We were friends with Guido Roberto Vitale. Not a simple working acquaintance between an economic journalist and a financier. In the seventies in Milan we were both young and we were trying to innovate the way of doing journalism and the petrified forest of finance. One of the first important operations that he followed was the conquest by Carlo De Benedetti of Olivetti. As a journalist I had in him a valuable source of information. I didn't betray his trust, but in exchange he didn't give me "poisoned meatballs", that is, false or distorted news.
Since then we have always met with greater or lesser intensity, and the topics of our meetings have gradually expanded from finance, to the overall economic structures of Italy and to more purely political issues, especially in recent times when it was necessary to question the profound reasons who had led the country into the hands of a populist and sovereign government, the furthest you can imagine from our culture and our liberal-democratic beliefs.
Guido Roberto had identified for many years in the weakness of the Italian bourgeoisie, today we would say of the elite, one of the main causes of the failure to consolidate the great leap forward made by our country after the Second World War. A weak bourgeoisie not so much economically as culturally and politically. It is not a question of capitalists without capital, but rather the opposite of capital without entrepreneurs. The latest book published by Vitale&Co, presented just two weeks ago in the very Milanese Società del Giardino in a crowded room also made up of many young people, identifies among the evils of Italy precisely the reluctance of entrepreneurs towards innovation not only of factory technologies , how much of the relationships with finance and politics.
In short, too many Italian entrepreneurs have tried shelter with a protective finance, as was that of Cuccia's Mediobanca or towards a political world willing to lend support, in exchange for not being disturbed in their games for power and in the cultivation of their clientele. But it was a short-sighted practice that led to the disappearance of large companies, fortunately replaced by a series of medium-sized companies that have been able to conquer international markets and which alone allow for a strong surplus in our trade balance.
The market economy and capitalism are the only system capable of bringing millions of people out of poverty, as he wrote in the preface of his latest book. But it must be a market well regulated by public authorities, and a capitalism based on people who are aware of having duties not only towards their companies, but also towards society as a whole. And instead too many look to the immediate benefit and neglect the consequences of their actions on the whole system. Too many entrepreneurs who have achieved fame and fortune take advantage of large and small welfare gifts. Too many try to get away from the Italian tax authorities or justice. Few consider it their duty to fight to change things, to have well-functioning and more transparent institutions. and this even if transparency can sometimes harm their immediate interests.
But the reasons for Italy's decline are many and complex. Unfortunately many innovators, as Vitale certainly was, have not found a political backing capable of challenging too many conservatisms, starting with those of the public administration and the trade unions, and therefore their correct intuitions have been thwarted by corporate drives, those of caste, which aimed to defend their privileged niche without realizing that sooner or later then the decline would overwhelm everyone. Every now and then a flame of hope was lit: a leader appeared on the scene who seemed suitable to make that long-awaited renewal. But then for one reason or another this illusion faded and you always found yourself a little further behind. Guido Roberto Vitale will be greatly missed, especially in a political and economic phase of extreme danger. It is to be hoped that many others will be willing to follow in his footsteps and keep the banner of the country's modernization high.
