ABSTRACT
Italy presents a special setting for understanding its political theorists. Nevertheless Mazzini crystallized the problems of other mid-nineteenth-century liberals and his work reflected the whole of European thinking. Mazzini left out the critical importance of the competitive factor, the way alternative associations may perform the same purposes. Mazzini, like Owen later, rejects the value of competition. Mazzini did make a crucial distinction governing the relation of the state and associations; both are supreme in their proper areas. Mazzini thought religion was the most important problem; he was concerned with the ethical side of man and the religious aspect of the issue. Mazzini's moralistic concern with positive freedom has obscured his contribution to the organizational question, for he was a pluralist and an individualist. Mazzini himself represents a convergence of democracy and nationalism; but it was the power politics of Camillo Cavour, which overlooked democratic propositions, that finally achieved Italian unity.
