Benjamin Constant’s liberalism and Italian anti-fascism (1925-1945): between Croce and the Partito d’Azione

During the fascist dictatorship and the Resistance, interpretations of Benjamin Constant’s thought took on a certain political resonance based on the different conceptions of freedom proposed by the various currents of Italian anti-fascism. Constant’s success among liberal-inspired Italian anti-fascists is mainly due to the portrait Benedetto Croce drew of him in Storia d’Europa and in his famous article Constant e Jellinek: that of the theorist of a freedom that was ethical rather than economistic. This was Adolfo Omodeo’s starting point in his depiction of a liberal-democratic Constant that refutes the reactionary interpretation proposed earlier by Guido De Ruggiero in Storia del liberalismo europeo. Croce and Omodeo thus paved the way for the interpretations of Partito d’Azione intellectuals such as Dionisotti, Venturi and Calogero. The last two in particular, against the backdrop of the Resistance, make Constant a champion of progressivism. But to propose a liberal-revolutionary Constant or one in favor of forms of democracy that also include the pursuit of social justice is to misrepresent his ideas, no longer straightforwardly interpreting his thought, but using it instrumentally to achieve political ends.