Luzzatto, Gino

Born Jan. 9, 1878, in Padua; died Mar. 31, 1964, in Venice. Italian historian. Member of the National Academy of Lincei (1945).

Beginning in 1909, Luzzatto taught at higher educational institutions in Padua, Bari, Trieste, and Venice. In 1938 he was suspended by the Fascist government of Italy; he resumed teaching only in 1944 at a university in Venice. From 1945 to 1953 he was rector of the University Institute of Economics and Commerce in Venice.

Luzzatto concerned himself primarily with the economic history of Italy. According to his conceptions, economics is one of the manifestations of civilization, along with politics and culture; the social organization of production changes in an evolutionary manner, without revolutionary leaps. Luzzatto did not distinguish between socioeconomic formations; he regarded feudalism chiefly as a political structure of society. His works contain an enormous amount of factual material. He came close to the views of the classics of Marxism in his definition of the nature of early capitalist production in Italy between the 14th and 16th centuries. He published sources and studied problems in historiography.