f.6949, Beneduce to Mussolini, 31 Jan. 1936 (Crediop); ibid., 17 Nov. 1937; AsBI, CB, no.313 f.1, Chiavolini thanks Beneduce after the resolution approved by the IRI Board of Directors to donate two hundred thousand lire per year to the party's welfare projects.
58 A practice widely diffused as demonstrated by Paolo Giovannini and Marco Palla. Il Fascismo dalle mani sporche: dittatura, corruzione, affarismo (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2019).
59 Years later, the first-hand account of Beneduce's son-in-law, the banker Enrico Cuccia, was that the Chairman of the IRI was ‘the only one who had the privilege of sitting in front of the Duce in the Sala del Mappamondo’. S. Gerbi, Mattioli e Cuccia: due banchieri del Novecento (Turin: Einaudi, 2007), 26.
60 AsBI, Beneduce to Tino, 28 Mar. 1925, AsBI, CB, c. 273, f.9, p.5. While in 1933, soon after the foundation of the IRI, Beneduce wrote: ‘Every nation lives its history day by day, and those who are out of the action are removed from the reality and life of their country. The struggle in the world is bitter and deadly. It is treason to withdraw.’ AsBI, Beneduce to Giuseppe Fusco, 23 Feb. 1933, CB, n.c. 250, fasc.5.
61 The former Minister of Finance in the first Mussolini government, Alberto de Stefani, commented on Beneduce: ‘The bewitcher of Bonaldo Stringher was Alberto Beneduce. He was enchanted by him in every decision of any importance. It was not surprising because Beneduce had such power that few men in finance or business operators were able to escape it’, and he continued on Beneduce's neutral pragmatism: ‘He was shrewd enough not to include in his analyses any ideology, teleology and purpose that would have raised Stringher's suspicions; and so he limited himself to the dialectic of acceptable perspectives, of compromise solutions, imposed by the force majeure of events, categorically avoiding raising the issue of the choice between private and public resolution’; in Alberto De Stefani, Baraonda bancaria, 522.
62 Beneduce to On. Alberto Asquini, Undersecretary to the Minister of Corporations, 14 Dec. 1933, in As Iri, Sn, Au, Copial. (1927–51), Pres. e Vicepr., Pres. e Comm. 1933–45, Pres.ris. 1933–4.
63 President Beneduce, to Achille Starace, Secretary of the PNF, 5 Oct. 1933, As Iri, Sn, Au, Copial. (1927–51), Pres. e Vicepr., Pres. e Comm. 1933–45, Pres.ris. 1933–4.
64 Beneduce to Osvaldo Sebastiani, Mussolini's Private Secretary, 26 July 1935, in As Iri, Sn, Au, Copial. (1927–51), Pres. e Vicepr., Pres. e Comm. 1933–45, Pres. corr. Iri e pers. 1934–5.
65 Beneduce to S. E. Galeazzo Ciano, 5 Dec. 1934, in As Iri, Sn, Au, Copial. (1927–51), Pres. e Vicepr., Riservati (1933–51), Segr. Corr. Ris 1934–42.
66 AsBI, CB n. 250, f.11 Beneduce to Alberto Pirelli, 25 Aug. 1931; AsBI, CB, n.276, f.12, Pirelli to Beneduce, 1931, on the BRI board composition. In these letters the tone between the two men is friendly and intimate; AsBI, CB, n.270, f.1 Alberti to Beneduce, where Alberti looks for advice from Beneduce on appointments of members of the bank's board, 12 Jan. 1925. Concerning the relationship with Ettore Conti and Pio Perrone, we know that in 1920 Beneduce met the two industrialists and was a technician appreciated by them. AsBI, CB, n.109, f.1. Pio Perrone to Alberto Beneduce, 4 Sep. 1920 and Ettore Conti to Alberto Beneduce 19 Sep. 1920. Both industrialists relied on Beneduce to obtain information on the 1920 Brussels International Financial Conference. With Toeplitz they discussed the economic scenario AsBI, CB, n.300 f.12, Toeplitz to Beneduce, 14 Sep. 1920.
67 The corporate purpose of the ICIPU was to finance private companies’ concessionary works of public utility which were of strategic importance for the country, in particular the development of electric industries.
68 According to his young compatriot Pasquale Saraceno, Beneduce was a Mussolinian rather than a fascist. See P. Saraceno, ‘IRI: Its Origin and Its Position in the Italian Industrial Economy (1933–1953)’, Journal of Industrial Economics, 3, 3 (1955), 197–221.
69 ASBI, CB, no. 226. Thomas W. Lamont to Beneduce, 14 Nov. 1925.
70 ASBI, Rapporti con l'estero, cart.18, Resoconto sui prestiti anglo-americani alle società italiane.
71 ASBI, CB, no.152 fasc. 3, 22 Dec. 1925.
72 Rumours reported by the national newspaper Il Mattino, 12 May 1925, in ASBI, CB, no.152, fasc.3.
73 E. Cianci, Nascita dello Stato imprenditore in Italia, 1977.
74 Regio decreto legge 5 Jul. 1928, no. 1817; see cfr. ACS, Crediop, Archivi aggregati, ICN, fascicolo 19.
75 The IMI was organised following the usual Beneduce scheme, with business-like governance. Beneduce became part of the IMI's executive board.
76 He was esteemed by Volpi and Stringher, and he built an international network by participating in the conferences in Brussels and Genoa in the early 1920s.
77 Lorenzo Iaselli, ‘Credito mobiliare, prestiti esteri e questione monetaria: il ruolo di Alberto Beneduce nel sistema finanziario del suo tempo’, in AA.VV., L'insegnamento di Alberto Beneduce, 135–51.
78 On fascism's foreign policy, see E. Collotti, Fascismo e politica di potenza. Politica estera 1922–1939 (Rome: La Nuova Italia, 2000); Gian Giacomo Migione, The United States and Fascist Italy: The Rise of American Finance in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Giandomenico Piluso, L'Italia e il gold standard: genesi e razionalità del modello Beneduce 1905–1935 (2011), 13–33.
79 Leandro Conte, ‘I prestiti esteri’, in Luigi De Rosa, ed., Storia dell'industria elettrica in Italia (Rome-Bari: Laterza) vol. II, 625–707.
80 In Italy the crisis was no less severe than in other industrial countries. It provoked the collapse of the currency, a striking reduction in real GDP (calculated in euros, from 228 to 132 million), the bankruptcy of almost 500 joint-stock companies (60% of the total), and a massive increase in industrial unemployment (more than 50% in 1929–33).
81 Already in 1926, the banking system had been reformed through decree laws, setting new rules and supervisory authorities. However, partly as a consequence of the fragmentation of supervisory responsibilities, partly due to the poor implementation of the 1926 law, and above all due to the failure to terminate the link between banks and companies, further intervention was necessary.
82 AsBI, Carte Jung, Beneduce to Jung, Geneva, 14 Jan. 1933.
83 AsBI, Carte Jung, Beneduce to Jung, 19 Jan. 1933.
84 Indeed, the industrial companies controlled by the IRI, once reorganised, would have to be sold back to the private sector. A specific section of the Institute, Sezione Smobilizzi, was created to achieve this aim.
85 As Iri, Sn, As, Studi, 1933–1944, Studio sui problemi del risanamento bancario (Menichella report), 5 Dec. 1933.
86 See Carlo Alberto Russo, ‘Bank Nationalizations of the 1930s in Italy: The IRI Formula’, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 13, 2 (2012).
87 Quoted by M. Marraffi, Politica ed Economia in Italia. La vicenda dell'impresa pubblica dagli anni Trenta agli anni Cinquanta (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), 57.
88 Valerio Castronovo, Giovanni Agnelli (Turin: UTET, 1971), 537.
89 The Economist, 4 Feb. 1933 in Archivio Fondazione Luigi Einaudi Opera Omnia: https://www.luigieinaudi.it/archivio-mobile/ (last visited 12 October 2022).
90 See Carlo Spagnolo, ‘Donato Menichella’, in Alberto Mortara, ed., Protagonisti dell'intervento pubblico in Italia (Turin: CIRIEC: 2012).
91 G. Guarino and G. Toniolo, La Banca d'Italia e il sistema bancario 1919–1936 (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1993).
92 The story of Beneduce's group reaffirms the idea, clearly set out by Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto, that politics is above all the work of the elites: ‘the entire Italian history' – wrote Guido Dorso – ‘is nothing but the masterpiece [or the failure] of small nuclei, which have always thought and acted for the absent crowds’, Guido Dorso, Prefazione a ‘La rivoluzione meridionale’ (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1944), 5.
93 By virtue of R. D. 24 Jun. 1937, no. 905.
94 Valerio Castronovo, Storia dell'IRI, Kindle Ed., pos. 954.
95 Donato Menichella, Stabilità e sviluppo dell’economia italiana 1946–1960. 1: Documenti e discorsi (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1997), 850.
96 Giulio Sapelli, Organizzazione, lavoro e innovazione industriale nell'Italia tra le due guerre (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1978).
97 AsBI, CB, n.310, fasc.5, 2 Dec. 1938, Beneduce's speech at IRI's training course inauguration.
98 Amatori, Franco, ‘IRI: Financial Intermediary or Entrepreneurial State?’, Financial History Review, 27, 3 (2020), 436–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
99 That the banking law was drafted in IRI environments by a staff composed, in addition to Beneduce, of Menichella, Saraceno and De Gregorio, is an established fact. See Cassese, Sabino, ‘La preparazione della riforma bancaria del 1936 in Italia’, Storia Contemporanea (1974), 3.Google Scholar
100 He was then appointed Senator in 1940 and enrolled as a member of the Fascist Party ad honorem.
101 The IRI would continue its activity up to 1999; the IMI would close only in 1998; CREDIOP and ICIPU would remain in place up to the 1960s.
102 Donato Menichella, Beneduce's director-general at the IRI, was appointed Governor of the Bank of Italy (1946–60); Francesco Giordani, who replaced Beneduce as IRI's Chairman (1939–43), became Executive Vice-President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1946–50) and then Chairman of the Consiglio Nazionale Ricerche (1943–4; 1956–60); Pasquale Saraceno, hired by Beneduce at the IRI, in the post-war became a top executive of the holding, chairman of SVIMEZ and an important public intellectual; Guido Carli, hired by the IRI in 1937, then became Governor of the Bank of Italy (1960–75) and Minister of Finance (1989–92); Raffaele Mattioli, who worked in the COMIT research office (1927–45), would become CEO and then Chairman of the Bank (1960); Enrico Cuccia, who married Beneduce's daughter, was an employee of the IRI and the Bank of Italy. In the post-war, he was one of the founders of Mediobanca, of which he became Managing Director in 1949, remaining in office up to 2000. He was considered one of the most influential economic figures of the post-war period.
103 On Mediobanca's history, see Farese, Giovanni, Mediobanca e le relazioni economiche internazionali dell'Italia. Atlantismo, integrazione europea e sviluppo dell'Africa, 1944–1971 (Milan: Archivio Storico Mediobanca, 2020)Google Scholar.
104 AsBI, 9 DA, Pratt. 28, f.2, p.6 Monnet's letter to Beneduce, 5 Aug. 1936. In the letter, Monnet apologises because he would ‘not have the pleasure to see you again’. So, their relations were certainly established. From another document we learn that ‘the banker Monnet (Monnet-Murnane and Co – 30 Broad Street New York) had the opportunity to meet His Excellency Beneduce in Basel about the credits for the purchase of cotton in America’. AsBI, Ibid., 3.
105 Giovanni Farese, Mediobanca e le relazioni economiche internazionali dell'Italia. Atlantismo, integrazione europea e sviluppo dell'Africa, 1944–1971, 250–6.
106 Paolo Ungari, ‘Ideologie giuridiche e strategie istituzionali del fascismo’, in Alberto Aquarone and Massimo Vernasse (a cura di) Il regime fascista (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1974), 45–57.
107 On Mussolianism, see Melograni, Piero, ‘The Cult of the Duce in Mussolini's Italy’, Journal of Contemporary History, 4, Special Issue: Theories of Fascism (1976), 221–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
108 Migone, Gian Giacomo, The United States and Fascist Italy: The Rise of American Finance in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
109 D. Menichella, ‘Scritti e discorsi scelti, 1933–1966’ (Rome: Laterza, 1986), 51–2.
