Even for wealthy and propertied classes, the state responding in a way that avoided the worst possible break from the capitalist order was a clear necessity. In 1920, Vittorio Cottafavi, a wealthy property owner and MP of the Liberal Constitutional group, wrote to Nitti, who had become prime minister, to stress the strategic need to publicize the social role of the state as an antirevolutionary antidote: To draw near the workers to the state so that they can see in it a friend and a protector .

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 270