After completing his secondary schooling, he enrolled in the Ca' Foscari University of Venice in the Department of Diplomatic Sciences with professors Silvio Trentin and Gino Luzzatto.

By 1928, he was among those arrested following the 12 April bombing in the Fiera di Milano for allegedly planning to assassinate Italian King Victor Emmanuel III, only to be interrogated and released.

On 1 January 1943, La Malfa and the lawyer Adolfo Tino succeeded in publishing the first of their clandestine publication, L'Italia Libera.

Later that year, La Malfa fled Italy to escape arrest, travelling to Switzerland, where he had contacts with representatives of the British Special Operations Executive.

La Malfa and Parri were both elected to the Constituent Assembly of Italy, and with the encouragement of Randolfo Pacciardi he joined the Italian Republican Party, commonly known as the PRI.

In May, he introduced the Nota Aggiuntiva, in which he supplied a general vision of the state of the Italian economy, including the inequalities which characterized it, and delineated the instruments and objects of their regime.

During the tumultuous 1970s, the Republican Party played a small but vital role in determining the government of Italy and maintaining continuity.

For him, the government was not in a position to delineate a strategic plan for financing reforms with their education, health, and transportation services, and Colombo only lasted one year on the job.

La Malfa pulled his party out of the subsequent Giulio Andreotti government over the issue of state control of cable television [1].

That December, he was named deputy Prime Minister in the fourth government of his friend Aldo Moro, and in 1975, he assumed the presidency of the Republican Party with Oddo Biasini replacing him as secretary.

Following the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, La Malfa gave a tearful and memorable speech in the Chamber of Deputies condemning terrorism and the Red Brigades.