ABSTRACT
The social question that besieged soi-disant “liberal” governments at the turn of the century were not the outcome of the excesses of an industrial development of the Manchesterian type — an unknown phenomenon in Italy. The new-liberals' view of history was that of an open-ended process characterised by incessant struggle, mediation, creativity: nothing that could be predicted in advance, and in particular nothing in common with "Second International" doctrines of socialism. Positive liberty and the historicisation of personal rights had a deep impact on the legal foundations of liberalism, as Ruffini — an acknowledged master for many young new-liberals — was quick to realise. The new-liberals, with their idea of the individual as a conscious and active interpreter of society's needs, naturally belonged to the organicist field. In this, they polemically opposed classical liberalism, which they identified with an essentially individualistic social theory.
