Franco Manni
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6th
November 2013, CLG lunchtime lecture Fylde College, Lancaster University
An Overview of the Ethical-Political History of Italy
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1.
Introduction This
lecture will not be an analysis of recent Italian political facts:
everybody can find on the Internet plenty of data about Berlusconi's
trials , Italian parliaments, governments, political parties, the
relationships between Italy and the other States, and the Italian economic
situation. (and I have given
you a few sheets which summarize the judicial and political deeds of
Berlusconi). Now,
instead, I would like to say a number of things that seem to me more
pressing to know about. “More
pressing” things for two reasons : 1) because most of them oppose the
most common clichés about Italy nowadays; 2) because they are a sort of
deepening of the causes of the facts, something which quite often has been
omitted in the usual analyses. The
title itself of this lecture has the unusual compound word “Ethical-political”,
which was loved by the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce and recalls the
link between Political History and Philosophical
Ethics. This lecture will be mainly historical and philosophical ,
and will not be a journalistic chronicle. I’m doing this
because I think that the Present can be understood more in depth
only if we are aware of the Past which has built it , and only if we are
aware of the Ideals -
I mean the ethical ideas - which
direct human will towards the future. Since
the topic of the lecture is so wide (Italian history) and the timetable is
so strict, in the title I have put the
word “overview” which implies a sort of quick survey where everything
is summarized and just stated but not demonstrated: maybe I should have
used the word “pointers” - instead
- and the phrase “some
pointers to the main outlines
of Italian history”. 2.
An Outline of Ancient History The
Italians are not the Romans! While the Romans conquered many nations for
centuries, the Italians on the other hand have been conquered by many
nations for centuries. While the Romans were brave in fighting and won
hundreds of battles, the Italians have lost most of the battles which they
fought, and the clearest example
is WWII , when the Italians
lost all their battles in the air, on land and at sea. The
Roman Empire had many foreign emperors who did not come from the Italian
Province ( think of Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus,
Caracalla, Diocletianus, Constantine, etc): whereas the Italian Kingdom
and the Italian Republic only had Italian kings and presidents. At
their peak, the Romans had emperors who wrote their works in Greek (Hadrian,
Marcus Aurelius), while Italian politicians of nowadays are among the
least proficient in foreign
languages in the European Union. Let
us distinguish “Nation”
from “State”. The Nation
is a cultural entity in which the people communicate the traditions learnt
in their families, such as eating and sexual habits, trades, and most of
all the mother language. The State is a political entity
fit for power (the “sovereign”, in other wordsthe highest power), which
demands the monopolising of physical strength, through the police and the
army, and by these means ensures that
the law is respected. The
relationship between State and Nation in Italian history is the opposite
of the one in Roman history: the Roman Empire was one
state ruling many nations speaking many languages; the Italians in
their first millennium were one nation divided into many states. In
fact, we can speak of “Italians” only after the end of the 10th
century, when we had the first simple
documents written in
the Italian language. Italian literature with its poets,
storytellers and scholars had scarcely begun by the 13th
century. With
regard to the political aspect, after it was conquered by the Lombards in
the 6th
century, for many centuries the Italian peninsula was divided in several
little states , ruled by leaders of other and non-Italian nationalities (such
as Byzantines, Arabs, Normans,
French, Spanish, Austrians), and also by Italian “dukes”, “lords”
and “kings” of little power. During the 45 years between the Congress
of Vienna in 1815 and the political unification of the Italians in 1860,
there were seven Italian states , each with its different capital,
currency, army, ambassadors, system of weights and measures. While
the English had already had their political unification in the 10th
century, and the Spanish and the French in the 15th
century, the Italians had thiers
in 1860 ! What
is the cause of this belated unification? The great historians of the XVI
century Niccolo' Machiavelli
and Francesco Guicciardini had no doubts in answering the question: it was
the papacy: “the Pope is not powerful enough to suppress all the
Italians under his sovereignty, but is powerful enough to prevent any
other Italian sovereign from
doing that.” Indeed,
an important and unique factor in Italian history is this: in Antiquity,
in the Dark Ages and afterwards, the
centre of the pope's power, and
thus of the Catholic church's power,
has always been in Rome, in
the centre of Italy (the Avignon Papacy apart,
that is the period from 1309
to 1378, during which seven successive Popes resided in Avignon
, in France, rather than in Rome) . 3.
Italians' “Finest hour” From
1820 till 1860 in Italy there was a cultural, ethical, political and
military movement called “Risorgimento”. It aimed at the independence
of the Italians from the rule of the Austrians, who dominated
- either directly or indirectly – five of the seven little states
inhabited by the Italians, with the exception of the Piedmont and the
State of the Church. The “Risorgimento” aimed for independence, not
political unification, which, nevertheless, had
become the same through
a series of coincidences in the international political situation. Many
Italian intellectuals (such as Alessandro Manzoni, Vincenzo Gioberti,
Massimo d'Azeglio, among others) gave the ruling class of the small
Italian states the
ethical ideal of independence
from foreign domination. the ruling class alone, because
80% of the Italian people were illiterate and uninterested in any political ideal whatsoever. The
most important of those intellectuals was Giuseppe Mazzini, who was the
only one who since the very beginning of the Risorgimento was aiming, not
just for independence, but also for political unification. Mazzini was an
exile from Piedmont, his country, because of his
revolutionary attempts which failed. He spent
most of his life in London, whence - by the means of thousands of
letters and a network of emissaries – he was able to lead and
organize the so called “Giovane Italia” (Young Italy), a revolutionary
society. I strongly recommend that you to deepen your knowledge of him. He
has been nicknamed “The Beating Heart of Italy”. In 1919, in his
travels to Versailles for the treatises of peace after the end of WWI, the
president of the USA Woodrow Wilson stopped in Genova (where Mazzini was
born) and , while placing a laurel wreath at the feet of Mazzini's statue,
said: “Only Gladstone and Lincoln had such clarity of insight into the
essence of liberalism. I am very much moved, sir [the Mayor of Genova] ,
to be in the presence of this monument. On the other side of the water we
have studied the life of Mazzini with almost as much pride as if we shared
in the glory of his history, and I am very glad to acknowledge that his
spirit has been handed down to us of a later generation on both sides of
the water. It is delightful to me to feel that I am taking some part
in accomplishing the realisation of the ideals to which his life and
thought were devoted. It is with a spirit of veneration, sir, and with
a spirit, I hope, of emulation, that I stand in the presence of this
monument and bring my greetings and the greetings of America with our
homage to the great Mazzini." And it was Mazzini who inspired
Wilson’s famous 14 Points. David
Lloyd George, war-time Prime Minister and founder of the League of Nations,
said : “I doubt whether any man of his generation exercised so
profound an influence on the destinies of Europe as did Mazzini. The map
of Europe as we see it today is the map of Giuseppe Mazzini. He was the
prophet of free nationality. The glittering imperial fabric reared by
Bismarck is humbled in the dust, but the dream of this young man, who came
over as an exile to England and lived in poverty here for years, dependent
on the charity of friends and armed only with a pen, have now become
startling realities through the whole continent. He taught us not
merely the rights of a nation; he taught us the rights of other nations.
He is the father of the idea of the League of Nations.” For
Giuseppe Garibaldi Mazzini was “The Man who taught us all” – and not
just Italians. Nietzsche stated,“The man I most venerate is Mazzini.”
For Mazzini’s friend John Stuart Mill he was “one of the men I most
respect” and for the historian Arnold Toynbee, who helped with his
School, “not Adam Smith, not Carlyle great as he is, but Mazzini is the
true teacher of our age.” For Walter Bagehot, founding editor of the
Economist and author of The English Constitution, Mazzini was “a perfect
model of sagacity and moderation, magnanimity and disinterest. Undoubtedly
he furnished the war materials of which the political strategy of Count
Cavour was able to make such wonderful use. Cavour without Mazzini would
have been an engineer without a source of force.” In
fact, another decisive major person of the Italian Risorgimento was
Camillo count of Cavour, prime minster of the Piedmont State and a genius
in the art of diplomacy: Cavour understood that in those years the
Austrian Empire was politically isolated
from the UK for ideological reasons, from the Ottoman Empire
and the Russian Empire for claims on territories, and from the
Kingdom of Prussia for their competition in the leadership of the German
nation. On the other hand the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III was full
of ambitions and longed for hegemony in Europe and so he allied with
Piedmont and his army defeated Austria in the bloody battle of
Solferino (it was the bloodiest
in 19th
century Europe after Waterloo, and resulted in the inception of the
International Red Cross). This victory permitted the enterprise of general
Garibaldi, who shipped 1000 volunteers in arms from Genova to Sicily
to conquer the Kingdom of Naples under the rule of the Bourbon.
His two ships were not sunk by the enemy Navy because they were
protected by two British ships at the harbour of Marsala. When,
after the successful enterprise of Garibaldi, the Kingdom of Italy
was founded in 1860, Roma and its surrounding territory were not
part of it yet, since Napoleon III with a French army was protecting the
political independence of the State of the Church. Nevertheless, when
Napoleon had been defeated and captured by the Kingdom of Prussia led by
Bismarck, Italy took the opportunity, declared war
on Pius IX, conquered Rome from the Pope and made it the capital of
the kingdom. From
these historical facts I want to single out these two concepts: 1)
Italian independence and unification were
achieved, thanks mainly to the decisive support of Foreign Powers: France,
Britain, Prussia: 2)
the Italians who instigated? the
Risorgimento were a few thousand out of a population of 22 million !
Garibaldi
for his enterprise went to Sicily with just 1082 followers, who were
veterans of all the previous, coups, revolutionary attempts and battles of
the Risorgimento in 1820-21, 1830, 1848-49, and 1859 . The majority? of
the Italian people – instead - were insensitive, uninterested and even
hostile. 4.
An Outline of More Recent History After
WWI which was fought
by Italy allied with Russia, Great Britain and France, a 20-year
dictatorship began, the Fascist Regime of Benito Mussolini, endorsed by
king Vittorio Emanuele III of
Savoy. In the aftermath of the war Mussolini and his party got more
and more votes until, in 1924
and then onwards, got an overwhelming majority. Italians loved Mussolini
enthusiastically and recognized themselves in the political ideas and aims
of Fascism. From 1936 Italy was allied with the Third Reich of Hitler,
aiming to make war against both the Free World and the Soviet Union of
Stalin. However, from 1942 the dynamic of the war reversed
and Hitler and his allies began their
retreat. In July 1943 an
Anglo-American army led by General Alexander landed in Sicily and began to
conquer the Italian peninsula from the South to the North. Then, because
of the invasion , the king made Mussolini resign and put him in prison; it
was the 25th
July 1943 and immediately the king began secret negotiations with the UK
and the USA so as to eventually sign an armistice on 8th
September. In the meantime, however, the German troops had substituted the
Italian ones in the war in Italy and resisted
the invasion for a year and a half more. During
this period Italy was split into two parts: in the South, with a small and
merely
symbolic army of 60.000 soldiers, the king joined the
Anglo-American Army , in the North the troops
still loyal to Mussolini joined as a subaltern partner the German troops
led by general Kesserling. thus a repeat of the XVI century wars could be
seen happening : when some small Italian states, supported by the Kingdom of France,
fought against some others supported by the Kingdom of Spain. On
25 April 1945 the USA and the UK completed the invasion and ended the
power of Nazis and Fascists in Italy.
Mussolini , while fleeing to Switzerland disguised as a common soldier, had been recognized and killed. Therefore,
once again after the Risorgimento some Foreign Powers included Italy in
modern Europe and in Western Civilisation. The
king had been obliged to resign after a referendum on the choice between
Monarchy and Republic which took place on 2 June
1946. Philosopher Benedetto Croce (whose importance I will outline below)
endorsed the Monarchy: he thought that, if Italy became a republic, the
State would lose much of its power in its
relationships with the Catholic Church and the papacy. However, among the
major political parties the Communists and the Socialists were republican,
and the Christian Democrats , while with internal divisions, had been led
by a president – Alcide De Gasperi, who was republican. These were the
results of the referendum: 10 million votes for the monarchy, 12 for the
republic. Thus Italy became a republic and so different from the majority
of the states of western Europe which were and still are monarchies. Let
us remember that , while the western monarchies either opposed Hitler or
remained neutral (Norway, Denmark, Luxemburg, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, most
of all the United Kingdom), the German republic of Weimar had quickly
become prey of the Nazi Party, and the same happened in the Republic of
Austria; with the Soviet
Republic and the Hungarian Republic becoming allies of Hitler. The French
Republic opposed Hitler, true, but with hardly any determination: this was
a problem of “defeatism” in the France of those times, so well
told by Marc Bloch in the book he wrote after the sudden fall of the Armée,
Strange Defeat, and it was the prelude to that puppet state called
the Republic of Vichy. Italy
was the only western monarchy allied
with Hitler, but nevertheless, as an Italian, I would call to mind some
important facts: while in
Germany no king could remove Chancellor Hitler, in Italy,
instead, the king on 25 July 1943 removed and arrested Prime
Minister Mussolini, and also , after some weeks, he signed the armistice
with the Great Alliance. Afterwards the Kingdom of Italy (I mean the
southern part of the country, from 8 September 1943 till 25 April 1945)
joined the Anglo-American Army in the war against Hitler. If the
king had not delayed the
armistice in the weeks between the 25 July and the 8 September the war in
Europe would have been shorter, since the Italian Campaign would have
ended in the summer of 1943, because
till that date there were
almost no troops of the German Army in
Italy. On the contrary, the king delayed because he was terrified of the
vendetta which Hitler surely
would take out on him, and so he needed time to prepare in secret his
escape from Rome to join the Allies in Southern Italy. Therefore, after
the imprisonment of Mussolini, in the weeks between the two dates, while
Italy was continuing its war in the Axis , many divisions of the German
army went to Italy, with the
reasonable purpose of helping the Italian ally against the Anglo-Americans. Nevertheless,
both actions of the king (removing Mussolini and
making the armistice) prevented the Italian army from supporting
Hitler any more, and this fact surely helped to shorten (we cannot know how much) the war in
Europe. What
I want to highlight by touching briefly on those facts is that the
monarchical institution provides that a state has at its supreme position
a person – the king – who does not receive his power from the
political mood of the moment, and , thus, is more protected from those
populist dictatorships which attempted to prevail in the XX century. For
instance, the Spanish Republic was prey to Francisco Franco's dictatorship
in the Thirties, and, when Franco's regime ended, the Spanish thought it
safer to restore the monarchy. Their decision proved wise when King
Juan Carlos de Bourbon firmly
resisted the military coup d'etat of Colonel Antonio Tejero de Molina on
24 February 1981. Moreover,
Italy suffers and bears a special burden of its own: the presence in its
territory of the pope and of his Holy See (the centre of the world
Catholic Church). Pope Pius XI had supported Mussolini (he called him
“the man of Providence”)
and in 1929 had made with him a treatise which had given the Italian
Catholic Church many privileges in the state and in
society. His successor Pius XII , after WWII and the end of the
monarchy, thanks to an organic alliance with
the major Italian political
party, the Christian Democrats, had enlarged the
influence of the church on Italian
politics, on the institutions and on
social habits. During his long office Pope John Paul II continued
to enlarge those interferences
of the papacy upon the
Italian governments in the educational system, in the legislation for the
family, in international
policy, and , most of all, in the very heart of politics: making or
preventing alliances between the political parties which were supposed to
support the Italian governments. Philosopher
Benedetto Croce , when speaking of the
referendum of 1946 on the choice between monarchy or republic, made a
correct forecast. The flame of the Risorgimento would have been
extinguished ! The canonical beatification of pope Pius IX (the old enemy
of the Italian Kingdom in 1870) made by Pope John Paul II in 2000 was
a sort of seal of this papal victory upon the Italian State. After
WWII, Italy divided – at least in the public propaganda and explicit
statements - into two political sides : the Pope's followers
and Stalin's followers ( both the leader of the Communists ,
Palmiro Togliatti, and of the Socialists , Pietro Nenni, admired Stalin),
and most of the voters and executives of both
sides were – of course – former voters and executives of the
fascist regime. On the other side, the Liberal Party , whose president was
Benedetto Croce, had very few
voters, and his commitment to the classical liberal doctrine ( separation
and balance of powers, the
laity of the State and its separation from the church,
the absolute value of individual and
collective human rights) was shared just by a tiny minority
of Italians , and nearly expelled from the mainstream culture of
the universities, schools, publishing houses, journals, newspapers,
and – afterwards – television.. Yet,
after the Conference of Yalta, the three Great Powers who had defeated the
Axis and won the war, had decided that Italy had to remain under the
influence of the Western Powers. Thus Italy first joined the Nato military
western alliance (in 1949) , and then the European Economic Community in
1957 , which afterwards became the
European Union in 1992. Italy, therefore , remained in the western world
because of international
alliances and economic
convenience, but it has been alienated from the very heart of the western
world in its inner and most
intimate convictions: political
beliefs and cultural ideals,
as I have already mentioned and I will revisit when I will focus on
Italian culture. Some
minutes ago, speaking of the two political sides into which Italy was
divided , I added
“at least in public propaganda and explicit
statements”. Why ? Because,
indeed, things were not so clear (sadly, in Italy very seldom if ever
are things spoken of clearly, honestly, consistently, transparently!
In Italy seldom if ever was there and is there a clear contrast between
government and opposition). In fact, since the very inception of the life
of the Italian republic the leader of the
Communists, Togliatti, decided that in the Constituent Assembly (convened
in 1946) the communist delegates would vote in agreement with the
Christian democrats to include in the prospective republican Constitution
that treatise made by Mussolini and Pius XI in 1929. Only the
Liberals and the Socialists opposed that inclusion, but they lost .
Without that decision by Togliatti and thus without the votes of
the communist delegates, that inclusion would never have been, and the
power of the papacy upon the Italian Republic would have been greatly
diminished.
5.
An Outline of Contemporary History This
division between Christian Democrats and Communists lasted till 1991. In
those decades the Socialists exploited their “middle” political
position, joining the former in the governments but asking for more seats
than it deserved, by threatening to join the latter in the opposition. In
the meantime Italy had become the fifth industrialized country in the world. After
the end of Communist States in Eastern Europe, in Italy the system of the
political parties changed : in between 1991 and 1994
the former parties (DC, PCI, PSI, PLI, PRI, PSDI, MSI) dissolved and
were transformed into other ones. The Communists (PCI) split in two: a
bigger and less radical Democratic Left-wing party
(PDS) and a smaller and more radical Party for Re-founding Communism
(PRC). The Christian Democrats split in two as well: a bigger and more
liberal Italian Party of the People (PPI) and a smaller and more right-wing
Christian Democrat Centre CCD (afterwards UDC). The more moderate of the
former Communists and the more progressive of the former Democrat Christians
eventually united forming the Democrat Party (PD), which still exists and
has got the majority of votes in the last general elections. The Socialists
were extinguished, being mortally stricken by the publicised bribery
scandals of their former leader , Bettino Craxi. Seizing
the opportunity, I mean the dissolving of power of the previous parties, a pool of judges in Milano, amongst whom
the most famous was Antonio Di Pietro, started a wide investigation into
politicians and business men to prosecute
the two sides of corruption: I mean
bribery and extortion. It was called Mani Pulite (clean hands) .
There were many trials and sentences for very important people in Italy of
those years (Forlani, Craxi, Gardini, among many others). Almost at the same
time two Sicilian judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino succeeded in
imprisoning important godfathers of the Mafia . However,
very soon the “reactionary front” … reacted (!) against
this attempt to westernise Italy,
when the judges fought the systematic illegality
in the North (bribery) and in the South (Mafia). First of all Falcone
and Borsellino were isolated and then betrayed by some of their colleagues,
and by some policemen and politicians . Finally, they were assassinated
by the Mafia. As
for the end of Mani Pulite investigations and trials , that was the business
and great success of Silvio Berlusconi, who had been
helped by the worst among the previous politicians, by Pope John Paul
II, by the most bankrupt industrialists and managers and by the Mafia. In
a short time from 1994 onwards the party of rich tycoon Berlusconi and a
xenophobic party called Lega Nord gained the majority of Italian votes .
Berlusconi was appointed Prime Minister three times , with the decisive –
even if elusive - endorsement of cardinal Camillo Ruini, president of the Italian Conference
of Bishops. Even
when Berlusconi was not in office (after the two general elections won by
Romano Prodi, and the present government led by Enrico Letta, who is the
nephew of Gianni Letta, the principal counsellor of Berlusconi ) , even then
he has always been the most powerful person in Italy, for a lot of reasons,
but most of all because of his overwhelming power in the media: owner of
three national tv networks and of many radio, newspapers, magazines, whose
editors and journalist are just employees of his.... he also owns the major
publishing houses Mondadori and Einaudi as well....; also, he has a
lot of friends and semi-friends and flatterers and servants in the state
television channels,
and also in the second most widespread Italian newspaper, “Il
corriere della sera”. He is the living nightmare realised by Orson Welles'
in his celebrated film Citizen Kane ! So, even when he is not in the
government, he can continuously manipulate
public opinion and raise it against the government of his opponents. His
first government fell because of the (temporary)
betrayal of his allied Lega Nord. Romano Prodi won the elections in
1996 but his government fell because of the betrayal of one his allies, the
Party for Re-founding Communism . The government of Prodi's successor
Massimo D'Alema (of the Democrats of the Left) was defeated in 2001 and
Berlusconi was premier again, this time for 5 years. Those were the years of
George W. Bush and Tony Blair, of the Twin towers, of the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq... In
2006 Prodi won the election for the second time, but his government lasted
just two years because of the betrayal of some radical members of parliament
(belonging to PRC) and some others of the right-wing of the alliance,
bribed by Berlusconi. Thus,
in 2008 there were the anticipated elections and Berlusconi won again . But
that government did not last 5 years, even if it was supported by the large
majority of the parliament. In fact, for the third time in its history Italy
was helped by foreign powers. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, hostile
towards Berlusconi, in August
2011 made the European Union impose on Italy strict conditions for the
return of the public debt, a task which Berlusconi was not able to accomplish. And the German pope
Benedict XVI, hostile towards Berlusconi,
removed cardinal Ruini from his office and gave the Italian people
more or less explicit messages of moral condemnation of Berluscon’s sex
scandals . So, Giorgio Napolitano, the Italian president of the republic was
able to make Berlusconi resign, threatening him with the dissolution of
parliament and a call for new elections which would have probably
been disastrous for
Berlusconi’s party ( at least in those months !). Thus Berlusconi resigned,
in spite of the support of the
majority of parliament, and
Napolitano appointed as premier a non-politician, a
so called “technician”, professor Mario Monti, widely renowned
and esteemed in the European Union and the US. The government of Monti, of
liberal and European convictions, honest, upright and clever in economics ,
lasted 18 months... he did his best to save Italy from economic collapse or
at least to delay it …. Nevertheless, he could not promote structural laws
against corruption, against tax
evasion, against conflict of
interests and others, because the majority of the MPs were still
supporters of Berlusconi, who was waiting to return to power. In
the general elections of last April 2013
a new party led by the former comedian Beppe Grillo gained a large
number of votes but he did not want to make an alliance either with PD or
with the party of Berlusconi . So the PD and Berlusconi, the two parties
pretending to be opponents, since neither had the majority required to
support a government, made an alliance and formed the present Italian
government ! However,
Berlusconi himself does not hold an office in this present Italian
government , neither as a premier nor as a
minister. Why? Because , at least outside Italy,
things have changed, and if Berlusconi were a premier
or a minister he would sometimes have to go to the Parliament of Strasbourg,
to the White House, to the Berlin Bundeskanzleramt, to Buckingham Palace, to
the Elysèe, and to the Holy
See, but the international leaders in those offices nowadays would not
receive him ! 6.
Italian Culture In
the first half of the XX century Italian culture was flourishing and even
admired abroad . The cause of that cultural
flourishing was the moral and political achievement of the
Risorgimento, it was the “long wave” of the Risorgimento. There were
scientists like Guglielmo Marconi and Enrico Fermi, economists like Luigi
Einaudi and Gaetano Salvemini. Most of all there was the philosopher
Benedetto Croce, then famous all over the world and valued by Albert
Einstein , Romain Rolland, Thomas Mann. The British philosopher Robin G.
Collingwood acknowledged Croce's works as the main groundwork of his own
philosophy. However,
Croce, besides being the most important opponent of Fascism, was also
anti-communist and anticlerical. Therefore, he was not only isolated and
excluded from Italian cultural institutions during the
fascist era , but also , after () WWII , he suffered an ostracism (even
? of a different kind) from the Catholic Church and, most of all, from the
Communist party, which for decades had been attracting most of
the Italian intellectuals in its ranks. Palmiro Togliatti, Communist
leader in the Forties and Fifties, gave explicit directions for promoting a
sort of “anti-Croce” cultural propaganda. Togliatti's instructions have
been accepted and implemented by most Italian non-Catholic intellectuals
from the Forties till the Seventies. Other anti-Croce
doctrine? had been given by Catholic cardinals, bishops, theologians,
scholars, and also this has got a large audience in Italian culture. Croce
- an authentic European intellectual belonging to the tradition of
Liberalism – was anti-fascist, anti-communist, anticlerical . Therefore,
since Fascism , Marxism and Catholicism were (and still are) the main
Italian cultural features, first the Italian cultural establishment
challenged and despised his ideas, then made the new generations
forget him and his ideas. Indeed, they succeeded and so he and his ideas,
for many years and still now, have
been forgotten. This
–rejection? of its major thinker (and of the Western Liberal tradition of
thought which had inspired him) led Italian culture to three
consequences: 1)
to be mainly Marxist in the principal
universities, journals, newspapers, publishing houses. First following
Soviet Marxism, and then -
from 1968 onwards - the Maoist and Anarchist version of it; 2)
to be slave to the ever-changing cultural
fashions (existentialism,
structuralism, post-modernism, logical positivism, etcetera) which were
first embraced with childish enthusiasm and then soon dismissed and
forgotten, as had been noticed and described
by one of the very few upright Italian intellectuals of the late XX
century, Norberto Bobbio; 3)
to be mainly Right-wing Catholic in the
everyday habits of family and community life. More
specifically, I observe here that the Italian university – since 1968 and
onwards – has become more and more infected with influence, peddling and
cronyism . It has become deprived of meritocracy. Italian academics have
been selected just for their links with the selectors: family
relationships, active membership in the same political party, personal
friendship, sex affairs, money exchange and sharing in business. Nowadays,
in the most important international websites concerned with ranking
the quality level of all the universities in the world, the best
ranking achieved by an Italian university ranges (depending on the
particular website) from 170th
to 210th.
Well, let us consider what a (deserved !) shame this ranking is for us
Italians, who should have made something better of our ancient and qualified
historical heritage in the sciences and the arts.... The
Italian intellectuals who are most acclaimed in Italy nowadays, like
Emanuele Severino (representative of
the right-wing Catholic lineage) and Massimo Cacciari (representative of the
Communist lineage) are almost unknown in the rest of the world... And, in my
opinion, rightly so! One
of the very few Italian intellectuals of today whom I esteem, is the
physicist and science historian Lucio Russo (whose main historical research,
The Forgotten revolution, has been translated into many languages), has written a book
about the Italian educational system and culture during
the last decades : Segmenti and Bastoncini. Sadly it has not
an English translation, but it
deserves one! In this book Russo
describes effectively and in a lively fashion some of the causes of the
fast and heavy decline of our educational system . Indeed,
in order to get selected information and some profound interpretations of
Italian culture, I recommend to you Benedetto Croce's book A History of
Italy from 1870 till 1915, for the Italian culture in the 19th
century; Norberto Bobbio's Ideological Profile of Twentieth-Century Italy for the
20th
century till the Seventies; and
Lucio Russo's Segmenti e bastoncini from the Seventies until the
beginning of the 21st
century. 7.
The Vices of the Italians After
having touched on the politicians, the industrialists, the clergy and the
intellectuals, now I would like to speak of the
Italian people in general, of its Vices and its Virtues. Since it is
a widespread habit of fair-play to tolerate criticism against any people
only if it is made by a person belonging to the same people, for instance a
Jew may criticize the Jews, let me, an Italian,
begin with the Vices of the Italians. In
my opinion, the greatest evil is the Arrogant Lack of Self-criticism. In my
opinion, the most severe example of this vice is : we Italians
were the Fascists and the allies of Hitler, but for 70 years
onward (since the end of WWII) 99.99
percent of the Italians have been pretending
and then believing and eventually identifying
themselves in the main as Italian “partisans” who “freed” Italy from
Nazi-fascism ! Never,
in the 54 years of my life, have I heard – in the institutional speeches
of the politicians, in the
media, in common people's talk – a single
hint of the historical
truth, that is that it was
General Alexander and his army who freed the Italians from themselves (!)
and from the dictatorship they had built and the wicked ally they had chosen. The
“partisans” - that is
Italian anti-fascist guerrillas - indeed did exist, and some of them were heroes and even
martyrs, but
: 1)
they began to exist only after the
armistice of the 8th
September 1943, when Italy had already been defeated and invaded; 2)
they were by and large just 20.00 people,
in a population then of 33 millions: that is just one partisan for 1,500
Italians . I drew this data from the historians. However I myself carried
out a direct test of historical research : since I teach the history of
the XX century to the students of the fifth year in
Italian grammar schools, I asked two
different fifth year classes to
ask their parents and grandparents still alive for this major piece of
information about their family history, that is: whether among their 6 male
ancestors (the two grandfathers and the four great-grandfathers) who were of
a fitting age to fight in () WWII, there were any “partisans”. Summing
up the two classes, my research dealt with 53 students, each
with 6 male ancestors of the appropriate age , for a total of 378 .
Here is the result of my research: from 378 men who had inhabited the very
heart of the Republican Sociale Italiana (the puppet state of Mussolini
after the armistice, where only you could find partisans), in those twenty
months of the “resistance” NONE of them had fought as a partisan
(an anti Nazi-fascism guerilla) ! A
present perverse effect of this old vice
(the Lack of Self-criticism) is this: nowadays Italy has the highest
rate of youth unemployment in the EU, the
highest rate of tax evasion in the EU, the highest rate
of corruption in the Western Countries. Italy is ranked 69th
in the world for freedom of the
press, a ranking lower than that of
many countries of the Third World . Recently (two weeks ago) Italy has been
expelled from the Group of Eight. But, the
Italians are still very far from Self-criticism : 1)
hypocritically they give all the
blame to the so called “politicians” and not to themselves who have been
voting for decades for those politicians ; 2)
and they schizophrenically
give all the blame to those politicians, while still continuing to vote for
the same politicians of the past decades. Another
Italian Vice is Blind Pride, if I may so call it. Among Italians
the despising of other peoples is widespread: we despise the immigrants from
Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa
and South America thinking of them as barbarians, criminals and parasites
sucking our wealth; we despise the British thinking they are hypocrites,
arid and materialist ; we despise the Americans thinking of them as stupid, childish, crude and bullies; we despise the
French pretending they are atheist, decadent, immoral; we despise the
Germans because we pretend they are dull,
obsessed, maniacal, authoritarian and
selfish. And
there is Envy towards our most
clever and deserving fellow citizens. Whoever
is the cleverest at
school, in his work place, in a trade union , in a political party, in a
Catholic parish, because of
Envy has been isolated , excluded from office, tasks, power, appointments.
There is not admiration, praise, liking and solidarity for our best fellow
citizens. The best persons are not imitated ,supported, followed. Besides
the case of Croce I mentioned before
in the field of culture, in the field of
politics I want to mention Giuseppe Cofferati, Romano Prodi and Mario Monti. Moreover,
there are the Machiavellian Mind and Cunning
Against Legality, vices which , for us Italians, work as a sort of
“shooting ourselves in the foot”: we think ourselves smart because, when
driving a car, we do not allow the pedestrians to cross the road on the
zebra crossings: but every car driver in turn
becomes a pedestrian in another moment! We think ourselves smart when
we do not pay the due taxes, but the consequence is that
the State or the Town Council, because of insufficient income, has
not enough money and so cuts the number of teachers at school for our
children, home care for our old
parents, the hospital stay and medical
care for us. We think ourselves smart always trying to go in front of the
queue without respecting the rights of the person who came before us, but
other people do the same against you
when you queue. We think ourselves smart when we get our son/daughter
hired as a public servant because of the unfair help from our brother
in law, or friend, or boss or political leader, but afterwards , when an
incompetent policeman shoots you instead of the criminal, or an incompetent
doctor gives you a wrong diagnosis and
therapy, it is you who are damaged by a public servant who has not
been hired for his capabilities. In
general there is Anti-Meritocracy:
merits and capabilities are systematically ignored, that is we very rarely
give a job, an office, a scholarship, a prize, an award to the person who
displays more capability in this or that task. Thus the Family, the Party,
the Union, the Parish, the Mafia, the Friend have the last (if not the only)
word in appointing people for positions in the university, in
journalism, in show business,
in social services, in the army and in
several other departments of public
service. There
is, then Distrust in the
Spirit, Progress, Science, Future. An important example of this vice is
this: the percentage of the Italian GDP assigned to Education is among the
lowest in the EU. Other examples: the law forbids
experiments in biomedical research; the law forbids
nuclear energy ; wind
and solar energy systems are few and without government subsidies; the
percentage of balance which Italian
private companies assign to Research
& Development Departments is the lowest in the OCSE countries; the use
of the internet by the people is the lowest in Western Europe. Therefore,
a deep and sclerotic Traditionalism pervades our people. I give you
several heterogeneous examples of that:
in our cinemas all foreign films are delivered dubbed in Italian;
children remain in their parents' house until they are 30-35;
Catholic parishes are tied to an immobile liturgy in which
laymen/women have no active role, while the priest does everything (gospel
reading, preach, prayers, choice of the hymns ) by himself; immigrants are
not given important jobs and offices both in public and private employment,
therefore, even if in Italy now there are millions of immigrants, Italian
society cannot be called really multicultural. Moreover,
there is Family-addiction,
a sort of close and centripetal view of
life , lacking the desire for and trust in for an encounter with the
other people in open society.
As I mentioned, people in their thirties are “parking” in their parents'
house; the vast majority of Italian companies are both owned and managed by
families. Furthermore,
there is Populist Extremism: demagogic and extremist political
ideologies attract the Italian
mind: Fascism (Twenties-Forties) , Communism (Forties- Nineties) ,
Berlusconism (from the Nineties until nowadays) . Strong among us is the
idea that the Majority is good in itself , and the minorities wicked in
themselves and they should not be allowed to disagree; strong is the idea
that analysis and dialogue between majority and the minorities are a waste
of time, and, instead a Brave Leader should decide everything by himself,
leaving free the Good People to enjoy the pleasures of the family and of the
football championship. In
addition , there is the Lack
of Courage: such as in WWII when we lost all the battles, so nowadays in
our lives we are cowards and unable to stand for our rights at school as
students, in a condominium as tenants, in an office as workers, unable to
oppose the bullying misfits of the private companies as customers, and the
bullying of the public bureaucracy as citizens . What appears to be
“passionate character” to dreamy and idyllic observers á la Tim
Parks, appears very differently in my life experience, and I would describe
our character in this way : Strong toward the Weak, and Weak towards the
Strong. 8.
The Hopes of Italy On
the other hand, what can I say on Italian
Virtues? In my opinion, the Italians are hard-working (I mean they do not
fear working intensely and for a long time) and they are flexible
(I mean they are able to face unexpected situations
using understatement, adaptability, expertise and ingenuity). What
good things can Italy give to others? As Benedetto Croce wrote in his
histories on 17th
and 19th
century Italy, the good Italians
we had during the dark ages of our history were a few isolated , forgotten
and sometimes persecuted intellectuals ; he mentioned Galileo Galilei and
Giambattista Vico during the Spanish domination and Giuseppe Mazzini during the Austrian domination; I mention
Croce himself during the Fascist period. Where
can Italy find its hopes? First of all, in my opinion, in the present Pope,
Francis. Because of the strong influence held by the Papacy in Italy,
I think that this pope has the will and the determination to reverse the
course followed by pope John Paul II, and to do that more than Benedict XVI
– who started the reversal - could do. I believe Francis
will try to reduce the greed for earthly power and selfish privileges
of the Italian Catholic church which have been damaging and weakening the
common good of the Italian State . Possibly he will also try to reduce the
dead traditionalism in social
habits concerning the moral duties of individuals
and of families, which nowadays
are warped and distorted and block the progress of the Italian society. I
find another hope, even if more uncertain, in the European Union : the
inspiring example of civic virtues given to us by the Western Countries of
this international community which – until now, at least – Italy still
belongs to ; the economic and legal bonds which the Maastricht Treaties
order upon the members of the community, and upon Italy as well; the
viability for Italian citizens, and especially for the younger ones, to move
freely both for tourism and for work towards more civilised countries... All
these things can be a moral and intellectual nourishment for us Italians ! I
said “more uncertain” because, sadly, the majority of Italians are
oriented towards voting for leaving the EU, if a referendum takes place. A
further hope , however paradoxical it can be, is this: the Italians will
surely have to suffer and endure great and long-lasting pains (long-lasting!
not “l'espace d'un matin”! in
the passing of a morning), as a consequence of
their great moral and political errors; however, I believe that these pains
will be a sort of wake up call, a sort of cockerel crow after the too
prolonged sleep, which can make us
sober after drunkenness, and
make us more humble and realistic after
a long period of vicious and escapist pride . The emigration itself of more
and more Italian youths to other Countries
will be a difficult, painful and nonetheless
healthy experience... as a teacher I have many former students of
mine who have already emigrated
abroad, for Australia alone I can count four of them! Still
I am aware that even if the pain and the wet blanket of disillusionment are
necessary in order to change direction in someone's life, nevertheless they
are not sufficient to do that: in order to obtain enough strength to
implement life-change, we
absolutely need another resource. I
mean we need new and better ideas on what we have to do. As for this, my
hope stays in the global media of communication :
films at the cinema,
tv series and the
foreign news on the television, and most of all the world wide web, the
internet. These global media are like open windows through which Italians (better
said: those Italians who want to) can see, understand, appreciate and
possibly follow other ideas and other human behaviours. Bibliography ñ
Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and
Reflections ñ
Giuseppe Mazzini, The Duties of Man and
Other Essays ñ
Denis Mak Smith, Mazzini ñ
Denis
Mak Smith, Italy and its Monarchy ñ
Benedetto Croce , Taccuini di Guerra
1943-1945 ñ
Norberto Bobbio , Ideological Profile of
Twentieth-Century Italy ñ
Norberto Bobbio, Politica e Cultura ñ
Franco Manni, Norberto
Bobbio e Benedetto Croce (http://www.lovatti.eu/fr/00.htm
) ñ
Curzio Maltese, La Questua (German
translation : Scheinheilige Geschaefte) ñ
Marco Travaglio, L'odore dei soldi,
(French translation: L'Odeur de l'Argent; Spanish translation: El
Olor del Dinero ) ñ
Lucio Russo, Segmenti e Bastoncini ñ
Wikipedia, Mani Pulite ñ
Wikipedia, Second Italian Republic ñ
Tobias Jones, The Dark Heart of Italy ñ
Bill Emmott, Good Italy, Bad Italy: Why
Italy Must Conquer Its Demons to Face the Future
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Franco Manni indice degli scritti
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Maurilio Lovatti main list of online papers
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