From the Post-World War I period to the years of Fascist consensus

In 1919, he collaborated with his father in the editing of "L'Azione Riformista," as evidenced by numerous references from his father, although we are unable to identify articles written by Adriano Olivetti as they were either anonymous or signed with a pseudonym. When, in 1920, Camillo decided to suspend the publication of that Canavese weekly, which he considered too provincial and lacking real influence in politics, Adriano persuaded his father to transfer the publication to him "and his young friends," but it did not go beyond 1920.

We know that he also collaborated with "Tempi Nuovi," the Turin political weekly promoted by his father along with Donato Bachi (who became its director) and other progressives. With the newspaper's first critical and then more marked anti-fascist turn, there was also a political shift for Adriano Olivetti, influenced by the cultural environment of the Polytechnic and his friendship with the Levi family, especially with Gino Levi, his course mate.

In 1924, he earned a degree in chemical engineering from the Polytechnic of Turin and, after a study trip to the United States with Domenico Burzio (Technical Director of Olivetti), where he updated himself on organizational business practices, he joined his father's factory in 1926. At the request of Camillo, he gained initial work experience as a laborer. He became the director of Olivetti in 1932, the year in which he launched the first portable typewriter called MP1 typewriters|(See: Olivetti Typewriters), and the president in 1938.

Adriano opposed the fascist regime with moments of active militancy. However, from articles in "Tempi Nuovi," at least until 1923, it is known that the editorial team had a relationship of mutual respect with Turin fascism led by Mario Gioda, who, although disappearing in 1924, left many followers in the Turin federation. Adriano's anti-fascism had already been expressed immediately after the discovery of Giacomo Matteotti's body in the demonstration he organized, together with his father, at the Giacosa theater in Ivrea in 1924.

He participated in the liberation of Filippo Turati with Carlo Rosselli, Ferruccio Parri, Sandro Pertini and others. By educational inclination, he was close to the Giustizia e Libertà political movement. Along with the Levi family, Adriano was among the protagonists of the daring escape: initially hosted by the Levis in their home in Turin, Turati then reached Ivrea. He stopped for the night at the home of Giuseppe Pero, an executive at Olivetti, and left the next morning in a car driven by Adriano, which reached Savona, where Pertini awaited them. Together, they sailed to Corsica and then reached France and Paris. How Adriano Olivetti managed not to be involved in the fascist investigation that followed Turati's escape is unclear. Two hypotheses can be formulated: one related to the fortune or superficiality of the investigations, and the other (which can only be hypothesized) involving protections from the Turin "giodiani" circles.

From 1931, the Aosta police (from whom the entrepreneur needed certification of Aryan race membership due to his father's Jewish origins) defined the young Olivetti as subversive. Adriano Olivetti was later appointed General Manager and, alongside assuming responsibilities in the Ivrea factory, demonstrated greater caution toward the regime. He then married Paola Levi, Gino's sister, in a civil ceremony. Paola, intolerant of the provincialism of Ivrea, convinced him to move his residence to Milan. This was one of the cultural turning points for Adriano because in Milan, he could meet the intelligentsia that later brought him closer to architecture, urban planning, psychology, and sociology. He still had problems with the regime when Gino Levi and Paola Levi's brother, Mario (who worked at Olivetti), was stopped at the Swiss border with a car full of Justice and Liberty pamphlets. He managed to escape, but the consequence was that Gino Levi and their father were arrested, remaining in the homeland's prisons for about two months.

During that time, Adriano mobilized and spent a lot of his money to defend his father-in-law and brother-in-law. This was the period when Camillo Olivetti's passport was temporarily withdrawn. However, relations with fascism improved in the thirties. It was mainly the meeting with architects Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini, who were at the forefront of architectural rationalism that was initially supported by Mussolini. The two architects corresponded to the great Le Corbusier, who, for a certain period, was also an admirer of Mussolini during those years defined as the years of consensus. Figini and Pollini joined the fascist party.

Certainly, Adriano was influenced by them; they would be the architects of the new Olivetti and, with Adriano, contributors to the plan for the Aosta Valley (of which Ivrea was part during those years). We do not know with how much conviction, but it is proven that Adriano Olivetti was definitively removed from the central political record in 1937 and requested—and obtained—a membership card from the National Fascist Party (PNF). Not only that; he was also received by Mussolini at Palazzo Venezia, where the entrepreneur from Ivrea presented his plan to Il Duce. In any case, the plan for the Aosta Valley received recognition and was exhibited in a show in Rome. Newspapers covered it, as evidenced by a letter that Camillo wrote to Adriano:

                            "Mr. Adriano Olivetti Rome,
                                 I have seen your articles in La Stampa and Gazzetta del Popolo regarding the plan for the Province of Aosta, and I hope that this work of yours can bring you much glory but few troubles. On Gazzetta del Popolo, I noticed that your name has been omitted. I don't know if the article was written by you (in which case, I warn you not to be too modest) or by others who did not want to mention your name, in which case, I would like to know the reason (…)"

(Letter found in the Olivetti historical archive)

His political affiliations during that period were with Giuseppe Bottai, who always represented a dissenting voice within fascism. Prudent enough not to be expelled like Massimo Rocca, Bottai was still a free spirit representing the other side of fascism, the less totalitarian and more problematic one. However, these qualities did not prevent Bottai from being a staunch promoter of the Manifesto of Race and one of the most fanatical supporters of fascist racial laws. His connection with the regime was of short duration. In architecture, Mussolini's tastes changed: from rationalism, he shifted to a regime architecture intended to echo the splendors of Imperial Rome. In any case, the plan for the Aosta Valley had another exhibition in Rome, and newspapers covered it, as evidenced by a letter that Camillo wrote to Adriano.

Then there was silence, with the war in Africa first, the Spanish Civil War, and then the Second World War. Adriano Olivetti's consensus weakened until it led him to open anti-fascism. Badoglio accused him of portraying Italy in a bad light with the USA. During the war years, he sought refuge in Switzerland, where he maintained contact with the Resistance.

Postwar era and the involment in the Community Movement

See Community Movement

Upon his return from exile with the fall of the regime, he resumed leadership of the company. Alongside his managerial skills that made Olivetti the world's leading office products company, he combined an insatiable thirst for research and experimentation on how to harmonize industrial development with the assertion of human rights and participatory democracy, both inside and outside the factory.

In 1945, Olivetti published The Political Order of Communities, considered the theoretical basis for a federalist idea of the state, which, in his vision, was based on communities—territorial units that were culturally homogeneous and economically autonomous. He became a supporter of European federalism after meeting Altiero Spinelli during his exile in Switzerland, initiated by Olivetti in 1944 due to his anti-fascist activities.

In 1949, Olivetti converted to Catholicism "due to the conviction of its superior theology." Towards the end of the forties, he was for a period in analysis with Ernst Bernhard.

The ideas advocated in The Political Order of Communities supported the Community Movement, founded by him in the city of Turin in 1948. In 1950, he presented his vision of the primacy of Urban Planning and Planning in politics. Under the influence of business success and his communal ideals, in the fifties, Ivrea gathered an extraordinary number of intellectuals working (some within the company, some within the Community Movement) in different disciplinary fields, pursuing the project of a creative synthesis between technical-scientific culture and humanistic culture.

The movement, attempting to unite the socialist and liberal wings under a single banner socialism|(see: Libertarian Socialism), gained considerable importance in Italy in the fifties in the fields of economic, social, and political culture. The political initiative aimed to create a socio-technocratic movement of around thirty deputies capable of constituting the balance between the center (dominated by the Christian Democracy ) and the left (dominated by the Italian Communist Party ).

In the fifties, along with Guido Nadzo, he was one of the leaders of the UNRRA , when there was an attempt to operate organically in urban terms. He became a promoter of a sociological study on the Sassi di Matera and the subsequent realization of the La Martella village (See: La Martella (only in IT) . In 1955, during the second edition of the Compasso d'Oro Award, Adriano Olivetti was awarded the first "Gran Premio Nazionale," a prestigious recognition for his influence on Italian industry and design.

In 1958, Olivetti was elected as a deputy representing "Community." His premature death marked the end of the movement.

Meanwhile, Adriano had remarried in 1950 to Grazia Galletti, several years after divorcing Paola. At that time, he already had three children: Roberto (who would succeed him at the helm of the company), Lidia, and Anna. With Grazia, he had another daughter, Laura. In the same year, he joined the Board of Directors of the National Institute of Urban Planning, which he had joined ten years earlier. In 1937, he had participated in a series of studies on a master plan for the Aost Valley.

Urban planning was just one of Olivetti's many passions; he also delved into history, philosophy, literature, and art. He personally funded the revival of the Urbanistica magazine. In 1953, he decided to open a calculator factory in Pozzuoli, offering above-average salaries and assistance to workers' families. The productivity at this facility surpassed that of the colleagues in the Ivrea factory.

In 1956, he was elected mayor of Ivrea, and two years later, he obtained two seats in Parliament by running with the Community Movement. His vote was significant for the vote of confidence in the Fanfani government. During his city administration, the fountain dedicated to his father, Camillo, was inaugurated on September 29, 1957. Also in 1957, the National Management Association of New York awarded Olivetti for his international business leadership. In 1959, he was appointed president of the UNRRA-Casas Institute, tasked with overseeing post-war reconstruction in Italy.

Death

On the 27 February 1960, Olivetti took a train from Arona, Piedmont, in the north of Italy, towards Lausanne, Switzerland. A few kilometres after the border between the two countries, he had a neuronal bleeding that led to his death. An autopsy has not been delivered, leaving various hypothesis opened, including the one that sees the participation of some United States-based lobbies in Olivetti’s death. After the declassification of documents elaborated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), it was discovered that Olivetti had been object of investigations by the CIA for several years.

In his enterprises, Olivetti's attempts at utopia may be translated in practice as actions of an enlightened boss or a form of corporatism. He decreased the hours of work and increased salaries and fringe benefits. By 1957, Olivetti workers were the best paid of all in the metallurgical industry, and Olivetti workers showed the highest productivity. His corporatism also succeeded in having his workers accept a company union not tied to the powerful national metallurgical trade unions.

During the 1950s, the Community Movement succeeded politically in Ivrea, where Olivetti was elected mayor in 1956. The utopia at the factory and in Italy at large began withering away even before his death in 1960. Olivetti's era saw great changes in Italian business and in industrial relations. New organizational methods were sought and humanistic idealism spread during the cruel time of World War II, as well as during the difficult post-war years. While the utopia of Olivetti could not have easily survived, it helped induce the rapid reconversion of Italy's industry from war to peacetime production.