A debate has begun on Confindustria. On the effectiveness and efficiency of representation, or at least this is how I want to interpret the interventions on this subject, in order not to fall into personal disputes that are outside my way of reasoning. The problem is that we have to take the bull by the horns and ask ourselves if the command model of the Confindustria representation in its apical point is not mistaken.
That is, if it is not wrong to assume that the National President (the Territorial Unions are quite another thing…) of Confindustria must always be an entrepreneur. I don't address the problem from a theoretical point of view: it would be tedious, even if sooner or later it would be worth doing. I limit myself to recalling that, without a doubt, the golden age of Confindustria after the Second World War was that of the Presidency of Guido Carli and the General Management of Paolo Savona. Sure everyone got annoyed and resented that dyad. But then we forgot the tragedy of the Costa presidency, when Confindustria was against Italy's entry into the European Common Market and when the industrialists directly lent a hand to the political parties to which they cast their votes without any mediation.
It ended badly in terms of reputation and risked the rift between the wing of the reformers, who finally won the game (Agnelli and Pirelli with their reform which was historic…) to then cause, alas!, disasters. They can be summarized with the epochal one of the agreement on the single point of the escalator which bore the signature of Giovanni Agnelli. We were in a dramatic situation, of course, with mass violence in the streets and squares and factories with dead and wounded never honored enough and the surrender of the economic and political ruling class. Rather than defending the state, she often defended those sons of hers who were in the forefront of the violent.
Today the international situation of the markets, together with the growing subtraction of sovereignty from the national states, would force industrialists to pay more attention to Brussels rather than to Romanesque politics, transferring a good part of Viale dell'Astronomia to Avenue Churchill in Brussels ("Chez George" is a stone's throw away and you can always dine very well...), because by now the great choices are not made in Italy, but on a European scale. And the time that needs to be dedicated to analyzing the markets and the international situation requires the training and growth of "organic intellectuals" of industrial representation. I am thinking of that misunderstood giant who was Felice Mortillaro, for example, who could have been the forerunner of this new season and who, not by chance, was, however, mortified for his excessive freedom of thought and his too brilliant intelligence. If you want to talk about merit, you need to give a technocratic and non-parental aura to the Confindustria management, starting with the young, working your way up through the older branches.
Good prominent officials with illustrious curriculum vitae and capable of interpreting the deep hearts of industrialists would be the solution. And perhaps they would certainly solve the great dilemmas before us much better, with the constant cooperation of entrepreneurs: how to restructure the internationalization of our proprietary representation, not only of industry and how to create, alongside the already existing and highly value, a think tank on industrial relations that is not extemporaneous and casually inspired by the fashionable professor, but capable, instead, of giving the go on this issue not only on an Italian but international scale. In short, with the Supreme Poet one can well wish that it is better for the Imperator to come from horizons outside the pepinière of those who must be represented: the latter would devote themselves even better to their enterprises, with greater concentration and would decide with more freedom and in full conviction and well scrutinize the salaried representatives. My belief is that the truth (and therefore the simple solution) also in representation can be reached with complex thinking, but that this thinking is ultimately much more frugal than one might think: it is constructed by subtraction and not by addition . Humility rather than ambition is therefore decisive.
*Professor of Economic History at the State University of Milan
