Introduction or preface

Among the many influences that shaped Piero Gobetti's thought, the American model – the model of a modern industrial democracy – deserves some attention. Such model had become part of the collective imaginary with the US intervention in the First world war. Even though there are only a few explicit references to the US model in Gobetti's works, he and his collaborators clearly bore that model in mind. This paper focuses on three main themes in Gobetti's and his collaborators' works: Wilsonianism, that is the adherence to the US president's views; the reflection on the protestant origins of the modernization typical of the Anglo-American «democracy of work»; and the crisis of democracy due to modern mass communication. This interest in American culture is also proven by the attention paid to Anglo-American pragmatism, which was the topic of Ada Prospero's (Gobetti's wife) dissertation.