ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: De Viti de Marco, the European War and President Wilson
Author: Martelloni Francesco, Mosca Manuela
Italy entered the war in May 1915, the USA in April 1917. 100 years on, this paper examines the viewpoint of the Italian political opinion nearest to President Wilson’s during the Great War. We do this via the writings of Antonio de Viti de Marco, the Italian economist widely known for his contribution to the pure theory of public finance, and as a precursor of public choice. His political career, on the other hand, is well known only in Italy: with this study we wish to extend his reputation beyond Italian borders. His dual role of politician and theorist also characterised the orientation of the Giornale degli economisti of which, together with other Italian marginalists like Pareto and Pantaleoni, he was director in the years of its greatest international prestige. The strength of De Viti’s connection to Anglo-Saxon culture derives from his English descent on his mother’s side, his marriage to an American, his trips to New York, his correspondence with economists like Seligman, the reviews and translations of his academic work and, last but not least, his political positions. Here we concentrate on his geo-political and economic ideas on the war, comparing them to those of other economists of the age like Barone, the two Clarks, Edgeworth, Einaudi, Keynes, Notz, Pantaleoni, Pigou, Seligman and von Mises. We then examine the positions of Italian democratic interventionists, those in favour of Italy’s entry into the conflict on the side of the Entente, despite its alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Unlike the nationalists, democratic interventionists interpreted the European war as a conflict between liberal democracies and authoritarian states, the latter viewed as a threat for western democratic civilisation, for its freedoms, and even for Italian independence itself. De Viti, with Gaetano Salvemini and others, hoped that the victory of the Entente would lead to a general process of liberal democratisation. This interventionism was inherited from the Risorgimento, especially the Mazzinian tradition, but found decisive confirmation in Wilson’s positions. Regarded as the standard bearer of democratic radicalism right from 1913, with the USA entering the war Wilson became its most prominent international leader. De Viti saw in him the interpreter of the interest “of the greatest number” and of the “general progress of the modern peoples”. But the Peace Treaties were to disappoint those hoping for the strengthening of European liberal-democracy.
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