Since capitalism was born it has been criticized as a source of inequality, instability, alienation of men forced into an "unnatural" competition. Whole shelves of any home library contain volumes that question the future of capitalism. Not only Marx but also Colletti and Napoleoni wondered in the seventies about the future of capitalism (collapse or development?) and even Soros, a devil for populists and sovereignists from all over the world, declared the "crisis of global capitalism". Not many have had the courage to speak of "good capitalism" as Stefano Cingolani did in the book that has just arrived in bookstores published by LUISS University Press, clearly subtitled "because the market will save us".
The financial crisis of 2008-2009 has not yet been fully absorbed not so much from the point of view of GDP growth, but for the psychological trauma it caused by sweeping away so many certainties about the future, generating distrust in the market and in globalization which had made so many promises that proved to be illusory when tested. To increase the dose, she intervened the Coronavirus epidemic that has exposed the incapacity of our social structures to prevent and combat an extraordinary event effectively and immediately. The result was that of a widespread request to the political power of the old nation states (the only one still existing even if a little dented) for protection, border control, limits to globalization to avoid redistributing work between various areas geographic regions, the return of the public to the direct management of businesses to thus save them from competition deemed excessive and therefore destructive, and the increase of the fiscal function to combat inequalities through the distribution of subsidies.
In the first place, Cingolani's analysis allows us to refute the most widespread clichés but also more wrong, both political and economic. Under the first aspect, for example, it can be shown that i authoritarian regimes or those dominated by strong nationalism, as in Great Britain, the USA or China, they have not been any more efficient than liberal democracies in fighting the epidemic, and indeed they have made very big mistakes with tragic consequences on the population, as for example in Brazil or in Russia itself.
On the economic side, all the recipes for autarkic closure, and for massive interventions by the State in the management of businesses, have already shown in the past that they hinder the development of citizens' income, bestowing security in exchange for a progressive impoverishment of the country and of individuals, as indeed had happened in the communist USSR. There is the risk of creating, as happened in the last century, a "political capitalism" which, with the excuse of offering protective barriers against the uncertainty of the markets, also questions the forms of liberal democracy which, albeit between errors and imperfections, have ensured broad individual freedoms and, at least until a few years ago, economic and social progress that has very few precedents in the history of humanity.
Now certainly globalization and certain forms of capitalism based on multinationals with managerial guidance, have faced considerable problems. It is difficult to say whether the crises have resulted from an excess of globalization or from a lack of it due to the contrast between the laws that have remained mostly national and the lack of global standards to give rules to multinational companies. But what is certain, and history has proved it, is that the greatest value of capitalism is its great capacity for renewal, face the creative destruction, which abandons old companies and old management schemes, in favor of new production and sales methods. Cultural references change, consumer demand changes and those who are capable of grasping the novelty are born immediately. The managing state is by nature conservative: tends to preserve the old, to satisfy the requests for stability coming from the population, to the detriment of the new, of managing the transition of people from the old jobs to the new ones.
Today we find ourselves poised between a common sense which in the face of danger tends to withdraw into fortresses deemed robust and a reality of facts from which it can be deduced that only capitalism is capable of adapting rapidly to new social and economic demands continuing to ensure the survival of liberal democracy and at the same time an adequate growth of the economy. It is clear that when one is afraid, the first impulse is to crouch down in a well-protected place. But as the best manuals on the art of war teach, "the best defense is the attack". And that is if we fail to find an economic and political structure capable of accompanying and supporting the transformation of the economy and of the culture already in place before the virus, then we will really be condemned to the decline that the defensive closures will not only be unable to avoid, but which will indeed be the decisive factors in accelerating the decline.
In the end, Cingolani rightly asks the question about who will be the new driver of this transformation which, moreover, is already in place but which should now run more. Which social group will take the lead in the process, forcibly pulling the whole of society, even the most riotous parts. There is no sure answer to this question yet. However, some trends can be glimpsed that could take the lead in the renewal: it is not a question of a new and solitary political leadership, or of a revolutionary social group that conquers pre-eminence, but of a widespread horizontal process that starts from the bottom, but which on the basis of an increasingly dense network of connections should move the whole of society in the right direction. It is a bit of a return to concertation between the government and the social partners, as desired by many. It could be positive, as long as the social partners are capable of overcoming their corporate closures and thinking in strategic terms, showing that foresight that everyone clamors for, but which few are willing to apply to their own affairs.
