2L - Challenges to the ruling elites: industrialisation and social change
Industrial growth created new wealth and new groups capable of organising outside the old liberal elite. This lesson explains how workers, socialists, Catholics and nationalists challenged the ways in which Italy was governed before 1915.
Industrial growth and social change
Industrialisation strengthened Italy's economy while changing the relationships between employers, workers and government. Growth accelerated from the later 1890s, especially around Milan, Turin and Genoa. Expanding textiles and engineering stood alongside steel, shipbuilding, electricity and motor production. Fiat's foundation in 1899 illustrates the emergence of a new industry, although motor cars were not yet a possession of most Italians.
Several developments worked together. Railways connected suppliers and markets; tariffs protected parts of domestic production; government orders supported industries producing ships, weapons and infrastructure. Hydroelectric power reduced some dependence on imported coal. The mixed banks, including Banca Commerciale Italiana and Credito Italiano, combined ordinary banking with finance for industrial businesses. Their investment helped firms expand, but closely linked the health of banks and industry: industrial difficulties could become financial difficulties.
Growth was concentrated rather than uniform. Northern factories could offer more regular work than some rural employment, but workers faced long hours, dangerous conditions and insecurity. Rural migrants increased the populations of industrial towns. Living and working close together made collective organisation more feasible: a dispute affecting one factory could become part of a wider movement. Literacy, newspapers, meeting places and associations spread political ideas beyond the circles of local notables.
Industrial working class
People mainly dependent on wages from industrial employment. Their shared position could encourage collective action, but differences in skill, income, region and political outlook prevented them from acting as one identical group.
Industrialisation also expanded the middle classes of managers, engineers, officials, clerical workers and small business owners. Some favoured liberal reforms and economic progress; others resented parliamentary bargaining or feared socialist influence. Employers themselves organised more strongly, including through the foundation of Confindustria in 1910. Politics therefore involved increasingly organised interests on several sides.
A causal explanation needs both sides of this process. Industrial growth increased the resources that governments could use for reform, but it also raised expectations and enabled pressure from below. The ruling elites could not assume that economic progress would automatically produce gratitude. If workers believed that they had created wealth without receiving fair wages or influence, growth could intensify rather than settle political conflict.
Socialism, unions and direct action
Socialism offered an organised challenge to a state closely associated with property-owning elites. The movement that became the Italian Socialist Party, or PSI, was founded in 1892. It connected parliamentary activity with newspapers, local government, cooperatives and workers' organisations. The Confederazione Generale del Lavoro, the CGL, was founded in 1906 as a national trade-union confederation. Socialist agricultural leagues also organised labourers in the Po Valley, showing that socialism was not confined to urban factories.
Reformist and revolutionary socialism
Reformists sought improvements through elections, legislation and organised bargaining as steps towards wider social change. Revolutionaries believed that the existing capitalist order needed a more decisive overthrow. These approaches could disagree about whether cooperation with liberal governments strengthened workers or weakened their independence.
Filippo Turati represented the reformist approach. Supporting a useful law did not mean abandoning socialist goals or accepting every action of a liberal ministry. Giolitti hoped that reformist influence would encourage workers to seek gains within the constitutional state. Turati's refusal to join Giolitti's government also reveals the limits of that strategy: a socialist leader had to consider his party's independence and members' opposition to an elite-led state.
Revolutionary syndicalists placed particular faith in direct action by workers' organisations, including the general strike, rather than in parliamentary bargaining. An economic strike sought a specific improvement such as higher pay; a political general strike could aim to challenge the government's authority. The general strike of 1904 showed the potential scale of collective action. Giolitti avoided an immediate nationwide military confrontation and used elections to strengthen his position, demonstrating that mobilisation did not automatically defeat the state.
The PSI's internal balance changed. The war in Libya intensified opposition to cooperation with Giolitti. At the 1912 congress, revolutionary influence increased; Benito Mussolini became editor of the socialist newspaper Avanti! later that year. He was then a socialist opponent of colonial war, not already the leader of a Fascist party. His later change of position must be explained through the war and subsequent political choices.
Socialist organisation made grievances more politically effective by supplying leaders, funds, communication and a programme. Its divisions also mattered. Reformists might achieve immediate gains, while revolutionaries accused them of accommodating the system. Calling the entire PSI revolutionary misses these tensions; describing it as merely a collection of wage demands misses its challenge to the political and economic order.
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