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Abstract: In his writings, the economist Federico Caffè often recalled the years after WWII as a period fecund in ideals in which the fundaments for the Italian Republic were chosen. Caffè looked upon those years with disenchantment. He lamented the futility of the ideals that had not found any realisation in concrete policies or institutions. Many economists and politicians had correctly identified the structural problems of the Italian economy, but vested interests and institutional resistances had hampered every proposed solution. Nonetheless this was no excuse for someone who believed that ideas, in the end, prevailed. Economists retained a measure of responsibility for the failed realisation of necessary changes. Ideas had so rapidly transformed in unfulfilled ideals, forgotten even by the pervasive liberalist historiography.

Keywords: Federico Caffè; Antonio Gramsci; Luigi Einaudi; Italian liberalism; Golden age of growth