The Great War and Italian Economists The End, Transformation or Restoration of Capitalism?

The Great War forced Italian economists to question the coherence of the theories supported apropos the exceptional nature of the conflict along with the potential developments which such an event could favour in the aftermath of the war. Once the war effort was over and done most economists fell back on the argument that the financial policy of the state needed to conform to the paradigm of “Smithian dogmatism”. However, two economists stood out as exceptions to this picture: Achille Loria, member of the school of historical materialism, and Maffeo Pantaleoni, an orthodox advocate of the marginalist approach. Attilio Cabiati, the third economist considered in the paper, developed a well-considered analysis of the changes to the monetary mechanisms regulating international trade. Cabiati developed novel ideas regarding the hitherto widely shared cornerstones of the economic paradigm.