The latest book by Gianfranco Viesti, "Centres and suburbs", published by Laterza in the Anticorpi series, is an ambitious volume right from the subtitle "Europe, Italy, the South from the XNUMXth century to the XNUMXst century". And to be honest, at the end of the reading, one cannot say that the scholar does not keep his ponderous promises. Viesti is one of Italy's best-known economists who is always accompanied by an adjective, "Southernist", for the in-depth studies on the subject of southern Italy that have engaged him for years. This time the theme of division and inequalities in our country are within a broader context, the European and world one, in which, looking for regional disparities outside Italy, he studies and deepens the "mezzogiornos" of others as well as our own . A good book of history as well as economic geography.
Twenty chapters divided into three parts, preceded by a dense introduction which alone holds up the entire scaffolding of the book. In each chapter the threads of globalization, tertiarisation, inequalities unravel and intertwine, all drawing the plot that must design the dress that comes out by answering the question suggested by the title: why are there centers? And why are there suburbs? Talking about it with him, however, we can only face our home, our South, and starting from a triviality: but why are we still talking about "southern question" 160 years after the work of Garibaldi, Cavour and the Savoys. Why are we still “disunited”?
For Viesti (and as it is now "indisputable", as he underlines) the real gap widens especially in the years of the First World War. And it happens above all because of the war, "which leads all the country's resources to concentrate on war production and therefore enormously amplifies the production system which was almost all located in the northwest", which "causes a very large dimensional leap and there deliver at the end of the war the industrial apparatus that we know today”.
Fascism will then add its own.
“It is the relatively least studied period by historians but it is quite evident that fascism looks to the South as a great reserve of arms for agriculture and for the army. Thus, the North is modernized and becomes not only industrial but also urban, so that the middle classes are born, an initial demand for consumption is created for local industry and a virtuous circuit is created which is detached from the rest of the country. While in the South you stay in the countryside. There are contributions from recent historians who also show how the fiscal and social policies of fascism have increased inequalities in the country, favored wealth and especially penalized wage labor in agriculture".
Yet development projects in the South had also been imagined during fascism by a certain ruling class of the country. The reference is clearly to IRI: is that right?
“In the XNUMXs, IRI, led by southerners, had fielded a project for large industrial sites in the South that were to be built in the XNUMXs. But we know how it ends, the Second World War arrives and everything stops. Not only. Even the effects of the war are not the same in the North and in the South: for example the destruction of the industrial apparatus of Naples is total while that of the North remains substantially protected. And finally, something we tend to forget, the first democratic Italy significantly widened the disparities because all the resources of the Marshall plan were, also understandably, destined for industrial recovery and therefore diverted to the North. A chain of fatal events for the South that only the decision of De Gasperi and others to create the Cassa del Mezzogiorno broke. A Cassa however, let us not forget, which in the early days, while setting up very positive works, did not address the theme of industrialization, which will only arrive at the end of the XNUMXs”.
So the best years for the south of the country were those of the southern Italian cash register?
“I would never have said it but yes, those years, which range from the fifties to the seventies of the last century, even if we consider them with light and shade, are substantially positive, above all because great efforts are being made to modernize this part of the country. Finally there is the urbanization of the South and there is the first major public investment of the Republic in social services. Schools, hospitals are born, and this causes a great change, the middle class appears, women begin to have a role. Obviously much better could have been done, let's think of the inability to govern urbanization which has caused very serious damage to the physiognomies of the cities in Naples, Palermo but also Bari. But it has nothing to do with what happens afterwards”.
And what happens in the following thirty years?
“With the XNUMXs, the ability to govern politics did not grow, but it was still a period of very strong consumption and therefore inequalities were not dramatic. The Nineties were terrible for the South, it totally lost its centrality, it disappeared from every political agenda, on the right and on the left, while the devastating effects of crime annulled all hope".
Yet you consider the XNUMXs to be the worst for the South.
“They are because they are aggravated by the external context. Italy is subject to European rules, which cause negative policies everywhere, what is called an austerity without development and without improving the public finances. Any policy towards health care, local transport, towards school, the university has not been far-sighted or capable of tackling the issue and aggravates the situation. I address them one by one in the book by demonstrating what I stand for.
It is not only Italian history and this too is addressed in the book.
"It is true. The fact is that national contexts lead to what is called polarization and which is born in this century. Today there are not only countries of the South and of the North, but there are also countries of the East which are completely different”.
One might say that it was wrong to enlarge the Union.
“It's not right to say that. Enlargement was an epochal phenomenon, it changed the cards on the table, it brought quite different social and political organizations into confrontation. And then it cannot be denied that in the first 40 years the Union produced development, albeit greater where the areas were richer. So, to give an example close to us, things went better in Veneto than in Puglia because that region was better equipped. But it is the same European policies that serve to favor the growth of those who are furthest behind and this has not always happened".
To return to the title of the book, who is in the center and who is on the periphery?
“Historical events count, there is no one way. And then there are public policies, the only ones at the basis of growth and which decide which side you are on. In Italy there is no doubt that those of the first Republic were better than those of the second. Because they aimed overall to build a more equitable country even though they have left us the terrible legacy of public debt. During the Second Republic there was not only a reduction in the quantity and intensity of public policies, but also an orientation that did not contrast inequalities, in terms of territory, gender and generation. Aggravated, as mentioned, in the XNUMXs. And culminate in the request for differentiated autonomy by some regions of the North swept away only by the wave of the pandemic. The reasoning was entirely consistent with the country's lack of unified direction: if resources are scarce, the strongest must be protected. It has never been said in these terms because the South also votes, but this was the meaning ”.
Among the handicaps from which southern Italy suffers, according to Viesti two are those that weighed more than the others: the level of education which at a certain point found itself to be very low with the flight of the boys who went to study in the universities of the North; and the physical isolation between one region and another, one city and another. Would it have been different if Naples, Bari and Palermo had been closer?
“Geography can push you away, but infrastructure brings you closer. The Canaries are in the middle of the ocean, but they are closer than ever, we have also seen this during the pandemic. So let's go back to the importance of public works. “
Yet Italy has managed so far: we are still a great industrial power. Are we sure that the South is really necessary?
“Italy has actually fared very badly. And I also account for this in the book. We are in the last places of everything that matters in Europe, Piedmont and Liguria don't work either. The Milan-Veneto axis is doing a little better, but until when? It is out of necessity that we have to mend the country, certainly not out of generosity".
Can this happen with the end of the pandemic?
“The pandemic has been a sensational break. Anything can happen. Also that Italy becomes one”.
