While on the one hand Letta is trying with difficulty to keep his own government alive by giving it a realistic and credible direction of travel, on the other the parties are on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The Pd fears that it will not be able to resist the centrifugal forces of its various currents, the Pdl is increasingly hostage to its leader's judicial problems, while the M5S appears incapable of politically using its great electoral success and seems to have exhausted its driving force towards the change, in a trivial controversy on the "per diem", that is, on the reimbursement of expenses of one's parliamentarians, which in any company would have been resolved in a few minutes.
But why, one might ask, precisely Grillo's movement, which with its 9 million votes has powerfully contributed to accelerating the crisis of the traditional parties, appears incapable of expressing any political initiative, overcoming the phase of insults and bullshit that were they also fundamental in capturing the votes of the many disaffected both on the left and on the right? The reason for this total inability of the grillini to overcome the phase of pure protest to contribute to the start of the construction of a new political-institutional system is now beginning to appear more clearly.
And these reasons reside in the very characteristics of Grillo's movement, in its cultural foundations, in its anthropology, as Galli della Loggia lucidly says, moved by a sort of "democratic extremism", a sort of Jacobinism aimed against any type of power and any type of representation (albeit democratically elected). The almost paranoid mania for "transparency", the lack of which is certainly one of the major flaws not only of politics, but also of the Italian economy and society, does not translate in the minds of the grillini into rules and practices capable of eliminating the current shortcomings , but in an exaggerated representation in the public square of every act of those responsible for making decisions, as if everyone could and wanted to take care of everything. It is clear that in this way a very serious and important issue such as that of transparency is reduced to a farce with the risk that in a short while people will get tired of seeing everything and everyone and like the knitters under the guillotine, at a certain point they will go back home to go about their business without solving anything.
The reasons for this grillina aphasia reside, on the one hand, in the fact that the movement has gradually gathered under its banners all the antagonisms and movements that have existed for some time but which have grown and disproportionately due to the collapse of the Italian institutional and political structures which have lost part of their credibility with the explosion of the economic crisis that blocked the mechanisms of patronage redistribution, and on the other hand to the observation that its ideal inspiration is vague and lame and certainly does not constitute a valid unifying element of all these variegated demands of society often at odds with each other.
And in fact this ideal inspiration essentially refers to the doctrine of the "happy decrease" of Serge Latouche and his Italian followers such as Maurizio Pallante. Everyone tries to understand what is actually meant by degrowth and above all why it should ensure happiness. It is enough to read something by Latouche to understand that we are dealing with a new utopian millenarianism that longs for a society that cannot be realized except with Pol Pot-like coercive means, the exact opposite of that liberation of the individual from the slavery of the markets and of modern society based on consumerism and I waste it.
For example - says Latouche - it is a matter of establishing whether well-being requires that one should have 10 pairs of shoes when two would be enough (reading these words I immediately thought of my wife and her friends who have developed a real passion), or a large house with a swimming pool. But who sets the level of acceptable needs? This level must be established – according to this theory, by the community: an assembly of citizens of this small municipality (in which everyone will have to live) establishes how many pairs of shoes each one may need or what kind of houses to own. A small village where everyone is forced to stay since mass tourism is banned. “A bell tower in the center and the horizon around delimit a territory sufficient for the life of a man. And then thanks to technology we can see the rest of the world from the comfort of our homes”.
More serious things are dreamed of on international trade, on working hours, on monetary circulation so as to give a glimpse of a closed medieval-type society in which one produces in order to survive and in which there is no power other than that of the community. History teaches that this power of all has actually always been transformed into the power of only one. After all, who thinks about the defense? For example, if a gang of young men raid the village not to steal since there is little or nothing to take, but to kidnap the young girls (it has already happened, remember?) who organizes the defense and charges the taxes to buy the weapons?
Grillo made it clear to the crowds who flocked to listen to him: we will all be poorer but happier. But people didn't want to listen to him. Everyone thought that by reducing the salary of parliamentarians they would get a comfortable job, more money, more satisfaction of their needs.
It was a collective blunder, a sort of escape from an unpleasant reality which instead must be faced with determination, but from which it is certainly not impossible to get out. However, it is essential that the parties and first of all the Democratic Party do not let themselves be enchanted by the sirens of the grillina utopia and try to offer citizens a concrete and at the same time ideal vision of the society they want to build, and above all to follow up the theoretical narrative some first steps with reform measures, first of all of the institutions, capable of giving visible substance to the prospect of change.
