State intervention in Italy during the nineteen-seventies and eighties: 'the heresy' of Federico Caffè

Set against the background of the cultural transformation that led to the rise of laissez-faire economic policies in Italy between the early 1970s and the mid 1980s, the essay highlights the figure of the economist Federico Caffè, a passionate defender of the economic role of government. His arguments rested partly on a careful and far-sighted consideration of the social costs inherent in the revival of a laissez-faire approach, and partly also on his conviction of the potential for social improvement as an intrinsic aspect of government intervention in the economy. Caffè’s vision, as expressed in his writings, mirrored the changing nature of the public sector in Italy during the period in question; consequently, his words fell on the ears of a public opinion that was increasingly deaf to his defence of the State and was unresponsive to his anguished appeal, in which he stressed the need to safeguard conscious collective action as the only means of civil advancement.