EINAUDI, LUIGI

(1874–1961)

   Aprofessor who became the first constitutionally elected president of the Italian Republic in 1948, Luigi Einaudi was the most prominent spokesman in Italy in the 20th century for economic liberalism and for a state whose role was strictly limited to what he called “the government of things.” Born in Cuneo (Piedmont) in 1874, the young Einaudi divided his time between his duties as a professor of finance at the University of Turin and as editorialist for La Stampa and Corriere della Sera. Like Luigi Albertini, his editor at the Corriere della Sera, Einaudi was an early opponent of Fascism. He spoke out against the violence and authoritarianism of Benito Mussolini’s movement even before the March onRomeand continued his criticisms after Mussolini had come to power.When Albertini was removed from the editorship of the Corrierein 1925, Einaudi’s long collaboration with the paper also came to an end. There was no place at a Fascist newspaper for a writer who praised free markets and European unification and had signed the manifesto of antifascist intellectuals published by Benedetto Croce in 1925. In 1930, an academic review that Einaudi had edited since 1908, Riforma sociale (Social Reform), was also suppressed by the authorities. Einaudi was able to continue with his scholarly work, however. His key work on economics, Principi della scienza delle finanze (Principles of the Science of Finances), was published in 1932, and he also was able to write a series of studies on the classical economists.

   After the fall of Mussolini in July 1943, Einaudi became rector of the University of Turin, but he was swiftly forced to flee to Switzerland to avoid capture by the Germans. Upon his return to Italy, he was made governor of the Banca d’Italia. He was elected to Parliament in June 1946 as a member of the Partito Liberale Italiano/Italian Liberal Party (PLI) and was soon given important economic responsibilities. In May 1947, Einaudi became budget minister and deputy prime minister in the first postwar government not to include the Partito Comunista Italiano/Italian Communist Party (PCI), and he introduced austerity policies that stabilized the plummeting lira. On 10 May 1948, he was elected president of the Republic. Einaudi served as president until 1955. He was an active scholar and writer up to his death in October 1961. His Prediche inutili (Useless Sermons)—reflections on the classical themes of political economy—appeared between 1955 and 1959. These “useless” sermons did not find much of an audience in 1950s Italy, where both the Democrazia Cristiana/Christian Democracy Party (DC) and the PCI were in the grip of dirigist economic philosophies, but Einaudi’s insistence on limited but efficient government, and his lifelong attachment to the cause of a united Europe, have much more resonance in contemporary Italy.

   See also Carli, Guido; European Integration; Gobetti, Piero.