Keywords

• During the First World War
• while forming his political views
• although Gramsci supported the principles of liberism under the influence of Luigi Einaudi
• his admiration was at the same time accompanied by severe criticism. Namely
• he accused Einaudi of double-dealing: in the magazine La Riforma sociale
• only a small number of copies of which were sold
• he strongly criticized capitalism and its degenerations
• while in the newspaper Corriere della Sera
• he preferred to remain silent. In late 1917
• Gramsci heightened his polemical attitude towards the liberalists and their main supporter
• also by considering them the parties most responsible for the countryâ€
• ™
• s political and economic disorganization
• as they had failed in their attempt to spread individualistic philosophy in Italy
• which would have allowed the rise of a genuinely liberal government. In 1919
• Gramsci rapidly distanced himself from liberalism
• because he deemed it was incapable of explaining the alterations produced by the War in social and economic life
• and he was convinced that only revolution could save humanity from the abyss into which it had plunged. Einaudiâ€
• ™
• s name disappeared from his writings at the very moment when Lâ€
• ™
• Ordine Nuovo and the Factory Councils movement caught the attention of economists and of Corriere della Sera. Subsequently
• Einaudi was mentioned again
• but only in the reflections written in prison
• in which Gramsci strongly attacked him for his ideas on the economic crisis
• relegating him to a less important position
• somewhere down in the circle of the greatest unworthy intellectuals: the loriani