Piero Gobetti On Liberal Revolution - Essay Example

In the book, Gobetti identifies two Italy. One of the Italy comprises of the enlightened and focus on modernity but it is small while the other comprises of the premodern is dominant and is characterized by traditionalism. Gobetti associates liberalism with other revolutionally movement. This essay focuses on my understanding of Gobetti’s ideologies in the book On Liberal Revolution. Gobetti live in the period after First World War when Italian liberalism had been abandoned and substituted by the great desire for power.

The political figures were ready to hold to power at all costs. Gobetti criticizes this kind of life and advocates for revival of true liberalism. Gobetti addressed fascist political culture. This is because there had been quite a number of liberal governments but they had not put much effort in establishing liberalism. This had led to failure of liberal economics and culture. He felt that Italy had failed in its efforts of establishing a middle class that benefited the nation as it had happened in Great Britain and France.

He felt that the middle class had played a great role in establishing successful liberal societies. However, the middle class in Italy was ineffective. Gobetti valued class liberalism since he believed that it was capable of to bring radical change (Gobetti, Urbinati, & McCuaig, 2000). Gobetti was opposed to the decline of liberalism in Italy and his book is an agonistic reformulation of liberalism. In Gobetti’s opinion, conflict and not consensus is the foundation of social and political regeneration.

He considered liberalism to entail continuous ethnic struggle against transcendental beliefs (Gobetti, Urbinati, & McCuaig, 2000). Gobetti insisted that liberalism was adaptable to different classes. Gobetti opposed fascism and claimed it was an accretion of all the iniquities facing the Italian society. Throughout the book, Gobetti defends the right of people to operate without the interruption of the state. He thus directs his revolution liberalism to the political scenery in Italy. He opposes the negative and positive conceptions of liberty.

He argues that political liberty is closely linked to political liberty. He advocate for liberalism, which allowed the entire society to make their decisions without arbitrary interference from the state (Gobetti, Urbinati, & McCuaig, 2000). However, he feels that the political environment in Italy was inappropriate for liberalism. Gobetti advocates for political education on historical them accept the spirit of liberalism. Gobetti’s ideas are greatly influenced by the struggles of workers in Turin and Gramsci’s vision of a factory based democracy.

The liberal Revolution was greatly influenced by his disapproval of fascism. Gobetti adopts Mosca’s idea of the political system characterized by struggles by elites to attain offices of power. Gobetti uses this idea to explain disagreements over ideas between the different social forces in relation to the different forms of power (Gobetti, Urbinati, & McCuaig, 2000). He believed that the workers would lead successful liberalism. This was based on the significance he associated with the struggles of the workers.

In Gobetti's opinion, Fascism was indicative of the historical failure of Italy’s political life. He believed that there had to be transformation in the economic as well as moral culture of the society for effective liberalism to