Giovanni Gronchi and Catholic Labourism

In Part Three of a series of pieces on the Italian Social Catholics, John writes:

Following the end of World War II, the left-wing of Italian Christian Democracy was intellectually dominated by the former anti-fascist partisan Giuseppe Dossetti and his circle, including Giorgio La Pira, Amintore Fanfani, and Giuseppe Lazzati. Known collectively as the dossettiani and sometimes as the “Little Professors” because of their relative youth and academic backgrounds, the Dossetti circle is the best known of the left-wing factions of Democrazia Cristiana (DC). However, there was also a vibrant Catholic labor movement in Italy, often called the “white” labor movement to distinguish it from the “red” labor movements associated with socialism or communism. Perhaps the most prominent Italian Catholic laborite of the post-war era was Giovanni Gronchi, whose own ideas about Catholic social action are an important chapter in the history of Italy’s Social Catholic tradition.

Giovanni Gronchi was born on September 10, 1887 in the town of Pontedera in the Tuscany region of Italy. He received an education in literature and philosophy and spent the years from 1911 to 1915 teaching Classics at secondary schools in various Italian towns. Gronchi’s earliest political experience came with the Christian political movement of the Catholic priest Don Romolo Murri, a man who pioneered Catholic political action at a time when many Catholics were opposed to any kind of cooperation with the government of the Kingdom of Italy, the same government that had deprived the Pope of the Papal States. After serving in the Italian military during World War I, Gronchi helped to found the Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI) or the Italian Popular Party, along with Don Luigi Sturzo and Alcide De Gasperi, in 1919. While Gronchi had a successful political career (he was elected to parliament in 1919 and 1921), it was Gronchi’s work with Catholic labor unions that would define his career.

Gronchi was made director of the Confederation of Christian Workers in 1920 and his success in the labor movement eventually earned Gronchi the attention of the new Fascist government of Italy. In 1922, Gronchi was appointed Undersecretary of Industry and Commerce under the new regime of Benito Mussolini. However, Gronchi would only stay in this position for a year, eventually resigning in 1923. Gronchi resumed his work with the Catholic labor movement, a dangerous position as the Fascist regime violently suppressed the independent labor unions.

During the period of Fascist oppression, Gronchi argued strongly against Catholic cooperation with Mussolini’s regime. Gronchi made his argument from the point of view of the poorer members of society. Gronchi maintained that if Catholicism became identified with Fascism, it would lose the support of the peasants and workers who were suffering under Fascist oppression. However, unlike the Catholic liberals, Gronchi also noted that many peasants and workers in Italy had already become alienated from the Church because of the perception that it was a vehicle for reactionary politics. Gronchi maintained that Catholic politicians must oppose both hopeless reaction and violent revolution.

Under pressure from the Fascist government, Gronchi eventually had to end his formal political career and even his career as a schoolteacher (Gronchi refused to join the National Fascist Party or to swear the oath to defend Fascism, as was required of all teachers in Mussolini’s Italy). Instead, Gronchi made his living as a businessman until 1943, when the Fascist regime collapsed and Gronchi returned to active politics.

Gronchi quickly resumed his position as a left-wing Christian politician and labor union leader. He made alliances with Giuseppe Dossetti’s left-wing faction of the newly-formed Christian Democratic Party. While an ally of the dossettiani, Gronchi’s major power base was the Catholic labor movement, resulting in the Gronchi faction having a less academic and more purely laborite view of politics. Gronchi’s Catholic laborite faction had its own journal Politica Sociale, which ran alongside the Cronache Sociali of the dossettiani. Gronchi’s faction tended to be less aggressive than Dossetti’s, but the two shared many similarities. Gronchi, for example, supported an “opening to the Left” and opposed the ejection of the Socialists and Communists from the national government in 1947. Gronchi also favored Italian autonomy in foreign policy and opposed a tight alliance with the United States, as did Dossetti.

Much of the rest of Gronchi’s political career was spent trying to end the paralyzing polarization of Italian political life. Having spent most of his political career working in the labor movement, Gronchi understood the attraction many workers felt toward socialism and communism. Gronchi believed that Italians could avoid both neo-fascist reaction and left-wing revolutionary violence only by building a functioning Italian democracy, and this would require bringing the Socialists and Communists into the government, “taming” them, making them less revolutionary and more reformist. An opening to the Left would also hopefully detach the Italian Left from the Soviet Union and help make Italian autonomy in foreign policy more feasible by breaking out of the dualism of the Cold War.

In 1955, Gronchi was elected President of Italy with the support of left-wing Christian Democrats and the Socialists and Communists. Gronchi would continue to serve as President of Italy until 1962, and during that time he would continue to work to heal the divisions caused by the Cold War, including taking a trip to the Soviet Union in February of 1960. Gronchi’s early attempt at an “opening to the Left” and the development of a democratic Italy autonomous in foreign affairs was a precursor to Aldo Moro’s later attempts toward largely the same goals during the 1970s. Giovanni Gronchi passed away in Rome on October 17, 1978.

Giovanni Gronchi’s experience among the workers and peasants who made up Italy’s labor movement provided him with important insights into how the Church was perceived by the mass of ordinary laypeople. Gronchi understood that for the Church to maintain its reputation as the defender of the poor, it had to take actions to avoid being branded as reactionary by left-wing opponents. This meant taking seriously the plight of the poor and workers and fighting on their behalf against injustice. Gronchi’s thought went hand in hand with his work with the Catholic labor unions. Catholic social thought and action were united in the person of Giovanni Gronchi and in the labor movement he pioneered. In today’s world of anti-worker austerity, we would do well to look to Gronchi and the spirit of Catholic laborism.