THE REFORMISM OF FEDERICO CAFFE

This paper is the testimony of one of the many pupils of Federico Caffe on the centenary of his birth. It contains fragments of the "story" of the man, the professor, the economist and the intellectual and it is addressed to those who did not have the opportunity to know him personally, though he was well-known to many people through his newspaper articles. The author remembers him as a man, with "an extraordinarily expressive face showing his intelligence, irony and melancholy" and, as both a professor and a man, with a particular "ability to understand other people's points of view", which proved to be very important in the student protests that were very heated at times. The author also recalls that, as an economist, he "contributed significantly to the recognition of economic policy as an independent discipline rigorously anchored to economic theory" (see Acocella's paper in this volume). Lastly, the author outlines the cultural content that distinguishes the intellectual's reformism, which he repeatedly proposed in his writings and the author likes to define as "radical". It is an "excellent synthesis of ethics, economics and history", which as Caffe wrote, offers "a vision of the world that gives mankind responsibility for social improvement".