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themselves. The movement marked a turning point in the historyof the capitalist society. It is an attempt to get rid of the risks inherentin business by planning and direction. Karl Pribram, in hisstudy of collective monopolies in Europe for the Brookings Institution,points out that unlimited free competition was never acceptedin Italy as the basis of the economic order as it was in America.Monopolies created by agreement were enforceable in the courts. 1And he agrees with another authority that the cartel was arevolution against risk, the central driving force in the capitalistsystem.Nothing seems to be more deeply ingrained in the human mindthan the old guild idea that those who produce should be permittedto set up the laws under which production is carried on. Howeverbitterly competitors may battle each other for business there is acommon ground upon which they can and will always unite againstthe consumer and the rest of society. For years the liberal has foughtthe cartel movement—and the American equivalent, trade combinations—asthe sinister fruit of sheer greed. But that attack has madelittle headway. The most serious aspect of this movement has nothingto do with morals. It comes down to a question whether thefunctions of distribution and production ought to be planned anddirected and by whom. Singularly a powerful group of so-calledliberals in this country, long the inveterate foes of this idea, has nowbecome its most vehement advocates. Italian businessmen took theview that production and distribution ought to be planned and thatthey should perform that function. That idea spread among capitalistsand, though freedom of trade along with the Rights of Manwere guaranteed by the old constitution, as Dr. Pribram points out,this did not prevent eighty-four cartels from operating to limitfreedom of enterprise.On the side of labor a similar drift was in the making. The GeneralConfederation of Labor was in fact under the domination ofthe Socialist party. Thus the leaders of the labor movement inItaly adopted the socialist diagnosis of the capitalist system; namely,that it suffered from a group of basic flaws that made its indefinite*Cartel Problems, an Analysis of Collective Monopolies in Europe, by Karl Pribram>Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.29